The FAA has authorized Sinclair to fly drones over people and moving vehicles for newsgathering without requiring a waiver, said a Sinclair release Wednesday. Sinclair said it's the first broadcast media company to receive such an authorization from the FAA. Scott Livingston, Sinclair's senior vice president-news, said that by “incorporating expanded drone footage,” the company enhances its news coverage of breaking news, weather and other events. Sinclair’s unmanned aerial systems program launched in 2016, operates “across 50 newsrooms nationwide and has completed over 40,000 logged flights to date,” the release said. The program includes 148 FAA-certified pilots and 540 trained visual observers, it said. The company’s drone pilots train at Virginia Tech. “The FAA’s authorization allows Sinclair to operate specially modified drones while adhering to strict safety protocols and procedures that meet federal requirements.”

The FCC should amend rules so broadcasters can use software in place of the physical emergency alert system (EAS) equipment currently required, said NAB in a petition for rulemaking Monday. The FCC put NAB's petition out for public comment Wednesday, and comments are due May 2. Under the NAB proposal, using the software in lieu of physical EAS boxes would be voluntary, and the software would need to be able to operate if internet or cloud connectivity is interrupted. The petition stems from a proposal NAB made in 2022 (see 2306020064), which the Federal Emergency Management Agency endorsed in 2024 (see 2407050021). “Given that our proposal has been pending now for over two years, NAB respectfully requests expedited consideration of this Petition,” NAB said.

The FCC should allow low-power TV (LPTV) broadcasters to use the 5G Broadcast transmission standard on a voluntary basis, said broadcaster HC2 in a petition for rulemaking Friday. The technology “allows an LPTV station to transmit a single 5G signal to its entire service area, which can be received by any compatible mobile device,” the petition said. “5G Broadcast thus provides both the spectrum efficiency of the one-to-many structure of broadcast operations and access to compatible mobile devices on existing 5G networks.” Currently, stations can only broadcast in the standard using an experimental license granted by the FCC, and only a few such stations exist.

A bipartisan group of former FCC commissioners have condemned the agency’s news distortion proceeding against CBS in joint comments posted Thursday. “These comments are submitted to emphasize the unprecedented nature of this news distortion proceeding, and to express our strong concern” that the FCC “may be seeking to censor the news media in a manner antithetical to the First Amendment,” said the letter from former Chairmen Alfred Sikes and Tom Wheeler and former Commissioners Gloria Tristani, Rachelle Chong and Ervin Duggan. Sikes and Chong are Republicans, while Chong, Duggan and Tristani are Democrats. The signatories “served under both Republican and Democratic leadership, and from that experienced perspective, express deep concern about the breadth of the content regulation authority asserted by this proceeding.” If the FCC doesn’t act to close the proceeding, it would suggest “that the Commission has been transformed into a tool of White House-driven speech suppression.” In response to a request for comment, the FCC repeated a statement from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr declining to end the proceeding, which it previously issued after a similar request from conservative groups (see 2503210060).

The FCC Media Bureau will give more consideration in the future to waivers for stations that constructed permitted facilities on time but failed to meet license application deadlines, said a unanimous order from the full FCC Tuesday. The item had been listed on Thursday’s open meeting agenda as an adjudicatory matter, but the agency released a deletion notice Tuesday.

Comments are due April 23, replies May 8, in docket 24-626 on an FCC proposal for cleaning up outdated references and processes in broadcast regulations, said a public notice Monday. “Numerous rule sections still reference outdated terms from the Commission’s legacy paper-filing processing procedures and discontinued databases, and are therefore incompatible with current electronic filing procedures,” the December NPRM said. The item was unanimously approved under the previous administration (see 2412100057).

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said he won’t scrap the news distortion proceeding against CBS despite a collection of conservative groups urging him to do so (see 2503200047). “With respect to their request that the FCC immediately dismiss the complaint against CBS, my answer is simple: no,” Carr said in a statement. “The FCC’s review of the complaint against CBS remains active and ongoing.” The Center for American Rights, which filed the complaint, also responded Friday to the conservative groups’ filing. "Conservatives have complained about media bias for decades, and today it's worse than ever before,” said CAR President Daniel Suhr in an email. “Rather than just grouse about it, we are committed to doing something about it: to protect consumers from broadcast stations that will slant and distort the news in violation of their legal obligations."

Eight conservative groups want the FCC to dismiss its news distortion complaint against CBS to prevent setting precedent that could be used against conservative media, said a letter posted Thursday in docket 25-73. The letter -- from Americans for Tax Reform, the Center for Individual Freedom, Digital Liberty and others -- also called for the FCC to eliminate the news distortion and news hoax rules. “All of these rules and procedures open the door for politicians to play politics with broadcasting.”

Consumers would pay more under an ATSC 3.0 tuner mandate, the Consumer Technology Association told an aide to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and Media Bureau staff in an ex parte meeting last week, according to a filing posted Tuesday. NAB has called for a tuner requirement in its recent ATSC 3.0 petition (see 2502260051). A search of TVs sold by a nationwide retailer showed that the average price of those with 3.0 tuners was $80 higher than 1.0 models, CTA said. “Given this sample, in addition to other known factors, such as patent licensing costs, it is reasonable to conclude that consumers would pay more if all televisions were mandated to include an ATSC 3.0 tuner,” the filing said. CTA “strongly believes the transition to ATSC 3.0 must remain voluntary and market-based, not guided by government mandates, and has consistently advocated this position in the record.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency denied that it has frozen reimbursement payments to public broadcasters in response to CPB’s request that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (docket 1:25-cv-00740-TJK) intervene (see 2503140060). A docket entry Monday said that the court had denied CPB's motion for a temporary restraining order. “The Agency is taking no such action -- there has been no withholding of funding,” said FEMA in a filing opposing CPB's request Saturday. “Rather, the Agency has modified its process for the review of payment requests.” The “hold toggle” lets the agency manually review reimbursement requests before sending them out, FEMA said. “The Agency will process payment requests and approve them for payment as appropriate, simply with an added level of internal controls to ensure that payment requests are reviewed prior to payment being released.”