The full FCC has voted to reject the Weather Alert Radio Network’s appeal of a 2024 Media Bureau decision rejecting 105 WARN applications for low-power FM stations in nine U.S. states and the U.S. Virgin Islands, said an order Thursday. WARN’s applications didn’t meet FCC requirements for a public safety radio service, and it didn’t provide any documentation that it had been in contact with state, local and national public safety entities, the order said. “Because WARN had not established that a public safety organization had officially authorized it to provide a public safety radio service on its behalf in the relevant proposed service area,” it didn’t meet the agency’s requirements that it have jurisdiction in its service area.

The FCC unanimously approved a $920,000 forfeiture and a $60,000 notice of apparent liability against pirate broadcasters, according to items in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. The forfeiture order was against Masner Beauplan of Middetown, New York, for operating an unauthorized station called “Radio Leve Kanpe” in Irvington and Maplewood, New Jersey, from November 2023 until January 2024. The NAL targets Radio Energy Inc. and its owner Pelege Marcellin for operating unauthorized AM stations near Boston called Radio Energy Boston in 2024. The stations stopped operating after they were inspected by FCC field agents, the NAL said. While searching for information on Radio Energy Boston, field agents found a news article announcing Marcellin’s purchase and renovation of a broadcast studio to establish a local radio station. Marcellin has 30 days to reply to the NAL.

Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said at investor conferences last week that he expects the FCC will act on the national ownership cap by the end of the year and possibly as early as this month. “I think we have a pretty clear line of sight” that the cap will be eliminated, Sook said at a Bank of America event Thursday. Sook said he had “a high degree of confidence in the Trump administration,” as well as FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and DOJ Antitrust Division Chief Gail Slater. Carr has been “very adept and very clever” by using an open national cap proceeding that had lain "dormant through the Biden administration and the [Jessica] Rosenworcel FCC, and reviving that by refreshing the record,” Sook said. Nexstar Chief Technology Officer Lee Ann Gliha said at Citi's Global TMT Conference on Wednesday that “we feel like we’re pushing on an open door, a bit.” Nexstar needs the cap to be eliminated to allow its proposed $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna to proceed (see 2508190042).

Since April, NAB has aired “nearly a quarter million” TV and radio spots across 192 media markets pushing for Congress and the FCC to relax broadcast ownership rules, the trade group said in a release Thursday. A campaign spot released last week called on viewers to “keep football free” by texting in support of relaxing the rules. “Supporters have sent more than 174,000 emails and 34,000 tweets directly to members of Congress and FCC commissioners,” NAB said. A national survey of likely voters conducted in August showed that 83% of respondents preferred games on broadcast over streaming, the group said. “The FCC must act quickly to level the playing field, so broadcasters can continue investing in the content communities rely on most,” NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt said in the release.

The FCC Media Bureau will gradually lift a freeze on major changes for low-power TV, Class A stations and translators through a phased process that involves temporarily reimposing modification freezes, said a public notice Wednesday. The notice also announced that there will be a 121-kilometer limit on station relocations and that new station applications will be accepted.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr signaled his support for the ATSC 3.0 transition in a release Tuesday on a Media Bureau public notice clarifying 3.0 application procedures. “Americans across the country will benefit from Next Gen TV and the improved viewing experience that it enables,” Carr said in the release. “That is why the FCC is working to support and encourage a timely transition. As the broadcast industry continues to evolve, we want to be sure that they can do so while maintaining their core public interest obligations.”

A long-stalled proceeding on the transfer of an FM translator station to convicted sex offender and Lake Broadcasting CEO Michael Rice has been terminated after Rice’s death in August, said an order Thursday from FCC Deputy Associate General Counsel Michael Janson. The proceeding dates back to a 2012 proposed sale of a Montgomery, Alabama, translator by Patrick Sullivan to Lake Broadcasting (see 1905310053). That deal was designated for hearing because Rice previously had licenses revoked for making misrepresentations to the FCC and because of his conviction for several child sex offenses in 1994.

CBS should release the transcript of an October 2023 60 Minutes interview with then-President Joe Biden and promptly install a bias ombudsman, said the Center for American Rights in an ex parte FCC filing last week. CAR pointed to a recent New York Times article in which former Paramount Global head Shari Redstone said Biden seemed drowsy during the interview with journalist Scott Pelley.

The FCC should be skeptical about TV broadcasters' arguments that setting a date for the ATSC 1.0 sunset will lead to the consumer electronics industry stepping up production of 3.0 receivers, said YouTube content creator and tech reviewer Lon Seidman in a letter to the agency posted Thursday in docket 16-142. When Pearl TV and broadcasters supported a voluntary rollout of ATSC 3.0, they repeatedly said that widespread voluntary adoption of the standard would create enough demand for electronics manufacturers, Seidman said. “Given these contradictions, the Commission should treat the current claims with caution and weigh them against the industry’s own earlier statements,” the letter said. “The real reason the market failed to materialize is that Pearl’s members, working through the [ATSC 3.0 Security Authority], imposed a private and opaque regulatory framework that prevented this from ever functioning as a true free market.” Meeting the industry’s security requirements is “so costly that in many cases compliance costs more than the actual manufacturing costs.”

The FCC Media Bureau is restoring language in the agency’s ATSC 3.0 rules that it said was inadvertently deleted in 2023, according to an order in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. The language in question involved the requirements to show public interest for non-expedited applications to deploy ATSC 3.0, the order said. The provisions were accidentally removed from the Code of Federal Regulations when the FCC modified the 3.0 rules for multicast streams in 2023, it said. The FCC at the time “never stated or implied” that it “intended to rescind these subsections.” The bureau said it's restoring the rules without seeking comment, effective immediately, because fixing the error falls under the “good cause” exemption to the Administrative Procedure Act.