The FCC will continue to allow employees to telework “at least” through September, acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told reporters Thursday afternoon and in an email sent to staff Thursday that we obtained. The FCC submitted a reentry plan to the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force last month, but the rise of the delta variant of COVID-19 caused the agency to “reassess,” Rosenworcel said.
Large indoor industry conventions will be high-risk situations if the ongoing rise of the delta variant of COVID-19 continues, said infectious disease doctors in interviews. Further complicating matters, they said it's unclear what the landscape of variants and vaccinations will be by October's NAB Show and Incompas Show.
A Florida broadcaster asked a federal court to prevent the FCC from auctioning his FM construction permit in the ongoing Auction 109, arguing it owed him extra time to complete his construction permit in 2014 after it reinstated a previous definition of an eligible entity in 2016. “The plaintiff’s construction permit will be wrongfully auctioned off to a third party bidder,” said the complaint (docket 1:21-CV-02050) filed in U.S. District Court In Washington Thursday by William Johnson, managing member of Florida-based Urban One Broadcasting Network. The company doesn’t appear to be connected to Maryland-based broadcaster Urban One, but neither company nor Johnson responded to requests for comment. Johnson’s filing lists him as representing himself. The complaint repeatedly warns the auction will start imminently and is dated July 24, but Pacer records it as having been filed Thursday. Auction 109 started Tuesday (see 2106030078). Johnson argued his company qualifies as an eligible entity under the revenue-based eligible entity definition, and he should have had additional time to complete construction on an FM station in 2013. Instead, the agency ruled the permit expired in 2014, the complaint said. Johnson filed petitions for stay in 2016 and a petition for declaratory ruling in June, after the Supreme Court’s Prometheus reinstated the eligible entity definition. Auctioning his permit will do “irreparable injury,” the filing said. Johnson wants the court to issue an injunction against the auction, order the FCC to withdraw the permit from the auction, and to act on Johnson’s pending filings. The agency didn't comment.
A draft NPRM on largely administrative changes to broadcast political advertising rules isn’t considered controversial and will likely be unanimously approved at or before commissioners' Aug. 5 meeting, said FCC officials and broadcast attorneys in interviews. The draft seeks comment on proposals to formalize policies about filing political ad information that the Media Bureau had long conveyed to licensees informally, attorneys said. “Some of it was already required, so I’m not sure that it makes much of a difference,” said Fletcher Heald's Anne Crump.
DOJ will require Gray Television to divest stations to Byron Allen’s Allen Media as a condition of approving Gray’s proposed $925 million buy of Quincy Media, an arrangement that mirrors the divestiture plan Gray announced in April (see 2104290067). DOJ’s announcement Wednesday is likely a sign that the Quincy acquisition will close in the coming days, said an informed broadcast lawyer. “Without the required divestitures, Gray’s acquisition of Quincy threatens significant competitive harm to cable and satellite TV subscribers and small businesses that advertise on broadcast television,” said Antitrust Division acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Powers. DOJ filed a civil antitrust suit alongside its proposed settlement in U.S. District Court in Washington. Without the divestiture plan, the transaction “would enable Gray to blackout more Big Four stations simultaneously” in the overlapping markets “than either Gray or Quincy could blackout independently today,” DOJ said. Powers said the divestitures are “a complete resolution” of DOJ’s concerns and praised the broadcasters involved as acting in “good faith.” The 10 divestitures involve seven markets: KVOA Tucson; WKOW Madison, Wisconsin; WSIL-TV Harrisburg, Illinois, and its satellite station KPOB-TV Poplar Bluff, Missouri; KWWL Waterloo, Iowa; Wisconsin's WXOW La Crosse and satellite WQOW Eau Claire; Wisconsin's WAOW Wasau and satellite WMOW Crandon; and WREX Rockford, Illinois. Neither Gray nor Allen Media commented Wednesday. Gray said in April the arrangement was intended to facilitate regulatory approval of the Quincy deal, which will send 11 stations to Gray. The divestitures don’t include the CW and MeTV programming streams broadcast on the digital subchannels of the stations, the DOJ proposed final judgment said. “Defendants’ retention of those CW and MeTV programming streams will not prevent the divestiture buyer from operating the Divestiture Stations as viable, independent competitors.”
The full FCC voted to impose a per station penalty of $512,228 against 14 broadcasters and a reduced $30,000 penalty against another over violations of good faith negotiation rules in retransmission consent negotiations with AT&T and subsidiary DirecTV. The 4-0 heavily redacted forfeiture order was released Wednesday afternoon.
The full FCC voted to impose a per station penalty of $512,228 against 14 broadcasters and a reduced $30,000 penalty against another over violations of good faith negotiation rules in retransmission consent negotiations with AT&T and subsidiary DirecTV, said a heavily redacted forfeiture order released Wednesday afternoon. The stations involved are affiliated with Sinclair through service agreements.
The FCC unanimously voted to seek comment on collecting equal employment opportunity data from broadcasters through Form 395-B, said a docket 98-204 Further NPRM Monday. The data collection was originally part of a proceeding in 2004 that stalled over concerns about confidentiality. “After so much time, this pause turned into a standstill,” said acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “We can do better than this.” The order stems from a draft circulated by Rosenworcel in February, and issues raised by Commissioner Geoffrey Starks in 2019 (see 2103260038). Failure to collect the EEO data “has hampered our ability to determine what regulatory actions are necessary to ensure equal employment opportunities,” said Starks. Rosenworcel commended Starks and Commissioner Brendan Carr for their collaboration here. The FNPRM seeks to “refresh the record regarding the collection of broadcaster workforce composition data and obtain further input on the legal, logistical, and technical issues surrounding FCC Form 395-B.” The item doesn’t appear to make specific proposals, and seeks comment on how confidentiality concerns should be handled, how the data collection interacts with court decisions on minority discrimination and recruitment, and whether the data should be “station-attributable.” Broadcasters had expressed concern that EEO data attributable to specific stations could be used against them in petitions to deny and similar filings. “An anonymous filing approach could impede” the FCC from contacting licensees if there are problems with the data, the FNPRM said. NAB said it is looking forward to reviewing the FNPRM and broadcasters "are committed to ensuring that they are able to recruit and retain a diverse workforce that represents the local communities they serve."
Aug. 11 nationwide tests of the emergency alert system and wireless emergency alerts are expected to proceed similarly to the last ones but more smoothly, said broadcasters and EAS officials in interviews. Volume problems and transmission issues that caused a drop-off in reception in the 2019 EAS exercise (see 2005120064) have been addressed. The 2021 WEA test requires users to have opted in to get the test message, unlike the 2018 version. The 2020 test was canceled due to COVID-19. “If something fails, we try to go back and see where it’s not working,” said Wyoming Association of Broadcasters President Laura Grott.
The bulk of FCC staff won’t return to the office until the FCC completes negotiations with its employee union, but talks haven’t been scheduled, per the National Treasury Employees Union and an Office of Personnel Management memo. Other agencies said they're trying to figure out their own return to their headquarters.