Monty Tayloe

The Alabama Broadcasters Association canceled its in-person Jan. 21-22 annual conference due to concerns about COVID-19, the group emailed members. “With the Covid Omicron variant spreading like wildfire across our state and already having an impact on many of your stations, we believe it is in everyone's best interest that we not gather in large numbers just yet,” wrote ABA President Sharon Tinsley. "We will begin contacting our speakers immediately to arrange to provide the content we had planned in a virtual setting over the next six weeks." Tinsley said as recently as late December that the event would proceed in person (see 2112220045). The conference had been planned to do so until just a day before the announcement, she said, "Our positive test rate in Alabama is over 36% today with more than 37,000 new cases in the last week," Tinsley said Monday. "We are supposed to help solve problems for our member stations -- not contribute to their problems. In spite of our best efforts, a large gathering would likely further the spread of the virus."

Low-power TV broadcasters want the FCC to make it easier to switch channels and move markets, and have received indications the agency could show more flexibility toward their service in 2022, said LPTV groups, attorneys and broadcasters in interviews. “The best thing would be to have another LPTV window,” said Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance Executive Director Lee Miller. “I believe that is something the FCC would like to see happen further down the road.”

Government agencies and law firms, like other institutions, appear to be still coming to terms with the new, more infectious COVID-19 omicron variant and what it will mean for work headed into the new year. State commissions so far report few changes.

Whenever the FCC gets a Democratic majority, broadcasters expect an uncertain environment for potential mergers and acquisitions, possible action on the UHF discount, and potentially two broadcast ownership quadrennial reviews, they said in interviews. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel declined to comment last week on whether the FCC would go after the UHF discount. She said the agency is reviewing some potential broadcast items for 2022 (see 2112140062).

KRDK-TV Valley City, North Dakota, qualifies for carriage as a local TV station on the Otter Com and Arvig cable systems in the Fargo area, the FCC Media Bureau ordered Friday in response to Parker Broadcasting must-carry complaints against the systems. MB said Parker met its obligation by pledging to buy and install any equipment needed to deliver an adequate signal to the cable headend. The two have 60 days from when KRDK provides a good quality signal to their headend to initiate carriage. Otter is happy to carry KRDK, but the broadcaster hasn't provided its signal or any information about how it intends to do so, said Business Operations Manager Eric Engler. Arvig didn't comment.

Satellite, wireline, wireless and broadcast industry groups almost uniformly opposed FCC proposals for stricter network resiliency requirements, in comments posted in docket 21-346 through Friday. Providers work voluntarily to share information and preserve their networks, so the FCC should “avoid unnecessary and burdensome additional regulation” said NTCA, similar to NAB, USTelecom and others. The FCC “shouldn’t take an overly prescriptive approach to unpredictable and highly variable events,” said the Competitive Carriers Association.

Five TV stations in Washington, D.C., began broadcasting in ATSC 3.0, with Howard University’s noncommercial station WHUT-TV hosting the signals of Sinclair’s WJLA-TV, NBCUniversal’s WRC-TV, Fox’s WTTG, and Tegna’s WUSA. “It’s gonna take time to infiltrate the market” with 3.0 receivers, said WHUT General Manager Sean Plater in an interview. “Step one was to get stations on the air." Viewers of WHUT’s 1.0 signal won’t see a difference in their feed, Plater said. “That’s one of the first things we checked.” NAB worked with Howard to create an ATSC 3.0 “learning lab” and certificate program at the school, said NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny in a video presentation Thursday. FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks appeared in the video, praising NAB for creating educational opportunities for Howard University students with the new standard. Matheny highlighted one student, Sulaiman Bastien, who created an 3.0 app in connection with the program. Plater said one reason broadcasters emphasized getting 3.0 online in Washington is to make the tech easy for lawmakers to access. “We want to make sure they can see it up close and personal.” Outgoing NAB CEO Gordon Smith said 3.0 will be broadcasting in 35 markets by year's end.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau activated emergency response measures for 17 counties in Kentucky, after the recent tornado strikes, said public notices and releases through Wednesday. The disaster information reporting system was turned on Tuesday. The bureau issued PNs on emergency contact information for licensees that need special temporary authority and on 24-hour availability of staff. A PN reminded essential personnel about availability of priority telecom services overseen by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for when local networks are damaged or congested: Entities working in emergency response that haven’t enrolled should consider participating in PTS. No public safety answering points, TV stations or radio stations were listed as out of service in Wednesday's DIRS report. It listed 24,817 cable and wireline subscribers as without service, and 0.8% of cell sites in the affected counties as down.

Characterizing NAB’s push for regulatory fees on tech companies as a Wi-Fi tax is “plainly false” and “intellectually dishonest,” NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan blogged Tuesday (see 2110230001). The FCC’s current regulatory fee regime is “sloppy at best” because it requires broadcasters to pay fees to support initiatives that don’t involve broadcasting, such as the USF, he said. “The Facebooks of the world like business plans that rely not only on free, unregulated spectrum, but also Commission resources subsidized from regulatory fees that they are not obligated to pay.” NAB’s request to update regulatory fee payors doesn’t mention Wi-Fi and goes beyond unlicensed spectrum, Kaplan said. “Broadcasters are not seeking to escape paying regulatory fees,” he said. “It should not be controversial for broadcasters to cry foul when being forced to subsidize enormous companies like Microsoft, which generate revenue beyond the GDP of most countries (even after paying groups like Public Knowledge),” Kaplan said. “If public interest groups truly supported what’s best for the public, they wouldn’t simply kick and scream because Facebook, Google, and Microsoft may have to pay their fair share.” Reg fees for unlicensed spectrum is what the FCC sought comment on after NAB's petition, "because those were their words," emailed Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. "Every single trade association that filed read this the same way -- as a tax on WiFi. If there is any intellectual dishonesty here, it is the effort of NAB to avoid admitting they proposed something so stupid." The FCC and Information Technology Industry Council didn’t comment.

News publishers and tech companies disagreed whether online headlines, photos and story snippets need stiffer copyright protection, in a Copyright Office proceeding (docket ID COLC-2021-0006) and roundtable on publisher protections. Publishers choose to have their content included in news aggregators and social media, and benefit from the traffic, said Google Public Policy Manager Kate Sheerin. It’s a “Hobson’s choice” for news organizations, replied News Media Alliance General Counsel Danielle Coffey. “We are forced to waive our ability to enforce our rights because of the dominance of these platforms.” Additional comments on the study are due Jan. 5.