Monty Tayloe

Lawmakers and diversity groups disagreed with industry trade groups about a petition for the FCC to require a vast swath of media companies -- including streaming services -- to report diversity data to the FCC. The schism surfaced in comments filed by Friday’s deadline in docket 22-209. “The media and entertainment industry is notorious for excluding people from historically underserved backgrounds,” said a letter of support from 20 Democratic House and Senate lawmakers, including Sen. Corey Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas.

The FCC's Communications Equity and Diversity Council needs more time to draft model policies for localities to prevent digital discrimination, the group said at its meeting Friday, which had been expected to include a vote on final recommendations for the agency (see 2202230065.

The Universal Service Fund should be revised and the FCC should consider requiring contributions from tech companies, said a bipartisan group of current and former commissioners on a virtual panel Wednesday hosted by the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council. The group, including former Chairs William Kennard and Richard Wiley, also discussed the lack of an FCC majority, the digital divide and media ownership.

NPR and FM6 broadcasters now agree that existing FM6 stations should be allowed to continue and that Channel 6 should be made available for noncommercial educational stations, but NAB and public TV groups have concerns about repurposing spectrum needed for the ATSC 3.0 transition, according to comments posted in docket 03-185. “Any reduction in available spectrum could hinder both noncommercial and commercial television stations as they voluntarily and rapidly adopt NextGen TV,” said a public TV joint filing. Proposals to limit the number of FM6 broadcasters and drop Channel 6 interference protections also drew concern from broadcast commenters. “Limiting FM6 operations to those who happened to take a stab at investing in the technology for a six-month Engineering STA is an arbitrary cut-off,” said Common Frequency.

FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington’s call last week for the FCC to examine its dependency on Nielsen Media Data (see 2207140055) has broadcaster and programmer support, but an accredited alternative isn't available, said broadcast and ratings industry officials in interviews. In some instances, moving away from Nielsen could be prohibitively disruptive, they said. “For some rules there are viable alternatives,” said Rob Folliard, Gray Television senior vice president-government relations and distribution. “But the entire industry is built on Nielsen" designated market areas. “We believe that this could open up competition and allow for competitors to Nielsen,” said LPTV Broadcasters Association Executive Director Peter Saad.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously vacated the FCC’s requirement that broadcasters check federal databases to determine if entities leasing time on their stations are agents of foreign governments, said a seven-page opinion Tuesday. The court ruled against the agency because the language of the sponsorship ID statute limits the due diligence required of broadcasters to their employees and sponsors. “The FCC’s verification requirement ignores the limits that the statute places on broadcasters’ narrow duty of inquiry,” said the opinion from Judge Justin Walker. “That is not the law that Congress wrote.” “The FCC overreached,” said Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council Senior Adviser David Honig. MMTC, NAB and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters were the petitioners in the case.

Tech and public interest groups urged the FCC to close off the possibility of charging regulatory fees to users of unlicensed spectrum, while NAB -- which first raised the proposal -- pivoted to arguing for additional fees for broadband service providers, in comments on the agency’s 2022 regulatory fees in docket 22-223 filed by Tuesday’s deadline (see 2206010058).

Broadcasters, MVPDs, ISPs and other entities argued over the state of competition in the broadband and video marketplaces and how to address it, in comments posted by Friday’s deadline in docket 22-203 for the agency’s biannual State of Competition in the Communications Marketplace report to Congress, due in Q4. Regulations premised on lack of competition “should be repealed,” said NCTA. The FCC “must consider the real-world consequences of imposing, in a highly competitive marketplace, a burdensome and outdated regulatory regime,” said NAB.

An NAB-backed Senate bill to open a window to allow low-power television stations to upgrade to better-protected Class A status is opposed by some LPTV groups, but lawmakers are looking to move it this year, said legislators and LPTV industry officials in interviews.

Apollo Global Management’s financing of Standard/Tegna, influence over the new company and the series of station transfers the $8.6 billion deal would create among Standard, Tegna and Apollo subsidiary Cox Media Group were targeted by MVPDs, public interest groups and fellow broadcaster Graham Media in petitions posted Thursday in docket 22-162. “Why would Applicants go through this many hoops?” asked MVPD Altice, saying one possibility “is that they seek to apply Cox retransmission consent rates to New TEGNA stations -- even though Cox isn’t buying TEGNA.” The applicants’ “attempt to exploit ‘after-acquisition’ clauses in retransmission consent contracts will inevitably result in increased MVPD subscription prices” for consumers, said a filing from two sectors of the Communications Workers of America.