The FCC won’t freeze radio regulatory fees or change the way it calculates them, and will continue phasing in fees for satellite providers, said an order and Further NPRM on FY 2020 regulatory assessments released Monday. Direct full-time equivalent employee allocations “best reflect the benefits provided to the payor,” the order said. The item, unanimously approved by the full FCC, includes measures intended to provide relief during the COVID-19 pandemic but doesn’t go as far as some broadcast commenters had requested. The agency can’t waive 2020 fees or late payments, or suspend fee increases over the current lack of advertising, the order said. Instead, the order streamlines the process of seeking hardship reductions or waivers, lowers the interest rate for installment payments of regulatory fees, and allows “red light” licensees to seek such relief. The agency will issue public notices with greater detail. The order adopts the population-based fees for TV broadcasters proposed in an earlier NPRM. “The population-based metric better conforms with the actual service authorized here -- broadcasting television to the American people,” the order said. “We disagree with the radio broadcasters that we should ignore our long-standing methodology in order to freeze regulatory fees for (and thus benefit) radio broadcasters at the expense of other regulatees,” said the order. “Because the Commission is statutorily obligated to recover the amount of its appropriation through regulatory fees, these fees are a zero-sum situation.” The agency also collect regulatory fees from most non-U.S. licensed space stations that have U.S. market access, the order said. Assessing the same regulatory amount on those stations as on U.S. licensed space stations “will better reflect the benefits received by these operators through the Commission’s adjudicatory, enforcement, regulatory, and international coordination activities,” the order said. The FNPRM seeks comment on methods for calculating fees for non-geostationary orbit satellites.
Lifeline providers are looking to FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly as a potential avenue for shifting a draft order circulated last month (see 2007300064) that would change the formula setting the minimum service standard to produce an MSS of 4.5 GB per month, said an industry attorney and an FCC official. That’s lower than the 11.75 GB the MSS will require starting in December without FCC action but higher than the freeze at the current 3 GB requested by virtually all Lifeline docket commenters. “We want them to do something, but we want it to be something that won’t harm Lifeline subscribers," said Public Knowledge Senior Policy Counsel Jenna Leventoff. “Vulnerable low-income Americans shouldn’t be left behind during this COVID-19 pandemic,” said attorney Judson Hill, who represents Lifeline provider TruConnect.
ATSC 3.0-focused entities BitPath, OneMedia and Pearl TV want the FCC to delay or ameliorate congressionally required ancillary services fees on broadcaster datacasting, while public interest groups believe those fees should be used to cover costs to consumers from purported disruptions in the 3.0 transition, said comments posted at the FCC in docket 20-145 (see 2006090055). Noncommercial educational broadcasters want to be exempt from the fees, and low-power TV groups seek more flexibility to benefit from 3.0.
Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim is more likely to act to change the ASCAP and BMI music licensing degrees than Congress is, and any move DOJ makes in that direction is likely to be an uneasy process and complicated by the presidential election, broadcast and music licensing attorneys said in interviews this and last week. DOJ held a workshop on the possibility last month (see 2007290068). “It remains apparent from the continuing attention that the Antitrust Division is paying to the issue of consent decree reform that the DOJ may act” to modify the decrees, said Weil Gotshal intellectual property attorney Benjamin Marks, who represented the TV Music Licensing Committee. “I don’t think Congress is likely to take up the issue before the election or in the short term."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's 2-1 ruling Friday knocking down two FCC conditions on Charter Communications' buying Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks didn’t get to the merits (see 2008140018). It nonetheless could have implications for future consumer challenges of regulations, said cable attorneys and appellant the Competitive Enterprise Institute in interviews. Industry and public interest lawyers disagree how the ruling will affect a parallel FCC proceeding on sunsetting Charter/TWC/BHN conditions (see 2007230015).
The broadcast TV industry expects improvement in Q3, but it's still (see 2008050063) too uncertain to promise specifics, said executives from Gray Television, Univision, E.W. Scripps and Tegna. “The situation is still fluid and visibility is limited,” said Gray Chief Financial Officer Jim Ryan. “The impact of the pandemic remains uncertain,” said Tegna CFO Victoria Harker. "Scripps has suspended issuing new guidance because of the economic uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic," said the company.
The FCC approved eliminating rules restricting same-market, commonly owned radio stations from airing duplicate programming, 3-2 Thursday. It eliminated restrictions for both bands, as expected (see 2008040063). The draft applied only to AM.
Some broadcasters are seeing signs the downturn in advertising caused by the pandemic is slowly improving. Others remain uncertain, based on earnings releases and quarterly investor calls this week. Sinclair stock closed down 10% Wednesday at $19.32. Fox fell 7.3% to $24.73.
The draft order on relaxing radio non-duplication rules will be expanded to apply to FM and AM stations, and draft items on broadcast antenna siting and telephone relay service rules are expected to be approved before Thursday’s commissioners' meeting, FCC and industry officials said in interviews this week. FCC Democrats are seen likely to oppose the expanded radio item, agency officials said.
Libraries are increasingly taking on the role of filling gaps caused by a lack of broadband access, and the pandemic exacerbated the issue, said librarians, educators and digital access nonprofits during the FCC Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment’s virtual workshop Monday. Libraries lending mobile Wi-Fi hot spots to patrons is a “Band-Aid” for the larger issue of web access, said Lisa Shaw, workforce development specialist for the Maine State Library. “When you’re bleeding, you need a bandage, and we’re bleeding very heavily.”