An FCC draft NPRM on a host of minor updates to the agency’s foreign-ownership rules for broadcasters and common carriers is expected to enjoy unanimous approval during the agency's open meeting Monday, FCC and industry officials told us.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez condemned the agency’s threats against broadcast networks and warned that a loss of its independence could hurt internationally. Gomez delivered remarks during a Center for Democracy & Technology event Thursday in Washington. It was the first stop on what Gomez called a “1st Amendment Tour” in a release earlier this week. “I'm embarking on a tour to talk about this administration's efforts of censor and control, because we need people to understand what's happening, and we need them to speak out,” she said Thursday. “We are in an alarming moment, and I am not someone who is generally alarmist.”
A loss of agency independence will ease the path for corruption and make it harder to address bipartisan issues such as privacy and increasing competition, said a trio of Democratic agency officials recently fired by the White House. For agencies like the FTC or Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, “if we are an arm of the administration, then instead of being a watchdog, we become a lap dog,” said fired PCLOB member and former FCC official Travis LeBlanc during a Center for American Progress panel discussion Wednesday.
The Center for American Rights (CAR) has filed a news distortion complaint at the FCC against CBS, NBC and ABC over their coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador. CAR is the same entity behind the ongoing news distortion proceeding against CBS over a 60 Minutes interview. The complaint comes less than a week after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr posted a warning to NBC parent Comcast about its coverage of Garcia. “Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest. News distortion doesn’t cut it,” Carr wrote Wednesday.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management has kicked off a rulemaking to bring back Schedule F under a new name and reclassify some federal employees to make them easier to fire, according to a fact sheet issued Friday by the White House. The change will allow agencies to “swiftly remove employees in policy-influencing roles for poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of Presidential directives, without lengthy procedural hurdles,” the fact sheet said. The National Treasury Employees Union -- which represents FCC staff -- didn’t comment Monday but filed a lawsuit in January over the executive order reviving Schedule F (see 2501220080).
The FCC’s pressure campaign against corporate diversity initiatives lacks a clear basis in the rules and isn’t likely to fare well if it is tested in the courts, said panelists during a Broadband Breakfast webinar Wednesday.
The FCC should deny Sinclair Broadcast’s proposed sale of five stations to Rincon Broadcasting because of Sinclair’s sidecar relationships with Deerfield Media and Cunningham Broadcasting, said a petition to deny filed Monday by a newly formed public interest group, Frequency Forward. “In addition to controlling television stations in violation of the Commission’s multiple ownership rules, Sinclair has made material misrepresentations to conceal the extent of its control over these sidecar stations,” the petition said. “Neither Sinclair, nor Cunningham and Deerfield, Sinclair’s alter egos, are qualified to be Commission licensees.” It called for the FCC to hold a hearing into whether Sinclair and its sidecars are qualified to remain broadcast licensees.
Broadcasters called for the FCC to “delete” nearly every reporting and filing obligation the agency imposes on them in scores of comments posted in docket 25-133 Monday, but the agency should roll back ownership rules first, NAB said. Multichannel video programming distribution (MVPD) interests and allies repeatedly argued that the highly competitive video distribution marketplace necessitates doing away with rules they claim tip the competitive scales. The docket also received many comments from space interests and the telecom industry (see 2504140037 and 2504140046).
The FCC lacks authority to impose new Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (Calm) Act requirements on current licensees or extend the rules to streaming services, said industry commenters in filings in docket 25-72, which were due Thursday. A nonprofit dedicated to fighting noise pollution and the Hearing Loss Association of America wrote in support of tougher FCC Calm Act enforcement, while NAB, NCTA and the Streaming Innovation Alliance (SIA) opposed any further ad loudness rules. “The Commission cannot -- and should not -- alter the CALM Act technical standards or impose new obligations,” NCTA said.
A White House executive order that says agencies can dispense with notice-and-comment requirements when repealing some rules is unlikely to have an immediate impact on the FCC because Chairman Brendan Carr has at his disposal many traditional ways of deleting rules, academics, industry lobbyists and attorneys said in interviews. Along with the order on notice and comment, the White House also released an order requiring agencies to scuttle “anti-competitive” regulations and another repealing showerhead measures that could affect how agencies justify decisions.