President Donald Trump withdrew his renomination of FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly to another term, the White House announced Monday (see 2008030072). The Trump administration and O’Rielly’s office didn’t comment. The agency declined to comment.
A draft order circulated to eighth-floor offices Thursday would reduce a Dec. 1 increase of the Lifeline program’s minimum service standard for mobile broadband. Currently, the MSS is to go from 3 GB monthly to 11.75 GB monthly on that date. The draft would instead shift it to 4.5 GB per month. It will “permanently clean up the mess” from the 2016 order that instituted the formula leading to the larger increase, Chairman Ajit Pai said. The agency waived a similar increase, from 3 GB to 8.75, in 2019. The metric has to rise to keep up with consumer data use, but increases that are too large prevent providers from keeping Lifeline affordable, Pai said.
Updated pacts proposed by BMI and ASCAP should be treated as proposals to terminate the consent decree regime entirely because they include a sunset clause, said NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan during a panel Wednesday on day two of DOJ’s workshop on music licensing (see 2007280062). ASCAP and BMI are “cartels” and it's in the public interest to constrain them with consent decrees, he said. There are more performance rights organizations than ever, and ASCAP and BMI face competition from publishers through direct licensing and from powerful tech companies, said advocates for ASCAP and BMI.
The consent decrees that govern music rights are out of date and artists should be able to enjoy the free market, said Antitrust Division Chief Makan Delrahim in the opening address Tuesday of DOJ’s teleconferenced two-day workshop (see 2007240067). Consent decrees “don’t conduct music, but the market for music is conducted by consent decrees,” said Delrahim. The pacts need to be justified by either the current landscape or a future one, and shouldn’t be kept to serve the status quo, he said.
Radio giants such as iHeart and Cumulus are united with low-power FM and public interest entities such as REC Networks and Prometheus Radio Project in opposition to a proposal to allow originating programming on FM translators (see 2006260029), in comments posted Friday in RM-11858. This responds to a petition from the new Broadcasters for Limited Program Origination. BLPO includes Miller Communications, Cromwell Group and Finger Lakes Radio Group.
The FCC will allow workers who are teleworking now to continue doing so until at least June 2021, and delayed its move to new headquarters until September 2020 over concerns about staff being infected with COVID-19 during the packing process. That's according to interviews with staff, the employee union, and a memo emailed to workers Friday by Chairman Ajit Pai’s Chief of Staff Matthew Berry. (Our earlier news bulletin on this is in front of this publication's pay wall here and the other one is at 2007240038).
The FCC will allow staffers who are teleworking to continue doing so until at least June, regardless of location, said a Friday emailed memo to staff from Chairman Ajit Pai’s Chief of Staff Matthew Berry “We want to provide those with concerns ranging from childcare to their own health with the peace of mind that they will have the flexibility they need over the coming months.” The decision was made “in light of recent announcements by school districts as well as the ongoing nature of the pandemic.”
The Supreme Court doesn’t need to intervene in FCC ownership rules because the ongoing 2018 quadrennial review is a mechanism for updating them, wrote respondents Tuesday to the agency’s attempted appeal of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ Prometheus IV (see 2005260052). “The sky will not fall if this Court allows the Commission to do its job without weighing in,” said respondents including Prometheus Radio Project, Free Press, Common Cause and the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-Communications Workers of America. By “looking in the rearview mirror,” further judicial review “might only make matters worse,” the filing said.
The newly formed Independent Broadcasters Association (see 2007100040) is intended to let independent radio stations cooperate to get some of the financial advantages the largest station groups enjoy, not as a lobbying group or alternative to NAB or RAB, said the group’s members in interviews last week. The IBA will be a buying group and one-stop shop for national advertisers, not a lobbying organization, said founder Ron Stone, CEO of Adams Radio Group. NAB and RAB “do an outstanding job,” said IBA member and Renda Broadcasting CEO Tony Renda. “Why reinvent the cow?”
Radio's future remains unclear, said BIA Advisory Services Chief Economist Mark Fratrik in a Tuesday webinar his firm hosted. The economy and local advertising showed signs of improvement in May and June as states and localities reopened, but recent surges in COVID-19 cases could “put a stop sign on recovery,” Fratrik said. Ad trends tend to lag slightly behind the broader economy, said BIA Managing Director Rick Ducey. Pandemic economic issues also affect regions differently, so a station’s outlook can depend on its market, Fratrik said. Radio is slowly reclaiming its audience reach, Fratrik said. Its audience reach numbers are overall 95% of March, he said. Drive-time listening numbers are down because of a drop in commuting, but midday numbers are up from listeners working from home, he said. Stations shouldn’t expect much of a boost from political commercials because radio traditionally isn't a main outlet for political spots, Fratrik said. That could change this year as campaigns look for replacements for in-person political rallies, said Mark Levy, president of Revenue Development Resources. Money that would have gone to campaign branded merchandise for such rallies or for donor luncheons could get snapped up by radio, he said.