NAB filed a petition for partial reconsideration of the FCC’s equal employment opportunity data collection order and Catholic broadcasters refiled and expanded their existing petition (see 2405010070), according to filings in docket 98-204 this week. The EEO order also was challenged in court (see 2405060057). NAB’s petition calls for the agency to reconsider making the broadcaster workforce diversity data publicly available and station specific and to reconsider changes to Form 395-B to allow for reporting of nonbinary genders. Making the data public violates the First and Fifth amendments and could threaten employee privacy, NAB said. “Given the Commission’s new categorization concerning non-binary employees, a number of broadcasters also have expressed concern on behalf of their employees who would be identified as such that they could be harassed,” NAB said. The FCC’s position that Congress requires it to regulate broadcaster EEO is wrong, and disclosing the data “will deliberately unleash pressure on stations to engage in preferential hiring practices,” NAB said. “The FCC effectively invites third-party activist groups to use the data for such inappropriate purposes.” The joint filing from Catholic broadcasters and groups including the Catholic Radio Association and the Sanctus Josephus Society has added another broadcaster to the 19 previously included in the petition. Jackson Lansing Catholic Radio has joined Archangel Communications, Holy Family Communications and others in calling on the FCC to reconsider the recognition of nonbinary gender in Form 395-B. The new filing also expands the Catholic broadcasters' First Amendment arguments. Speaking on a podcast Wednesday, an attorney representing one of the organizations pursuing a legal challenge to the EEO order condemned it as an attempt to control broadcasters and collect employee personal information. “They want to use this regulation to force organizations to use hiring practices for people of the LGBTQ persuasion that they prefer,” said Abraham Hamilton, general counsel of the American Family Association. Hamilton compared the public listing of the EEO data to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s listing of hate groups and said the FCC wants to force broadcasters to “capitulate” to “the Biden administration’s obsession with the LGBTQIAP+ sexual deviancy sociopolitical agenda.”

NAB confirmed Monday that its Leadership Foundation won’t award actor Robert De Niro the Service to America Leadership Award Tuesday. De Niro gave a speech condemning former President Donald Trump during a campaign event for President Joe Biden last week, which drew much negative media coverage. The Celebration of Service to America Awards is dedicated to honoring ‘vital local journalism and public service” and is “proudly bipartisan,” an NAB spokesperson said. “While we strongly support the right of every American to exercise free speech and participate in civic engagement, it is clear that Mr. De Niro’s recent high-profile activities will create a distraction from the philanthropic work that we were hoping to recognize,” NAB said. “To maintain the focus on service of the award winners, Mr. De Niro will no longer be attending the event.” The foundation announced that De Niro would receive the award for his philanthropic work in a May 28 news release.

Radio broadcaster Salem Media apologized for releasing a film and book questioning the 2020 election results and removed both from all its platforms, Salem said in a news release Friday. The book and film are called 2000 Mules. They're the work of conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza and the organization True the Vote. In the release, Salem said it relied on representations from D’Souza and TTV that a Georgia private citizen named Mark Andrews illegally deposited ballots during the election. “We have learned that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has cleared Mr. Andrews of illegal voting activity in connection with the event depicted in 2000 Mules,” said the release. “We apologize for the hurt the inclusion of Mr. Andrews’ image in the movie, book, and promotional materials have caused Mr. Andrews and his family.”

The one-year window for qualified low-power TV stations to apply for Class A status under the provisions of the Low-Power Protection Act opened Friday, and will stretch until May 30, a Media Bureau public notice said Friday in docket 23-126. The window is open to stations that broadcast a minimum of 18 hours daily, carry three hours per week of local programming, are located in markets of 95,000 households or fewer, and met all those requirements 90 days before the LPPA’s approval on Jan. 5, 2023. Fewer than 30 rural stations are expected to qualify. LPTV broadcaster Radio Communication Corporation is challenging the FCC order implementing the LPPA in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (see 2405230040).

The Copyright Office (CO) last week gathered feedback from broadcasters, streamers and songwriters on the potential redesignation of the entity that administers digital streaming royalties under the Music Modernization Act (MMA) (see 2208150042). President Donald Trump signed the MMA into law in October 2018, establishing the mechanical licensing collective (MLC). The MMA -- a years-long negotiation and legislative compromise among music industry, broadcast and streaming entities -- modernized the royalty payment system for the digital era. The MMA requires the CO to review the MLC’s designation every five years. The first review began in January, and reply comments are due June 28. The MIC Coalition, which includes NAB, CTA, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and the Digital Media Association, didn’t take a position on the MLC’s redesignation. But the coalition recommended the CO require the MLC to incorporate performance rights organization data into the musical works database to help members more efficiently handle payments. The MLC’s current database lacks comprehensive information for all four performing rights organizations, they said. The National Music Publishers’ Association and Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI), organizations that hold MLC board seats, recommended renewal. NMPA said it opposes proposals that "erode the proper functioning or funding of the MLC as explicitly laid out in the statutory text.” The MLC has “succeeded in fulfilling all of its obligations with the lowest operating budget of any known license administration collective in the music publishing industry,” said NMPA. The MLC’s operating costs, as a percentage of royalties it processes, was 3% in 2023, it said. Collective management and performing rights organizations typically take a 10%-20% commission, NMPA said. NSAI acknowledged there are areas for improvement but said the MLC has “exceeded everyone’s expectations in its first four years of operation. It is efficiently and effectively licensing, collecting and distributing royalties in a way our industry has not seen before.” Songwriters of North America said the existing MLC should be renewed, but the organization needs to address issues with the transfer and accuracy of the database.

The FCC should treat public TV stations differently from commercial stations in its locally originated content proceeding (see 2403120071), America’s Public Television Stations and PBS said during a call with an aide to Commissioner Geoffrey Starks Thursday, according to an ex parte filing in docket 24-14. The proposal prioritizing applications from broadcasters that originate local content “should not shift the long-standing understanding of localism as ‘issue-responsive’ programming,” the filing said. The NPRM proposes defining locally originated content as created within or very close to a station’s market, and that would exclude much public TV content, the filing said. The proposed definitions “do not align with the inherently local, community-responsive programming of public television stations, especially the programming of state and regional networks and local stations that engage in station collaborations,” the filing said. “Public television stations, which are locally owned and locally operated, are inherently local.” The FCC’s local content proceeding could have implications for what content is considered local in future proceedings, PBS and APTS said.

Broadcast applications filed after Aug.1 will need to use 2020 U.S. Census data in any interference analyses, said the FCC Media Bureau in a public notice in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. “Failure to do so will require amendment and may result in dismissal of applications as defective,” the PN said. The TVStudy software the agency uses to calculate interference and allot channels will make use of the 2020 census data, the PN said. TVStudy has also been updated to version 2.3.0, said a separate PN listing the updates.

The FCC Media Bureau will allow low-power TV stations to apply to change their channels starting Aug. 20, after a 14-year freeze, said a public notice Tuesday. The freeze on major modification applications for LPTV was put in place in 2010 in anticipation of the broadcast incentive auction. The freeze will be lifted Aug. 20 only for channel change applications. “No other changes will be permitted,” the PN said, but added that allowing channel changes is the “first step” in doing away with the freeze altogether. The channel change applications will be processed “on a first-come, first-serve basis.” Mutually exclusive applications will be handled through a settlement window to be announced by the MB in a later PN. Lee Miller, Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance executive director, told us many LPTV stations have long been waiting for the chance to change channels to improve reception or change their market. The announcement is “a step forward for our industry,” he said.

Radio Communication Corp. “fundamentally misreads the statutory scheme” and is “simply mistaken” in its challenges to the FCC’s implementation of the 2023 Low Power Protection Act (LPPA) (see 2404230058), said the agency's respondent brief Wednesday (docket 24-1004) in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “It is well within Congress’s power to regulate local television broadcasting,” said the brief. RCC's arguments that the FCC’s rules governing which low-power TV stations can upgrade to Class A status violate the First Amendment or discourage cable carriage of LPTV stations are “entirely beside the point,” because RCC is located in too large a market and so “ineligible for Class A status under the plain text” of the LPPA, the FCC said. The agency “correctly interpreted the statutory requirement that an eligible station ‘operate in a Designated Market Area with not more than 95,000 television households’ to mean that an eligible station must be located within a Designated Market Area that has no more than 95,000 television households,” the filing said. RCC is in a DMA with more than 95,000 TV households, so “that conclusion resolves this case,” the FCC said. “RCC’s various policy objections, its strained reading of the Communications Act, and its tenuous constitutional theories cannot change its ineligibility.”

The full FCC rejected an application for review from radio broadcaster Americom appealing a Media Bureau denial of its request to increase the power of a Carson City, Nevada, FM translator station. The rejection was detailed in an order released Tuesday. “We find no error in the Staff Decision,” the order said. Americom had sought a waiver to increase the translator’s power from 40 watts to 250 watts to better reach Nevada's Reno and Sparks markets and better serve Carson City, the order said. The Media Bureau found that “neither the irregular size and shape of the Nielsen Reno Market nor the signal degradation due to terrain obstruction, were unusual circumstances sufficient to justify grant of a waiver,” the order said. In its application for review, Americom argued that the Media Bureau decision didn’t match the spirit of the FCC’s AM Revitalization order, and that the bureau should have been more flexible and didn’t give Americom’s request sufficient consideration. The order said that Americom’s request would have conflicted with language in the AM Revitalization order limiting AM station service areas, and affirmed the Media Bureau ruling. “The benefits of Americom increasing its service area beyond the parameters set forth in the FM Translator Siting Rule do not outweigh the public interest benefits of applying that rule in a fair and consistent manner,” the order said.