NCTA is challenging some changes sought by utility company interests to the FCC's pole attachment item on its July agenda. The proceeding continues to attract significant lobbying from broadband and utility advocates (see 2507160024), particularly over contractor approvals.
President Donald Trump on Friday hailed the House’s passage (see 2507170045) just after midnight of a Senate-amended version of the 2025 Rescissions Act (HR-4), which includes a clawback of $1.1 billion in advance CPB funding for FY 2026 and FY 2027. As expected, the House voted for HR-4 216-213, with only two Republicans -- Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Mike Turner of Ohio -- joining Democrats against the measure. Several Democratic leaders and other advocates predicted dire consequences for many local public broadcasters.
Despite pressure from tribal and public interest groups, the FCC appears unlikely to change rules for the AWS-3 auction to allow a tribal window, industry officials and observers said Friday. With Olivia Trusty, a second Republican, joining the commission, Chairman Brendan Carr probably has the votes to approve auction rules regardless of opposition from Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez, officials said. The agency is scheduled to vote on the order Thursday.
An FCC draft order on the July 24 open meeting agenda that would give the bureaus authority to delete FCC rules without seeking notice and comment is drawing warnings from public interest groups, but communications industry officials told us they aren’t concerned. The agency has also recently skipped notice and comment while shifting the language of existing rules.
FCC Media Bureau Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman retires Aug. 1, after 50 years … Nexstar promotes Dan Lanzano to president of national advertising sales, a newly created position … Digital infrastructure firm Equinix names Shane Paladin, ex-Siteimprove, executive vice president and chief customer and revenue officer.
SES said Thursday it had closed on its $3.1 billion acquisition of Intelsat, 15 months after the deal was announced (see 2404300048). FCC approval came last week (see 2507110066). “Today, we’re not just merging two companies -- we’re creating a stronger company, built for the future,” said SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh. SES said the purchase helps it explore potential growth markets such as IoT, direct-to-device communications, inter-satellite data relay, space situational awareness and quantum key distribution.
The FCC has opened a docket, 25-233, on Charter Communications' proposed $34.5 billion purchase of Cox Communications, the Wireline Bureau said Thursday. The cable ISPs filed their application for FCC approval of the change of control earlier this week (see 2507150051).
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.”