The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America filed another petition asking the FCC to revoke the licenses of stations belonging to Arthur and Yvonne Liu. The two own a Washington-area station that broadcasts the Russian-sponsored news channel Radio Sputnik, WZHF(AM) Columbia Heights, Maryland (see 2203230054). The new petition targets the license renewals of six stations in New York and New Jersey owned by the Lius’ company Multicultural Broadcasting, and contains a testimonial from a New Jersey UCCA member who listens to the stations. The previous filing used much of the same language and contained a testimonial from a D.C. UCCA member. UCCA attorney Arthur Belendiuk, of Smithwick and Belendiuk, told us the new version is necessary because FCC staff told him the petitions had to target an application -- such as a license renewal application -- to be valid. The new filing is “fundamentally identical” to the previous one but addresses the agency’s standing issue, he said. The stations in the petition include WZRC(AM), New York; WHWH(AM), Princeton, New Jersey; and WPAT(AM), Paterson, New Jersey.

The FCC Media Bureau approved the license renewal applications of Wiseman Media's WZYX(AM) Cowan, Tennessee, and two translators over objections that the translators were broadcasting to the substantially same area, said an order and consent decree in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. Triangle Access Broadcasting argued that one or more of the renewal applications should be denied, but the Media Bureau ruled the matter moot after granting a minor modification request from Wiseman to fix the overlap. The consent decree requires Wiseman to implement a plan to comply with online political file rules, the order said.

The FCC Media Bureau seeks comment on Gray Television’s request to shift to Channel 30 from 5 for WMC-TV Memphis, Tennessee, said an NPRM in Tuesday’s Daily Digest. Comments are due 30 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register, replies 45 days.

A petition seeking revocation of the station licenses of a broadcaster that airs content from Russia-controlled Radio Sputnik (see 2203230054) on a Washington, D.C., area station doesn’t satisfy evidentiary rules, violates the First Amendment, and ignores a 2020 Enforcement Bureau investigation that concluded the FCC couldn't act against the stations involved, said an opposition filing Monday from Way Broadcasting, which owns WZHF(AM) Columbia Heights, Maryland. Other companies also owned by Arthur and Yvonne Liu are also parties to the filing. “It’s about what I expected,” said Arthur Belendiuk, the Smithwick & Belendiuk attorney representing petitioner the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. Belendiuk said the Media Bureau told him the matter can’t proceed unless the petitioners challenge a specific application, and it shifted the matter to the Enforcement Bureau. Belendiuk expects to file challenges soon to Liu stations that are currently up for renewal, he said. WZHF is the only Liu station that airs Sputnik; its license doesn’t expire until 2027. The denial of a station’s license renewal can’t be based on another station’s violations, said Way’s filing Monday. The revocation petition also doesn’t have the required specificity for the allegations against even WZHF, said Way. “It does not provide dates or quotes of the alleged false programming,” and doesn’t present evidence to prove the inaccuracy of WZHF’s content, the opposition filing said. Radio Sputnik is not “a Kremlin public relations outlet beamed in from Moscow” but instead similar to programming on the BBC, the filing said. “Unlike in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Americans enjoy the bedrock freedoms of speech and of the press,” Way said. The FCC also investigated WZHF in 2018 and declined to act in 2020, Way noted. Then-FCC Chairman Ajit Pai ordered that investigation in response to requests from Congress. The EB sent several letters of inquiry to the licensees and determined “there is no enforcement action that could be taken against the licensees in question,” wrote Pai in a 2020 letter to Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. The petition to revoke “fails to demonstrate that licensees breached any of their duties as public trustees and the petition must be denied,” Way said.

The FCC Media Bureau approved several TV channel adjustments, said orders in Monday’s Daily Digest. The bureau granted WNYT-TV’s request to shift WNYT-TV Albany from Channel 12 to 21, Scripps’ request to move KTVQ(TV) Billings, Montana, from 10 to 20, and the Alabama Educational Television Commission’s request to be allotted Channel *4 in Vernon, Alabama -- the FCC uses the asterisk to identify noncommercial educational stations -- as the community’s first local NCE station.

The FCC Media Bureau identified tentative selectees in 16 groups of mutually exclusive applications for noncommercial educational FM construction permits from the November NCE window, said a public notice Friday. The selectees include Cheyenne Broadcasting Foundation’s application for Wilhoit, Arizona; the National Association for the Prevention of Starvation’s application for Elkmont, Alabama; and Ethree Group’s application for Cypress Quarters, Florida. Petitions to deny the applications of the selectees are due 30 days after the order is published in the Federal Register.

The best way for the FCC to encourage minority ownership in broadcasting is to neither loosen nor tighten ownership rules, says an upcoming study from University of Minnesota assistant professor-media law Christopher Terry. The study, "Regulatory Paralysis: the Answer to the Unanswerable Question of FCC Minority Policy," used FCC and NTIA media ownership data to determine that minority ownership in broadcasting expanded during the 17 years FCC rules were gridlocked by repeated remands to the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. “This suggests that the Supreme Court’s decision freeing the FCC from the longstanding regulatory impasse is potentially problematic because the decision permits the agency to restart the process of changing ownership rules,” the study said. “No one is going to like this,” because the data doesn’t support the tighter restrictions favored by public interest groups nor the deregulation pushed by NAB, Terry said in an interview. He said he believed before doing the study that proactive ownership regulation by the FCC was the best way to increase minority ownership, but that’s now changed. During the years of 3rd Circuit remands, Black-owned radio stations increased by nearly 65%, and Black-owned TV stations increased sixfold, the study said. Asian-Americans radio owners increased by 161%, Hispanic-owned radio by 161%, and Hispanic-owned TV stations by 323%, the study said. The large percentages are due in part to the still small numbers of minority-owned stations, the study conceded: "While these increases were notable, minority groups are still drastically underrepresented in terms of ownership percentage to population." The study also said the vast majority of those minority broadcast owners have just one or two stations. “If the FCC wants to increase diversity, then a minority station owner, locally operating a single or dual station group appears to provide a consistent structural model to follow,” it said. Minority-owned stations are more likely to offer diverse formats, and encouraging a proliferation of small minority-owned groups is the best way to create a diversity of voices and content, Terry said. “The dispute over minority ownership remains a debate framed around the number or percentage of stations women or minorities control when the substantive issue is that content that should be available at the market level is not being produced in sufficient quantity,” the study said. The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters didn’t comment. The study is expected to be published in the Michigan Technology Law Review later this year.

Petitions to intervene in the hearing proceeding on the license of WJBE(AM) Powell, Tennessee, are due May 2, said a notice in Thursday’s Federal Register (see 2203210047). The hearing proceeding concerns whether WJBE owner Joseph Armstrong is qualified to hold a broadcast license after being convicted in 2017 of filing fraudulent tax forms.

The FCC should “rethink” assessing forfeitures against broadcasters for “simple administrative errors,” said NAB in comments posted Tuesday on a $32,000 notice of apparent liability the FCC issued against Cumulus over equal employment opportunity filing violations at stations Cumulus has since sold. Cumulus didn’t upload a 2018 EEO report to public file for nearly a year past the due date because of an administrative “oversight” and an employee leaving the company, said the Cumulus NAL. “Inadvertent mistakes, especially those that do not trigger complaints and produce no cognizable harm, should not lead to monetary penalties,” NAB said. It doesn’t usually intervene in enforcement actions against individual broadcasters, but a broadcast industry official told us NAB is looking at intervening more often. The NAL “elevates ministerial compliance over substance, unfairly penalizing Cumulus for understandable and inevitable human error,” NAB said. If the FCC goes forward with a monetary forfeiture, it shouldn't adjust the amount upward due to Cumulus’s prior filing violations, it said: “Many of the prior violations cited by the NAL occurred prior to a 2018 transfer of control of Cumulus, and the Commission even relies on unrelated actions from 2003 to justify its proposed forfeiture.”

“Unnecessary and ill-advised” limitations on the deployment of new ATSC 3.0 multicast streams for broadcasters will harm viewers, said NAB in a call Friday with FCC Media Bureau staff, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. Broadcasters have launched additional multicast streams since the release of the FCC’s further NPRM on ATSC 3.0 multicasting “and will continue to launch additional programming in the future,” NAB said. NAB “continues to be willing to work with the Commission,” but the FCC should “move forward expeditiously without being distracted by bad faith arguments designed to frustrate innovation,” the group said.