The FCC should “promptly” release an NPRM indicating its preliminary conclusions about an ATSC 3.0 transition date, said Pearl TV Executive Director Anne Schelle during a meeting last week with an aide to Commissioner Olivia Trusty. “Each quarter that passes without a definitive signal and an NPRM” from the FCC “increases the risk of extending the timeline” for the transition “by another year, as development and manufacturing processes are tied to seasonal and retail schedules,” said a presentation included with the ex parte filing in docket 16-142. Without an NPRM pointing to a date, “manufacturers are likely to adopt a wait-and-see approach,” Pearl TV said, adding that TVs have an 18-month development cycle. “All parts of the ecosystem -- from [consumer electronics] manufacturers to developers of converter boxes to retailers and smaller market broadcasters -- need the certainty of a set transition date and volume of devices to focus attention on the last stage of the transition to ATSC 3.0,” the filing said.

The FCC Media Bureau is seeking comment on a petition for declaratory ruling on whether a homeowners association's (HOA) rules against rooftop antennas violate FCC regulations, said a public notice Friday. The matter concerns a dispute between Wintergarden, Florida, resident Brian Smith and the Orangetree of Lake County HOA. According to filings from Smith, the HOA ordered him to remove his rooftop TV antenna and replace it with one installed in his attic. Smith said the HOA’s policy violates the FCC’s rule for over-the-air reception devices, which “prohibits governmental and nongovernmental restrictions that impair the ability of antenna users to install, maintain, or use” such devices, the notice said. Comments are due Aug. 11, replies Aug. 26.

Tegna has agreed to a $222,500 settlement with the FCC over an Oct. 2021 incident where a 13-second clip of pornographic material was played on a monitor visible behind an anchor during an evening news weather segment, said an order and consent decree in Thursday’s Daily Digest. Tegna told the FCC that an unknown person used the monitor’s screencasting feature to transmit and display the material while on a legacy wireless network that, unknown to the station's IT team, didn’t require a password. After the incident, Tegna deactivated the network, disabled screencasting on all monitors at all its stations and began requiring that all new monitors be installed without Wi-Fi capabilities, the consent decree said. Under its terms, Tegna agreed to create a compliance plan and file compliance reports with the FCC for the next three years. In 2016, then-Schurz-owned WDBJ Roanoke, Virginia, paid a $325,000 FCC forfeiture after it aired an image that contained pornography during a news story about a firefighter’s adult film career (see 1604040057). Schurz appealed the amount but eventually paid in order to close its sale to Gray Television.

Fourteen groups signed a letter Thursday urging the FCC to reject NAB’s push for an ATSC 3.0 tuner mandate. The groups -- which include Digital Liberty, Americans for Tax Reform, the James Madison Institute and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, as well as two individual signers -- said ATSC 3.0 already reaches three out of four Americans. “By any reasonable standard this is a success,” and broadcaster arguments that the 3.0 transition is in jeopardy without FCC intervention are “flimsy.” The agency “should maintain its voluntary, market driven adoption policy that has reached the vast majority of Americans, not embrace a mandate just to reach the small minority of markets broadcasters have struggled to penetrate,” the letter said. “While broadcasters operate under the strain of onerous regulations dating from the Second World War, new mandates on other technologies are not the solution.”

The FCC requiring a mandatory ATSC 3.0 transition would “emulate Soviet-era politicos” and amount to “blatant market meddling" for “dubious benefits,” wrote former FCC Commissioner and Free State Foundation Adjunct Senior Fellow Michael O’Rielly in a post Wednesday. O’Rielly compared broadcaster plans to generate revenue from their spectrum using ATSC 3.0 datacasting to “side hustles" and to “allowing mailmen to use U.S. postal trucks to deliver Christmas trees.” Even if a 3.0 datacasting business materializes, “remember that the government would be allowing broadcasters to leverage the spectrum that they use to offer these services for private gain and far afield from providing broadcast services to the public. Is this the best use of a scarce resource?” O’Rielly asked.

A pirate radio operator in the Boston area has agreed to pay $10,000 to the FCC as part of a settlement with the agency, said an order and consent decree in Tuesday’s Daily Digest. In April 2024, the FCC approved a $597,775 notice of apparent liability against Jean Marius, operator of the unauthorized radio station Radio Tele Planet Compas in several communities in Massachusetts. After the NAL, Marius gave the agency evidence of his inability to pay the proposed forfeiture, according to the consent decree. After determining that he had ceased broadcasting, the Enforcement Bureau agreed to the reduced amount, which Marius must pay within 30 days. Under the consent decree, Marius agreed not to commit future acts of pirate broadcasting or assist anyone else in doing so. If he violates the settlement within the next 20 years, he will have to pay the remaining $587,775 proposed, the consent decree said.

The executive order targeting funding for NPR and PBS is illegal viewpoint discrimination and retaliation and therefore violates the Constitution, according to recent amicus filings from civil rights and journalism advocacy groups. The briefs were filed last month at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and entered this week.

Gray Media and E.W. Scripps have agreed to a swap of TV stations that would involve seven stations in five markets and create new duopolies for both companies, said a Gray release Monday. Media brokers told us that a wave of such swaps has been anticipated (see 2505150056) since the FCC signaled in March a new willingness to waive its prohibition against top-four duopolies (see 2503120066). The Media Bureau approved a Sinclair deal involving a top-four waiver last week (see 2507010073).

Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler slammed current Chairman Brendan Carr’s handling of the Skydance/Paramount deal in an op-ed piece published Saturday by The Guardian. Wheeler said he expects the FCC to cease “slow-walking” the deal after CBS agreed last week to a $16 million settlement in President Donald Trump’s personal lawsuit against the network (see 2507020053). By holding up the deal over a news distortion complaint against CBS, Carr exceeded the FCC’s traditional authority, Wheeler said, adding that the chairman “has not been shy” about using FCC authority to achieve political goals. “It is time to unfurl the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner at the Federal Communications Commission,” Wheeler wrote. “What was once an independent, policy-based agency has been transformed into a performance-based agency, using any leverage it can discover or invent to further the Trump Maga message.”

Public interest groups, MVPD groups and low-power TV broadcasters opposed to NAB’s petition for a mandatory ATSC 3.0 transition are “protecting their turf” rather than the public interest, said NAB Chief Legal Officer Rick Kaplan in a blog post Monday. Kaplan was responding to a June ex parte filing from the Consumer Technology Association, NCTA, ACA Connects, Public Knowledge, the Advanced Television Alliance and the LPTV Broadcasters Association, which said NAB’s request goes against both the public interest and the Trump administration’s push for deregulation (see 2505090060).