FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel changed the leadership of several FCC bureaus, said a release Monday. Industry officials said the change doesn’t appear to be an omen of big shifts at the agency -- most of the new heads are longtime bureau staff who were already in the leadership of their departments. They said the staff changes are an expected outgrowth of Rosenworcel’s becoming permanent chair late last year. "The timing is based on the Chairwoman’s new term and appointment as permanent Chair," said an FCC spokesperson. The spokesperson confirmed that the former chiefs remain employed by the agency. Until Monday's announcement, Rosenworcel had retained several bureau heads from the administration of former Chairman Ajit Pai. Holly Saurer, a longtime Media Bureau staffer who had been Rosenworcel’s acting media adviser, will become MB chief, replacing Michelle Carey. Michele Ellison, a longtime FCC Deputy General Counsel, who was general counsel in an acting capacity under Rosenworcel, will take the job on a permanent basis. Former Public Safety Bureau Deputy Chief Debra Jordan will replace Lisa Fowlkes in that bureau’s top post. Alejandro Roark, former executive director for Latino civil rights group HTTP, is the new chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, replacing Patrick Webre. Prior to HTTP, Roark worked on tech policy for the League of United Latin American Citizens. Loyaan Egal, a former deputy chief in DOJ's National Security Division Foreign Investment Review Section who worked on Team Telecom matters, will become Enforcement Bureau acting chief, replacing Chief Rosemary Harold. Before DOJ, Egal was in the Enforcement Bureau, where he established and led the then-USF Strike Force. “I’d also like to thank Michelle Carey, Lisa Fowlkes, Rosemary Harold, and Patrick Webre, for their public service as they transition to new roles across the agency,” Rosenworcel said. See our news bulletin also.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel changed the leadership of several FCC bureaus Monday. She had until Monday retained numerous department heads from the administration of previous FCC Chair Ajit Pai.
The FCC is statutorily required to handle the 2018 and 2022 quadrennial reviews separately, said Media Bureau staff at an FCBA virtual panel Thursday. The law says the FCC “shall” review broadcast ownership rules every four years, and that means “this is something we must do,” said MB Attorney-Adviser William Durdach, saying the law doesn’t allow the agency to “roll a quad into another quad.” Stakeholders speculated the agency could seek to skip the 2018 QR (see 2112200018).
Broadcast engineers and equipment manufacturers commenting in docket 21-422 all endorsed an FCC proposal to allow the use of computer models to verify the patterns for FM directional antennas. The one exception was antenna manufacturer ERI (Electronics Research Inc). “You’re going to have antennas that don’t work the way they’re represented,” said ERI CEO Tom Silliman in an interview Friday. Said engineering firm Meintel Sgrignoli, echoing most commenters: “It is our experience that various computer modeling software programs do an excellent job of predicting accurate antenna pattern data."
ATSC 3.0's backers need to focus on attracting consumers, advertisers and consumer tech OEMs to the new technology, said executives from E.W. Scripps, Sinclair, Nexstar, and BitPath in a virtual panel Thursday. “A lot of these OEMs need to understand in a much deeper way what’s in it for them,” said Kerry Oslund, Scripps vice president-strategy and business development. If broadcasters don’t ensure that ATSC 3.0 early adopters see “a tangible difference,” 3.0 “will be 3DTV all over again.”
An FCC draft order on largely administrative changes to political advertising rules is considered noncontroversial and could be approved unanimously even before the agency’s Jan. 27 open meeting, said broadcast and FCC officials in interviews. The item’s docket, 21-293, shows no activity since October. The NPRM version was unanimously approved before commissioners’ August meeting (see 2108040058).
NAB and other supporters of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act are making a renewed push to advance the measure, despite its still-murky path to becoming law in 2022. HR-1735/S-673 would let small news outlets negotiate revenue-sharing with online platforms (see 2103100058). Sponsors are readying tweaks in a bid to quickly advance the measure out of at least the House Judiciary Committee.
The FCC Media Bureau’s announcement Tuesday that the consolidated database system (CDBS) won’t accept new filings after Wednesday (see 2201110077) surprised broadcasters and broadcast attorneys. But they told us it isn't likely to create many problems for them. Other than having to email some forms that previously would have been entered into the system, “it’s not going to be a big change,” said Dawn Sciarrino of Sciarrino and Associates.
The Alabama Broadcasters Association canceled its in-person Jan. 21-22 annual conference due to concerns about COVID-19, the group emailed members. “With the Covid Omicron variant spreading like wildfire across our state and already having an impact on many of your stations, we believe it is in everyone's best interest that we not gather in large numbers just yet,” wrote ABA President Sharon Tinsley. "We will begin contacting our speakers immediately to arrange to provide the content we had planned in a virtual setting over the next six weeks." Tinsley said as recently as late December that the event would proceed in person (see 2112220045). The conference had been planned to do so until just a day before the announcement, she said, "Our positive test rate in Alabama is over 36% today with more than 37,000 new cases in the last week," Tinsley said Monday. "We are supposed to help solve problems for our member stations -- not contribute to their problems. In spite of our best efforts, a large gathering would likely further the spread of the virus."
The 2021 nationwide emergency alert system test showed improvement over the 2019 version, but difficulties with primary entry point stations and low participation by low-power broadcasters affected the results, the FCC reported last week on the Aug. 11 test. The agency also issued a report on the simultaneous wireless emergency alert test (see 2112300045).