The FCC’s proposed disclosure rules for political ads that use AI-created content “are a natural and common-sense extension” of its mandates for ensuring transparency in broadcasting and political ads, Public Citizen, Campaign Legal Center, the National Organization for Women and 39 other public interest groups said in a letter to the Media Bureau Thursday. “The proposed rules are especially important because broadcasters interpret the FCC’s current rules as prohibiting them from requiring disclosure of AI-generated content,” the letter said. “We urge the FCC to adopt these rules promptly.” NAB didn’t comment.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on agency enforcement actions to the FCC’s $518,000 forfeiture order against Gray Television, as well as SCOTUS’ ruling against Chevron deference, Gray said in a motion and supplemental reply brief Wednesday. The court previously ordered that the FCC and Gray file briefs weighing in on the application of the high court’s Loper Bright ruling against Chevron deference but didn’t do so for SEC v. Jarkesy, which is seen as potentially requiring jury trials for many agency enforcement actions. Jarkesy “raises the fundamental question of whether the FCC had the authority in the first place to conduct the proceeding that led to the forfeiture the FCC asks the Court to uphold,” Gray said in a motion. “Under these circumstances, Gray proposes as the most prudent course of action supplemental briefing on whether Jarkesy invalidates the FCC’s Forfeiture Order.” If the 11th Circuit were to find that the FCC’s claim against Gray is similar to the SEC forfeiture in Jarkesy, “then not only did Gray have the right to a jury trial, but also the Seventh Amendment prohibited Congress from assigning adjudication of the claim to the FCC,” Gray said. The court must also consider whether the FCC has statutory authority over Gray’s purchase of a network affiliation under Loper Bright, Gray Television said in a supplemental reply brief Wednesday. The FCC had argued that the court shouldn’t take up the agency’s authority because it was outside the scope of the supplemental briefs the court ordered (see 2408080052) and wasn’t previously raised in the proceeding by Gray. The Loper Bright opinion instructs courts to first determine the boundaries of an agency’s authority before ruling on whether an agency has engaged in “reasoned decision-making” within that authority, Gray said. The FCC also raised the issue of its statutory authority by discussing it in the forfeiture order it issued against Gray, Wednesday’s filing said. The Loper Bright decision “commands” that federal courts “must review all questions of law without deference to the agency whose action is under review,” Gray said.

Standard General and its founder Soohyung Kim filed an amended complaint Friday in an April lawsuit that accuses FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, Allen Media CEO Byron Allen, Dish CEO Charlie Ergen and others of conspiring to block Standard’s $8.6 billion attempted purchase of Tegna last year (see 2306010077). The amended complaint is largely similar to one filed in April (see 2404250059) but includes an additional count, which argues that the FCC violated the Communications Act when it considered Allen as an alternative buyer to Standard. “The possibility of an alternative buyer for TEGNA -- Mr. Allen -- infected the agency’s entire treatment of Standard General’s license-transfer application,” the amended complaint said. Considering an alternative buyer constitutes “an extreme agency error” that should be subject to judicial review, and the court should enjoin the FCC from doing so for Standard’s future transactions, the complaint said. “Mr. Kim has had to alter Standard General’s immediate broadcast strategy” to avoid deals that fall under FCC review to prevent future discrimination against Standard, the complaint said. “Without declaratory or injunctive relief, he cannot pursue larger deals that he would otherwise be pursuing and that require the FCC’s pre-approval.” The amended complaint also calls out the timing of meetings and phone calls Media Bureau Chief Holly Saurer and Rosenworcel had with Ergen and I Street Advocates attorney David Goodfriend, who has represented Dish, Allen and unions that opposed Standard/Tegna. “Mr. Ergen and Chairwoman Rosenworcel had a scheduled breakfast to occur within a week of the shot clock starting, Mr. Goodfriend and Ms. Saurer had a scheduled meeting the same day the objectors first filed, and Mr. Allen called Mr. Kim the day after the FCC ordered Standard General to produce highly sensitive documents,” the complaint said. The defendants “expressly or tacitly entered into an agreement to work with each other and with Chairwoman Rosenworcel and Ms. Saurer to thwart the Standard General-TEGNA deal,” the amended complaint said. The FCC, Dish, Allen and the unions have until Sept. 9 to respond, according to the court’s orders. Dish, Allen Media, the FCC and Goodfriend didn’t comment.

The FCC Media Bureau granted Microsoft’s request to withdraw its petition of reconsideration against FCC rules easing the creation of broadcaster-distributed transmission systems, according to a public notice in Friday’s Daily Digest. Microsoft dropped the petition in a filing posted Tuesday (see 2408060043). The DTS order was intended to aid the ATSC 3.0 transition. Microsoft had raised concerns that the order would lead to broadcasters interfering with devices using the TV white spaces.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau proposed a $14,000 penalty for Audacy over allegations that it violated the agency’s contest rules by not selecting and notifying winners of a radio contest according to the contest’s stated terms, a notice of apparent liability in Friday’s Daily Digest said. The NAL is a response to a complaint about a 2021 “National Cash Contest” Audacy conducted for 21 days on 194 stations. Under the contest’s terms, 11 times daily listeners could listen for a keyword and win $1,000 by submitting that keyword to the station within the hour it was announced. “One national winner was to be selected randomly from each hour’s eligible entries from all participating stations, for a total of 297 (27x11) opportunities to win,” the NAL said. The contest terms said winners would be notified within 72 hours of selection and get their prize within eight to 12 weeks. After receiving a letter of inquiry (LOI) from the EB, Audacy admitted it “did not act timely in selecting and/or notifying 50 winners out of the 297 time slots, which is 16.8% of the potential winners.” Audacy said part-time employees' performance caused the mishap and that it sent out the remaining contest winnings after receiving the LOI. The NAL said that wasn’t sufficient. “We hold that the Licensee’s conduct constitutes an apparent willful violation of the requirement of section 73.1216 of the Commission’s rules to conduct the Contest ‘substantially as announced or advertised,’” the NAL said.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision eliminating Chevron deference shouldn’t affect the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' approach to Gray Television’s appeal of an FCC $518,000 forfeiture order, the agency said in a supplemental brief Wednesday. The 11th Circuit requested supplemental briefs from the FCC and Gray after SCOTUS’ Loper Bright v. Raimondo decision (see 2407110058). The agency applied the best reading of its rule against affiliate swaps and so doesn’t require special deference for the court to rule in its favor, the FCC said. Gray’s argument that its purchase of a station affiliation in Anchorage didn't “result” in a top-four duopoly because Gray already owned such a duopoly “is not the best or most natural reading” of the text of the FCC’s rules, the agency said. The court should also favor the FCC’s interpretation of its own rules under another SCOTUS precedent that wasn’t affected by Loper Bright, Kisor v. Wilkie, the FCC said. Kisor requires that the court consider a regulation as if there were no agency interpretation, but if ambiguity remains, it allows the court to conclude that the agency interpretation may be appropriate. Gray has argued that the Loper Bright decision invalidated Kisor precedent. “This Court is not the proper forum to revisit binding Supreme Court precedent,” the FCC said. The 11th Circuit shouldn’t consider Gray’s arguments that the FCC doesn’t have statutory authority over the sale of a station’s affiliation because Gray didn’t raise the argument earlier in the case and because it's outside the scope of the supplemental brief the court requested, the agency said. Gray “improperly expanded the scope of the supplemental briefing, and the court may not reach arguments on which the FCC had no ‘opportunity to pass’ in the administrative proceedings,” the FCC said.

Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on Wednesday defended the FCC’s proposal to require disclosures on political ads created with generative AI (see 2407250046). Rosenworcel was asked during a news conference about comments from Commissioner Brendan Carr characterizing the NPRM as part of a Democratic National Committee effort to put a “thumb on the scales” ahead of the 2024 election. “That’s not remotely accurate,” Rosenworcel said of Carr’s characterization. “We came up with this proceeding on our own, because we have familiarity with what a public and political file looks like at our nation’s broadcasters. After all, we’ve been doing this kind of work for decades.” AI is “a technology that is going to show up in so many aspects of our economy, communications technology included,” she said. “So it's smart to wrap our arms around these issues.”

The full FCC unanimously granted low-power FM licensee Park Public Radio’s appeal of a Media Bureau decision rejecting the company's modification application in part for being filed a few hours too early, an order released Tuesday said. The item was slated for Wednesday’s open meeting but listed as an “adjudicatory item” on the agenda. The matter concerns Park’s March 3, 2021, application to modify KPPS-LP, St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Its modification would have interfered with another station that was silent for a year and had a license that expired at 3 a.m. the next day, April 1. Another licensee, Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Minneapolis, filed a conflicting application to modify its translator at 9 a.m. on April 1. The Media Bureau originally rejected the Park application and granted Central Baptist's because the silent station’s license hadn’t yet expired when Park filed and the application had short spacing defects. The full FCC ruled that Central Baptist's and Park’s filings were premature, and should have been filed after the MB issued a public notice announcing cancelation of the silent station’s license. The FCC also ruled that the Media Bureau should have allowed Park to amend its defective application. In the past, the agency has acknowledged that previously filed defective modification applications could, if corrected, prevail over later filed nondefective applications, the order said. The order rescinds the grant to Central Baptist and maintains the dismissal of the Park application but allows Park to refile an amended application.

A recent Media and Democracy Project (MAD) submission of a petition with 25,000 signatures against the renewal of Fox-owned WTXF-TV Philadelphia (see 2407250056) is an attempt at “distort[ing] the Commission’s processes” and less than 2.3% of the signatories reside in WTXF’s viewing area, the network said in an ex parte filing Friday. “Taking at face value MAD’s claim as to the accuracy of the names and locations in its filing,” only 571 of them “possibly reside in Fox 29 Philadelphia’s viewing area,” Fox said. “In contrast, over 3.1 million households, and many more people, live in the Philadelphia” designated market area. The FCC “does not, and should not, make decisions on whether to grant a license renewal application based on the number of persons allegedly willing to fill out a webform.” The petition “cannot outweigh the testimony of numerous viewers of Fox 29 Philadelphia who have urged the Commission to swiftly renew the station’s broadcast license.” The FCC “should adhere to its own precedent, weigh the evidence in the record fairly, and grant Fox 29 Philadelphia’s license renewal without further delay.” The "issues raised in the petition go well beyond the Philadelphia station and raise serious questions about the decisions made by its owner to knowingly spread dangerous lies to protect profit,” MAD Executive Director Milo Vassallo said in an email. “It is time to remind Fox that we the people own the airwaves, not any single individual or corporation."

The FCC should reconsider resurrecting rules restricting commonly owned, same market FM stations from duplicating content, NAB said in a petition for reconsideration posted Monday in docket 19-310. In 2020, the previous FCC dropped the rule for FM and AM stations, but the current commission reinstated the FM portion in June, responding to a 2020 petition from REC Networks, the musicFIRST Coalition and the Future of Music Coalition (see 2407020055). The FCC “has no basis to reverse its initial judgment in this proceeding and willfully turned a blind eye to conducting any research including seeking any updated comment after waiting nearly four years to act,” NAB said. The FCC should have sought comment on whether the reversal was needed but instead acted based only on the record from 2020, NAB added. The trade group also said the recon order returning the nonduplication rules “turns the petition for reconsideration standard on its head.” FCC precedent requires showing a material error or omission in the order, but in the FM nonduplication recon order the agency “reasons that it has the ability to reconsider the Order here because the material error is that the Order itself was wrongly decided.” NAB added, “Were the FCC to adopt this new approach to petitions for reconsideration, the standard would amount to no standard at all.” The FCC should “reconsider its grant of the Reconsideration Petition in this proceeding, and solicit comment on the effect of eliminating the FM radio duplication rule during the past four years.”