The FCC should investigate broadcast network late-night shows “to ascertain whether late-night shows on broadcast channels are violating broadcasters’ public interest obligations by advancing private agendas,” said the Center for American Rights in a complaint letter Wednesday. A previous complaint from CAR led to the FCC’s news distortion proceeding against CBS. Wednesday’s letter references CBS’ announcement that it was canceling The Late Show with host Stephen Colbert because it was losing money, and argues that this is evidence of a political agenda among broadcast networks. Colbert and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel are both public supporters of former President Joe Biden, the letter said. Late night shows lean left, and “up until today, it could be justified as a profitable (mis)use of the airwaves, indicating some critical mass of consumers wanted it,” CAR said. “Now that myth is busted as well.” The CAR letter cited a 1975 proceeding against a station over slanted news broadcasts, the same precedent CAR cited in a previous complaint calling for the agency to take action against ABC over a reporter’s social media post (see 2506110053). Attorneys have told us that that proceeding doesn’t provide much of a precedent for punishing stations for slanted news, because the station owner in that case, Indiana broadcaster Star Stations, was accused of a host of other violations including witness intimidation, false financial reporting and lying to the commission. The FCC voted then not to renew Star’s licenses because of the licensee's broad misconduct, not its news reports. The FCC has “an appropriate role to ask how things got so bad at CBS -- and whether things are equally bad at ABC and NBC,” CAR said. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s Robert Corn-Revere, a former FCC chief of staff, said CAR’s complaint Wednesday “doesn’t rise to the level of frivolous” and amounts to a “fairness doctrine for late night talk shows.” However, “that doesn't mean this FCC under Chairman [Brendan] Carr won't entertain the idea,” Corn-Revere said.

Opponents of NAB’s petition for a mandatory transition to ATSC 3.0 pressed their case with aides to FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty in a meeting last week, according to an ex parte filing Monday. The Consumer Technology Association, Public Knowledge, cable trade groups and the LPTV Broadcasters Association said the FCC shouldn’t require a nationwide shift to ATSC 3.0. “If broadcasters are concerned about market demand for ATSC 3.0 tuners, they need to do their part in consumer education and promotion rather than seeking a technology mandate,” said the filing. “Stakeholders representing all aspects of the television ecosystem do not support NAB’s proposal. This Administration has prioritized regulatory reduction, and it would be counterproductive to adopt new mandates that decrease flexibility and increase costs.”

Pearl TV and the broadcast members of the ATSC 3.0 Security Authority (A3SA) are using encryption standards to box out independent device makers, and those standards should be made public, said DVR gateway device maker SiliconDust in an FCC filing Tuesday. It responded to a Pearl TV submission last week that attacked SiliconDust’s HDHomeRun device as containing parts from a company affiliated with Chinese chipmaker Huawei (see 2507180047). The FCC rules against including Huawei technology don’t apply to devices like the HDHomeRun because it doesn’t originate voice, data, graphics or video telecommunications, SiliconDust said. The company “does not provide sensitive technology to Chinese companies. The insinuation by Pearl is shameful.”

The FCC Media Bureau has reached consent decrees with two more broadcasters that appealed forfeitures involving children’s programming violations related to Hot Wheels toys, according to a pair of orders released Friday. The additional settlements were with Second Generation of Iowa and several stations owned by the Sinclair-affiliated Deerfield Media. As in the other settlements with smaller broadcasters (see 2507180066), they won’t pay a penalty and will have their licenses renewed. Deerfield and Second Generation had faced fines of $20,000 per station.

The FCC Media Bureau has reached consent decrees with a number of smaller broadcasters that appealed $20,000 forfeitures related to children’s programming violations, according to three orders released Friday. Under the terms of the settlement, the broadcasters -- Waitt Broadcasting, New Age Media and GoCom Media -- won’t pay a penalty and will have their licenses renewed. The broadcasters were part of a widespread series of violations involving ads for Hot Wheels toys aired during a Hot Wheels-themed TV program. The FCC reached a $500,000 settlement in June with Sinclair, which had faced a $2.6 million penalty, over the same incident (see 2506300064). Under the terms of the settlement, the three broadcasters have to develop compliance and training plans and self-report noncompliance for two years.

Consumer Technology Association CEO Gary Shapiro blasted broadcasters late Thursday for saying CTA members opposing ATSC 3.0 have a conflict of interest because they own streaming channels (see 2507150072).

The International Human Brotherhood of Teamsters, Fuse Media and the Center for American Rights each called for the FCC to impose conditions on Skydance's acquisition of Paramount. The views were expressed in a Tuesday meeting with aides to Commissioner Olivia Trusty, according to a joint filing posted Thursday. The Teamsters said the agency should require CBS stations for the next eight years to have the same number of full-time station employees as it did on July 7, 2024. Fuse Media said New Paramount should be required to set aside a fixed percentage of programming on its streaming platforms for content from “independent content sources.” Along with a requirement that the company recruit “from a wide range of ideological viewpoints,” the Center for American Rights said the FCC should require “increased network carriage of locally produced content from affiliated and owned-and-operated stations.”

Both Antonio Cesar Guel and the FCC Enforcement Bureau have appealed Administrative Law Judge Jane Halprin’s June ruling that Guel must pay a $188,491 penalty -- the maximum allowed for a single violation -- for a sham transfer of multiple broadcast stations to his teenage niece (see 2506160044). The Enforcement Bureau said in a filing posted Thursday in docket 23-267 that FCC precedent dictates that each of the seven stations Guel pretended to sell constitutes a separate violation, and that Guel should have to pay $188,491 for each one. That would total $1,319,437. Guel's filing, posted Thursday, argued that the ALJ improperly set the $188,491 penalty amount and that before requiring a forfeiture the agency was required to issue a notice of apparent liability proposing a $188,491 penalty. An NAL would give Guel the opportunity to submit evidence about his inability to pay the forfeiture amount, his filing said. He also argued that the FCC doesn’t have the authority to issue monetary forfeitures after the U.S. Supreme Court’s SEC v. Jarkesy ruling and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ subsequent ruling striking down the agency’s forfeiture against AT&T. “Under those courts’ rulings, the FCC cannot impose civil penalties upon Mr. Guel without the protections of a trial by jury before a neutral arbitrator,” said the Guel filing. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has maintained that the FCC still has forfeiture authority (see 2504280038)

The FCC should “move expeditiously” to relax broadcast ownership and require a mandatory transition to ATSC 3.0, said NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt in a meeting Monday with FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty, according to an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 17-318. “Each day that passes without reform further disadvantages broadcasters -- and ultimately the American public -- in a land of unconstrained non-broadcast media giants,” the filing said. Recent objections to NAB’s push for an ATSC 3.0 transition timeline and tuner mandate are “disingenuous and blatantly anticompetitive” and come from “certain players in the ecosystem that are clearly threatened by a competitive free video service available to consumers throughout the nation.” Local broadcasters “are striving to secure a future that is free, local, innovative, and resilient,” the filing said. “But doing so requires timely, forward-looking action from the Commission.”

Consumer Technology Association members are incentivized to oppose NAB’s proposed mandatory ATSC 3.0 transition because they own free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels, Pearl TV told acting FCC Media Bureau Chief Erin Boone and Media Bureau staff in an ex parte meeting last week, according to a filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. “TV manufacturers that own FAST channels today are competing with broadcasters for advertisers and viewers; consequently, it is not surprising that they too are incentivized to stifle broadcast innovation,” said the filing. Pearl also pushed back on arguments from the American Television Alliance that the agency lacks authority to require a transition to 3.0 that would involve broadcast spectrum being used primarily for datacasting and nonbroadcast activities. “Of course the Commission has authority after providing notice-and-comment to sunset one of its rules,” the filing said. “It seems hard to imagine that a party in 2025 could seriously doubt the Commission’s authority to sunset one of its rules.”