A court dismissed AT&T's breach of contract and a trade secrets violation complaint against a negotiator handling retransmission consent talks for a group of Sinclair sidecar stations. That prompted speculation by industry lawyers we spoke with Friday on whether the decision will affect broadcasters' appeal of an FCC ruling that they violated good faith rules.
Advertisers need more education about the timeline and capabilities of ATSC 3.0, and the consumer experience is especially important, said panelists at the NextGen TV Summit put on by SMPTE and the Society of Broadcast Engineers Thursday,
Terrier Media wants to sell the Ohio daily newspapers acquired from its buy of Cox’s stations, said an FCC Media Bureau letter posted Wednesday in docket 19-98. Terrier planned to reduce the daily publication schedule of the papers -- which include the Dayton Daily News -- to three days a week to comply with the restored newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rules (see 1911220069). It was granted an extension of the deadline to arrange the sale, said the Media Bureau. The Thursday deadline to reduce publication was extended to March 16.
The FCC doesn’t need to clarify or firm up noncommercial educational station underwriting rules, said broadcasters and their attorneys in interviews last week. Underwriting violations led to a $76,000 penalty for two stations connected with the University of Arkansas last week (see 2001070048). The Enforcement Bureau noted the agency hasn’t adopted “quantitative guidelines” for underwriting announcements and the FCC “affords some latitude” to licensees that exercise reasonable good faith judgment.
TV stations that must change frequencies following the incentive auction continue (see 1908090050) to make their phase deadlines by shifting their signal to interim antennas that don’t reach all viewers, said broadcasters, FCC officials and antenna manufacturers in recent interviews. Phase seven -- out of 10 -- of the post-incentive auction repacking ends Jan. 17.
The FCC “placed the interest of a private equity firm ahead of everyday people” by approving Terrier Media’s buy of Cox Enterprises stations (see 1911220069) and Terrier’s plan to comply with newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rules by reducing the Dayton Daily News publication schedule, wrote Dayton, Ohio, Mayor Nan Whaley (D) and former FCC Commissioner Mike Copps in USA Today Thursday. “A region of nearly 1 million people will bear the brunt of these devastating cuts to its primary news source.” The deal's OK “with its explicit endorsement of profit over the public interest demonstrates that the FCC has lost its way.” The FCC had done away with the cross-ownership rules when Terrier proposed the purchase, but the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ Prometheus IV restored the rule before the agency approved the transaction. Copps is a special adviser to Common Cause, a Prometheus petitioner. “FACT CHECK: The FCC eliminated the stupid and outdated rule that is leading to this outcome, but the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, at the urging of your co-author, reinstated it,” tweeted Matthew Berry, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's chief of staff. “I suspect your co-author neglected to inform you that the very restrictions he supports are one of the major elements responsible for the decline in local journalism (in Dayton and elsewhere),” tweeted NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan to Whaley. In the absence of the Prometheus "ruling we would not have revised the filing this way," emailed a Terrier spokesperson. "From the beginning, we saw our investment to improve services to local communities and this operational change was not our intent nor in our original filing.”
The FCC’s clarification of political file rules creates new, subjective disclosure obligations that aren’t backed up in the law, burden companies and raise First Amendment questions, said broadcasters, network affiliates and NCTA in comments posted Tuesday in docket 19-363 supporting NAB’s petition for reconsideration (see 1911180068). “This decision will harm the entire local advertising ecosystem and burden the speech of political and nonpolitical advertisers alike,” said a joint filing from Gray Television, E.W. Scripps, Meredith, Block Communications and WBOC. Transparency groups including Campaign Legal Center, Sunlight Foundation and Common Cause disagree. “Any possible burden” is “clearly outweighed by the benefits of public disclosure,” the groups said.
Strategies for getting around the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that involve the FCC splitting off deregulation items from the 2018 quadrennial review and approving them (see 1911210065) are unlikely to be successful, said experts including broadcast attorneys in interviews in December. The ruling requires the agency base changes to ownership rules on data about the rules’ effects on minority ownership, said United Church of Christ attorney Cheryl Leanz, who argued for the petitioners in Prometheus IV. “If the FCC doesn’t get the data, they don’t get to pass go.”
A 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision this month could have implications for state political advertising disclosure rules and for the FCC’s recent clarifications of its own political file rules, said broadcast attorneys in interviews (see 1910170037). In Washington Post v. David McManus, the 4th Circuit ruled unconstitutional a Maryland law designed to combat election interference by requiring online platforms to disclose political ad buys. The 4th Circuit’s analysis could be used to challenge state and federal laws on disclosure of political ads for online platforms, and some of those rules affect broadcasters, said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford in a blog post. Disclosure rules aimed at online platforms in the state of Washington could create “undue burdens” for broadcasters in the state, said Washington State Association of Broadcasters President Keith Shipman.
Entertainment Media Trust skipped a Dec. 5 conference in its license proceeding it had been ordered to attend and is in danger of having the proceeding dismissed and not having its licenses renewed, FCC Administrative Law Judge Jane Halprin said in an order posted in docket 19-156 Tuesday. Halprin is “deeply troubled” by EMT’s actions, she said. EMT not responding to the order to appear and failing to show up “provides a basis for immediate dismissal of this proceeding,” she said. Halprin isn’t yet dismissing the proceeding because of “tumult” about EMT’s representation, she said. EMT’s former attorneys -- Fletcher Heald's Davina Sashkin and attorney Anthony Lepore -- had represented both EMT and the Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee holding EMT’s stations, but were abruptly terminated as EMT’s lawyers (see 1911260067). If a substitute representative of EMT doesn’t file an appearance in the proceeding by Dec. 20, Halprin will invite the other parties in the case to file motions to dismiss, she said. EMT’s ongoing bankruptcy is expected to soon be dismissed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, and the licenses reverted to EMT, according to a filing from Chapter 7 trustee Donald Samson. EMT didn’t comment Wednesday, but in a podcast version of his radio show posted Tuesday, (at about the 20:45 mark) Bob Romanik -- who the Enforcement Bureau has argued is the true controller of EMT’s stations -- said he's being thrown off the air because of opposition to his politics and his frequent use of the n-word. “They are trying to throw me off the air day in and day out, they got all kinds of lawyers working the case,” Romanik said. “It has nothing to do with anything else, I don’t care what they say,” he said. Repeatedly using the racial epithet alongside descriptors such as “greasy,” and “lazy,” Romanik said on the podcast that the FCC’s issue with him isn’t his status as a felon but “thousands of complaints” filed against him. At one point, Romanik apologized for using the word “black” in lieu of the n-word. EB hasn’t referenced content complaints in EMT’s case.