Monty Tayloe

The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council’s working groups are making progress toward providing the agency with reports on AI security concerns, ensuring access to 911 as networks evolve and offering recommendations for 6G security, said the group leads during Wednesday’s CSRIC meeting. The groups are on pace to deliver several reports in 2025 and 2026, with the first -- on AI, machine learning and the specific security concerns they bring to communications networks -- due in March. “We believe this is a complex task,” said working group co-Chair Vijay Gurbani, Vail Systems' chief data scientist.

The FCC should grant broadcasters a brief retroactive waiver of the agency’s audible crawl rules to allow them to adequately display emergency information until the agency decides on a longer-term solution, nearly every commenter said in docket 12-107 responding to a recent NAB petition (see 2411290007).

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr’s Nov. 13 letters to tech companies (see 2411150032) about their relationship with news website rating service NewsGuard are inaccurate and repeat false information, NewsGuard co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz said in a letter Friday to Carr, the agency's incoming chair. “We wish you had reached out to us before sending your letter because it relies on false reporting about us,” the co-CEOs wrote. Carr also relied on reporting from Newsmax, which has “misled” the commissioner in order to undermine the service’s credibility because it rates Newsmax poorly, NewsGuard's letter said. “An analogy would be a maker of unsafe cars objecting to its rating by Consumer Reports by making false claims about the magazine’s testing process,” NewsGuard said.

The FCC updated its Mapping Broadband Health in America tool to allow for visualization of more detailed data at the intersection of broadband access and health problems such as opioid abuse, cancer, chronic disease and several conditions affecting maternal health, said a public notice, fact sheet and news release Friday. The latest update “provides a crucial lens into the complex factors affecting maternal health” and is aimed at “empowering communities and policymakers to take action to improve the health and well-being of reproductive age and pregnant women across the country."

The U.S. Supreme Court decision doing away with Chevron deference won’t grind the next FCC to a halt but could prompt congressional action on the USF, former FCC officials said during panel discussions Thursday at Broadband Breakfast’s "Broadband in the Trump Administration" event.

The FCC is expected to unanimously approve a draft NPRM that would seek comment on several updates and language changes to broadcast rules, industry and agency officials told us.

FCC Communications Equity and Diversity Council members are concerned the advisory committee won’t be allowed to continue its work once Commissioner Brendan Carr takes over the agency, and the group used its final 2024 in-person meeting Friday to present arguments for its continued operation.

The FCC under presumed next Chairman Brendan Carr will scrutinize the Skydance/Paramount deal but also remove restrictions on broadcast ownership and “rebalance the scales in favor of business,” former FCC aide Adonis Hoffman wrote in a blog post for The Media Institute Wednesday. Although the FCC would “normally” review only the transfer of broadcast licenses connected with Paramount/Skydance, Hoffman said Paramount has issues with audience measurement and minority shareholders questioning the deal and that could merit the FCC conducting a more thorough examination. A complaint filed against CBS about editing a 60 Minutes interview “is unlikely to pass legal muster” but is also likely to lead Carr to look more closely at the transaction, Hoffman said. Though Hoffman expects scrutiny of the Paramount deal, the agency also will be friendlier to other broadcast acquisitions. “The new FCC promises to be much less hostile to companies seeking to consolidate,” he wrote. “That alone should encourage the mergers and acquisitions deals that have been sitting on the sidelines awaiting a more favorable regulatory environment.” He said Carr is likely to “reconfigure the vast amount of power that FCC bureaus now have and to centralize that decision-making in the office of the chairman.” That will make it more difficult for bureaus to levy fines and derail deals, Hoffman said, adding Carr will also likely streamline or sideline the agency’s advisory committees. Carr’s FCC “can be expected to function more like an activist SEC,” with regulations always changing to reflect shifting market dynamics. “Having served at the FCC as a legal adviser, Commissioner and now Chairman Carr has the institutional credibility to be politically courageous in consolidating power and effecting change.”

FCC Commissioner and incoming Chairman Brendan Carr on Tuesday discussed empowering local broadcasters, moving "aggressively” on USF revisions and opening up the space economy and jumpstarting spectrum policy. Speaking at the Practising Law Institute's 42nd Annual Institute on Telecommunications Policy & Regulation, Carr said he's “really looking forward” to taking the commission's top seat.

Congress should require that the likely next FCC chair, Commissioner Brendan Carr, “commit to protecting free speech and the public interest” because as a sitting commissioner he won't have a Senate confirmation process to lead the agency, and he's “a threat to free speech,” Free Press co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez wrote in an opinion column in The Hill Saturday. Gonzalez highlighted Carr’s public statements on using the FCC news distortion and equal opportunity rules against broadcasters and FCC regulation of social media platforms as evidence that he is a free speech threat. “Talk about Orwellian,” Carr responded in a post on X. “My decision to stand up for the free speech rights of everyday Americans and against the censorship cartel is not the threat, enforced silence is.”