The FCC should establish a timeline for a nationwide TV transition to ATSC 3.0, with stations in the top 55 markets -- covering 70% of the U.S. population -- shifting to 3.0-only broadcasts by February 2028, NAB said in a petition for rulemaking Wednesday. Under the proposed timeline, the remaining markets would transition to 3.0 -- which ATSC 1.0 TVs can't receive without a converter -- by February 2030. The petition also asks the FCC to change its rules to require new TVs to be able to tune ATSC 3.0 channels and require manufacturers to make accessing broadcast channels easier on new devices. “Without decisive and immediate action, the transition risks stalling and the realistic window for implementation could pass,” NAB said in the petition. “The time for half-measures is over.”
An FCC advisory opinion on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act would be “a fool's errand” and should be “DOA,” Commissioner Anna Gomez said Sunday in a thread on X responding to a New York Post report that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is planning to act on 230 soon. “The FCC should not be in the business of controlling online speech,” Gomez said. “Congress and the courts must quickly step in to stop this unlawful power grab.”
Public broadcasting is facing the “most significant” funding challenge it has seen in 30 years, America's Public Television Stations President Kate Riley said Monday at the APTS 2025 Public Media Summit in Washington. Congressional efforts to defund public media are “predictable threats” but grant-freezing executive orders and the FCC's investigation of NPR and PBS stations are “unpredictable threats,” Riley told the “fly-in” gathering of PBS station managers.
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous but narrow opinion Friday that reimbursement requests submitted to the E-rate program, administered by the Universal Service Administrative Co., can be considered “claims” under the False Claims Act (FCA). The decision in Wisconsin Bell v. U.S. reaffirmed the ruling of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Elena Kagan, one of three justices appointed by a Democratic president, wrote the opinion.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez condemned the FCC investigations of broadcast networks as "weaponization" of the FCC's authority, while the Center for American Rights called for the agency to investigate diversity initiatives at CBS.
The full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should overturn its three-judge panel’s decision against the FCC’s 2024 net neutrality order, said an en banc appeal that Public Knowledge, Free Press, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and the Open Technology Institute jointly filed Tuesday. The 6th Circuit should grant en banc review because the January decision creates a circuit split with the 9th Circuit and the D.C. Circuit on whether broadband internet access service (BIAS) falls under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, the appeal said. The 6th Circuit panel “shoehorned its policy preferences into the law, in a slapdash and inconsistent opinion that, if left unchallenged, will eliminate the ability of future regulators to promote universal, affordable competitive broadband access,” Public Knowledge Legal Director John Bergmayer said in a statement.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s announcement that the FCC will begin investigating regulatees with diversity, equality and inclusion programs appears to be among the first actions a federal agency has taken to enforce President Donald Trump’s DEI executive order, though the FCC’s authority in this area is unclear, attorneys and academics told us. In his letter Tuesday to Comcast, Carr said the agency plans “broader efforts to root out invidious forms of DEI discrimination across all of the sectors the FCC regulates.”
The FCC is investigating Audacy’s KCBS San Francisco over the station’s broadcasting of locations and identifying details of vehicles involved in an undercover Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in January, according to a Fox News report that quotes FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
The FCC opened a docket on the news distortion complaint against CBS, and both the FCC and CBS have released the unedited transcript of the 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Editing of the interview is also the subject of a suit that President Donald Trump brought against the network.
The FCC abruptly declined to defend the inclusion of a nonbinary gender category in its broadcaster workplace diversity data collection shortly before the start of oral argument at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday. The eleventh-hour shift could lead to the court declining to rule on the case, attorneys told us.