The FCC’s proposed updates to its foreign-sponsored content rules would exceed the agency’s authority, increase burdens for broadcasters, and are unnecessary, said NAB, Gray Television, network affiliate groups, and the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council in comments this week in docket 20-299. Enacting “unnecessary, burdensome regulations” to “protect against something that from all indications has never happened does not reflect a sound approach to rulemaking,” said the affiliate groups. If such rules are enacted, the agency should carve out exceptions for advertising and religious and local programming, as well as grandfather existing agreements, the broadcasters said.
The FCC’s biennial 2022 Communications Marketplace Report’s video competition section lists the quadrennial review and ATSC 3.0 as focuses of FCC broadcast policy for the next two years and chronicles rising competition for broadcasters from online media, but it doesn’t indicate upcoming changes to the agency’s definition of the broadcast marketplace or MVPDs. “While the report is thorough in its coverage, it seems to miss some core dynamics of the local media advertising marketplace,” said BIA Advisory Services Managing Director Rick Ducey. “Local media are competing for all media spending. TV and radio stations don’t just compete with other stations, they compete with all other local ad-supported media.”
A Gray Television petition asking the courts to set aside the FCC’s $518,000 forfeiture order against the company (see 2211010077) suggests it's targeting agency policy rather than simply seeking to overturn the fine, attorneys told us. “The Commission’s Order is erroneous and improper for several reasons,” said Gray’s petition for review in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (docket 22-14274) last week.
Standard General continues to battle retransmission consent concerns about its proposed buy of Tegna, according to releases and FCC filings this week. Standard Thursday touted a retrans deal with Comcast as evidence of its willingness to comply with conditions on the transaction (see 2212190063), while MVPD Dish sent the FCC a completely redacted retrans letter from Cox Media Group – owned by deal participant Apollo Global Management -- in response to Cox’s denial (see 2212130061) it had sought to include Tegna stations in retrans negotiations. An FCC comment period on Standard’s proposed conditions is set to end in late January, just weeks before a Feb. 22 milestone in the Standard/Tegna merger agreement that would allow Tegna to choose to exit the deal.
With six business days left in 2022, the FCC has started its 2022 quadrennial review even as its 2018 review remains unfinished. FCC officials told us a vote on a draft QR order or NPRM isn't likely soon without five commissioners. Before Thursday's QR public notice establishing docket 22-459, multiple 10th-floor officials said there had been no mention of a QR proposal from the chairwoman’s office in months.
Action on Standard General’s proposed buy of Tegna isn’t expected soon, and recent concessions by Standard founder Soohyung Kim aren’t moving deal opponents, said industry attorneys and groups. “The reality is that the proposed investment increases the parties’ incentive and ability to collude in ways unaddressed by Standard General’s offer," said the American Television Alliance in a release Monday. Standard’s deal for Tegna was filed in February 2022, and the arrangement is now under the effects of a “ticking fee” clause in the merger agreement, which raises the price the longer the deal isn’t approved by regulators (see 2210280062). The “purchase price is increasing every day,” said Kim in a statement Friday.
FCC commissioners and panelists at the Practising Law Institute’s Institute on Telecommunications Policy & Regulation Thursday outlined expectations for 2023 involving employment data collection, enforcement and the USF, but many speakers were focused on cyber and national security, such as compromised apps and obsolete devices. “It’s time to turn our attention to the millions of wireless devices in our country that are insecure,” said Commissioner Nathan Simington. “There’s an industry-wide acquiescence to careless practices.”
Broadcasters tout ATSC 3.0’s capabilities for disseminating detailed emergency information, but it’s not clear what form the standard’s advanced emergency information offerings will take and who will provide it, said participants at an Advanced Warning and Response Network Alliance roundtable event at NAB’s headquarters Wednesday. AWARN’s roundtables are intended to help determine what advanced emergency alerting is, said AWARN Executive Director John Lawson, who's also the president of ATSC 3.0 alerting firm America’s Emergency Network.
The FCC should go after insurance companies that buy sales leads from robocallers and users of spoofed numbers, said communications attorney Arthur Belendiuk, of Smithwick and Belendiuk, in a complaint filed on his own behalf Monday in docket 20-195. “Starting as early as 8 a.m. and continuing into the evening hours, Complainant is barraged with a steady stream of unwanted telephone calls on both his mobile telephone and office telephone number, seven days a week,” said Belendiuk. The FCC “has the statutory authority to eliminate this scourge on American consumers,” said the complaint, comparing robocalls to “a plague of locusts” and calling for a forfeiture of $500 million for each company involved.
MVPD and telecom groups don’t agree with broadcasters on the practicality of revamping the FCC’s regulatory fee system, said reply comments filed in docket 22-301. NAB, a group of 57 smaller broadcasters and nearly all state broadcast associations filed replies in support of proposals from NAB and the Satellite Industry Association to rethink how the FCC parcels out the fees, but the Wireless ISP Association, NCTA and CTIA panned the idea. “The proposals of NAB and SIA are self-serving, impracticable, and would be unmanageable,” said NCTA.