A bill proposed by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would repeal broadcast ownership rules and prevent antitrust authorities from treating broadcasting as a unique market is unlikely to be approved any time soon, said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford in a blog post Wednesday. “Being introduced so late in the Congressional session with no other declared political support, the bill has little chance of becoming law in this session of Congress,” Oxenford said. The proposed Local News and Broadcast Media Preservation Act also contains elements similar to the proposed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (see 2209130054), and would allow broadcasters to collectively negotiate with tech companies for use of their content. “With the rise of social media and an ever-changing media landscape, it is imperative that our local newspapers and broadcasters are given the freedom to adapt,” said Paul last week in a news release on the legislation.

The Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector has granted a 12-day extension to the Spanish Broadcasting System to answer queries related to its foreign-ownership request (see 2208010052). “As such, the new 120-Day review period deadline is December 12, 2022,” said a letter posted Monday in docket 22-61.

“Having no standards, multiple standards, or ever-changing standards” for broadcast viewership ratings would create “any number of problems” in the video industry, said Nielsen CEO David Kenny in video conferences with aides to Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington Wednesday, according to an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 22-239. Simington and Carr have both expressed support for an FCC reexamination of the agency's reliance on Nielsen (see 2207180037). Nielsen has competitors but none has “devoted the resources necessary to provide a service as accurate and reliable as ours,” said Kenny. “Nielsen has worked hard to overcome the largely COVID-related concerns that led MRC [Media Ratings Council] to suspend Nielsen,” the filing said. Competitor Comscore is also seeking MRC accreditation.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau issued several notices of illegal pirate radio broadcasting, said letters posted in Friday’s Daily Digest. Letters were sent to Alex Weiss, Lili Weiss, Karen Weiss and Edward Weiss in Great Neck, New York; Onick Bouquet, Brentwood, New York; Edward Stallworth; Battle Creek, Michigan; and Hager Management, Brooklyn, New York. The letters warned recipients of possible forfeitures of more than $2 million for “entities found to willfully and knowingly suffer (i.e., permit) a third party” to make unauthorized broadcasts on their property. The recipients have 10 days to respond to the agency, the letters said.

The FCC should continue to monitor licensing and patent issues around ATSC 3.0 “to ensure patentees’ adherence to the requirement that patentees make declared essential patents licensable and available" on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms said the Alliance for Automotive Innovation in comments posted Thursday in docket 16-142. “These terms should include licensing such patents to all interested implementers, regardless of location in the supply chain, at a royalty based on the value of the smallest saleable unit and without the threat of injunctive relief,” the filing said. The FCC should consider issuing requests for information on licensing practices to the MPEG LA patent pool on 3.0 and individual 3.0 patent holders, the filing said. Several commenters in the 3.0 proceeding urged the commission to steer clear of regulating 3.0 patent issues, with a few expressing doubt that the FCC has the regulatory authority to do so.

Passage of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is “vital to broadcasters’ mission to create an informed citizenry,” wrote former NAB President Gordon Smith in The Hill Tuesday. “The rapid, often anticompetitive expansion of the dominant Big Tech platforms has upended the advertising marketplace, posing a grave threat to the industry,” Smith said. “Left unchecked, Americans will lose access to the most trusted local news as broadcasters and newspapers face an uncertain and daunting future,” Smith said. The JCPA “drastically favors broadcasters over newspapers and gives the biggest rewards to massive media conglomerates rather than local newspapers,” said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld in a blog post Tuesday. Employee caps on eligible beneficiaries of the law don’t apply to broadcasters, and the language in it could give broadcasters more votes than newspapers, Feld said. The proposed law “is not a government handout, nor would it create a new regulatory regime,” Smith said. “It would simply create a framework for news publishers to negotiate on equal terms with the Big Tech behemoths in the marketplace.”

Rohde & Schwartz endorses Qualcomm’s proposal that the FCC seek comment in the same proceeding as ATSC 3.0 for deploying the 5G Broadcast standard for over-the-air TV content delivery to mobile devices (see 2208080065), said the broadcast equipment vendor in reply comments Tuesday in docket 16-142. Adding 5G Broadcast support to “existing and upcoming” smartphones and tablets “is just a matter of software and middleware adjustment and upgrades,” said R&S. “In other terms, there will be no need for additional silicon or any hardware changes within the same mobile devices,” it said. “Based on its flexible design, 5G Broadcast can be implemented hand-in-hand with ATSC 3.0 within the same 6 MHz channel.”

The FCC Enforcement Bureau wants Administrative Law Judge Jane Halprin to compel broadcaster Snake River Radio to produce evidence it promised in the license hearing proceeding for its station KPCQ(AM) Chubbuck, Idaho, said a motion for leave and a motion to compel posted in docket 22-53 Monday. The proceeding concerns KPCQ’s period of silence and whether Snake River’s tower was removed during some of that time (see 2205190048). Snake River promised to provide evidence that several photos of the station’s tower were taken during the period the Enforcement Bureau is arguing it was removed, but the broadcaster missed an Aug. 12 deadline and since then hasn’t responded to repeated EB requests, the filings said.

Comments are due Oct. 3, replies Oct. 18, on America-CV’s petition for a declaratory ruling allowing it to be up to 100% foreign owned, said a public notice in docket 22-213. The request involves a bankruptcy reorganization that would transfer ACV’s four TV stations in Puerto Rico and one in Miami to Vasallo TV Group, which is owned by Spanish citizen Carlos Vasallo, the filing said.

Geobroadcast Solutions’ testing of its ZoneCast geotargeted radio technology wasn’t comprehensive and ignored recommendations from chief technology officers and chief engineers at Beasley, Audacy, Cumulus and iHeart, said a joint filing from those CTOs and engineers posted in docket 20-401 Thursday. Those companies oppose the FCC’s geotargeted radio proposal, and Thursday’s filing is a response to a GBS ex parte filing that said the companies declined to offer input on the tests. “These tests have addressed all the specific questions pertinent to the decision before the FCC that have been raised in this proceeding,” said the GBS filing. GBS has “consistently presented the Commission with contrived field testing designed to minimize the true interference impact of its proprietary ZoneCasting proposal,” the filing said. The companies provided input to GBS in 2020 on the parameters for a proposed field test in San Francisco, but that test didn’t happen and the subsequent field tests performed by GBS weren’t as comprehensive, the filing said. “The undersigned CTOs gave their attention and knowledgeable input” as to “the minimum necessary field tests for ZoneCasting,” but GBS “misunderstood -- or ignored -- those parameters” in the tests it did do, the filing said. GBS didn’t comment.