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).
Broadcasters urged the FCC to issue an NPRM on NAB’s proposal to allow them to use virtual, software-based emergency alert system equipment instead of physical devices, according to an ex parte filing recapping a meeting with an aide to Chairman Brendan Carr. “Certain changes in the EAS marketplace increase the need for prompt attention to this proposal,” said representatives of iHeartMedia, Beasley Media, Cox Media, New York Public Radio and NAB in the filing, posted Thursday in docket 15-94.
Proponents of the 5G broadcast standard for low-power TV haven’t adequately shown that the new standard won’t cause interference to other services, said Sinclair Broadcast and NAB in reply comments filed in docket 25-168 in response to a petition from HC2 (see 2506030060). The petitioner “has not submitted a detailed engineering analysis or a technical study demonstrating that LPTV stations can operate using 5G Broadcast without interfering with existing television services,” said Sinclair.
The Media Bureau has approved Sinclair’s sale of five stations to Rincon Broadcasting and waived a limit on common ownership of top-four stations in the same market, said an order Tuesday. The bureau also rejected a petition to deny the deal from recently formed public interest group Frequency Forward (see 2504150056). The group’s “allegations concerning Sinclair’s character qualifications have repeatedly been considered and rejected,” the order said.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously denied a Radio Communications Corp. petition for review of the FCC’s implementation of the 2023 Low Power Protection Act (LPPA), which allowed low-power TV stations fulfilling certain criteria to upgrade to Class A status (see 2411180040). “We are unpersuaded by RCC’s arguments. The FCC’s Order adheres to the best reading of the statute,” said Judge Harry Edwards in the opinion Friday.
Twenty-three state attorneys general filed a joint amicus brief Monday supporting PBS and NPR lawsuits that challenge a White House executive order cutting public broadcasting funding. The brief -- from states including Colorado, Michigan, Arizona, New York and North Carolina -- argued that ending funding “would gravely harm Americans” by cutting access to emergency alerts and vital information. Rural areas and tribal communities “stand to suffer particular harms in the event public radio and television broadcasters discontinue or reduce the services they provide to those areas.” The White House’s order to cut funding usurps Congress’ authority, the filing added. “It is up to Congress, with its exclusive power of the purse, to decide whether and how to fund public media,” it said. “If the Executive Branch disagrees, the lawful course is to ask Congress to rescind appropriations, as it has now belatedly asked. But the Executive Branch’s actions challenged here, unilaterally terminating appropriations, are unlawful.”
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is reviewing a proposed FCC rule titled “Modernization of the Nation's Alerting Systems,” which could be related to NAB’s proposal to allow software-based emergency alerting equipment, according to the OIRA website and industry officials. Since April 21, all agency regulations have been required to undergo OIRA review, but it has been unclear how that process would interact with the FCC’s procedures (see 2505090004). The alerting item posted by OIRA doesn’t appear to correspond to any item listed as having been circulated to the FCC’s 10th floor as of Friday. The OIRA website listing contains almost no details about the item, only that it was submitted for review May 30, a few days after the final reply comment date on NAB’s proposal (see 2505230056). The FCC didn’t respond to queries about the OIRA listing. OIRA’s webpage shows that a number of FCC and NAB officials met about the item via teleconference June 13.