When do noncommercial stations stray from permissible acknowledgment of those local businesses that provide funding for its operations to impermissible commercials? That question was addressed in a Notice of Apparent Liability issued by the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau on Thursday, proposing a $15,000 fine for a low power FM station whose underwriting announcements were deemed too... Continue Reading…
Here are some of the FCC actions of the last week of significance to broadcasters, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau entered into negotiated settlements with two Boston-area pirate radio operators who admitted to illegal operations and... Continue Reading…
Multiple press reports yesterday said that the FCC has circulated a memo to its employees announcing that the FCC will not be resuming in-person operations at least until August 27 – and if work resumes then, it will be from the FCC’s new headquarters building. The FCC has been planning for several years a move... Continue Reading…
We recently wrote about a case where a Judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York found that the website Mashable had a license to use a photo accessible from its site that was actually an embedded photo coming from the servers of Instagram. In that decision, the Court found... Continue Reading…
Should broadcasters be able to originate programming on FM translators? Playing off the proposal to allow limited amounts of programming on FM boosters – basically the insertion of local ads, news, or emergency alerts – in the zonecasting proposal on which the FCC took comments earlier this year (see our summary here), a group of... Continue Reading…
The year of the pandemic claimed another victim – this one being what has become a regular event – the nationwide test of the EAS system (see our articles here and here about the last two tests – tests which are required to assess the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System – IPAWS – at... Continue Reading…
Here are some of the legal and regulatory actions of the last week of significance to broadcasters, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. The FCC released a Second Report and Order and Order on Reconsideration regarding Next Gen TV (ATSC 3.0).... Continue Reading…
It appears that there will be no requirement imposed on television and cable ads to include disclosures revealing the wholesale prices of prescription drugs in any advertising for those drugs. We wrote about the decision from the US Department of Health and Human Service to impose such a requirement on television ads here, and we... Continue Reading…
The question about what to do with the protections offered by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act took another turn this week, when Joe Biden suggested that online platforms needed to take responsibility for the content posted on them and correct misinformation in those ads. That position is seemingly the opposite of the President’s... Continue Reading…