After much public debate, the FCC voted 3-2 today to reconsider and reverse the prior decision of the Wheeler FCC to leave the broadcast ownership rules largely unchanged in the 2010/2014 Quadrennial Regulatory Review. As detailed in an FCC Fact Sheet released after the FCC’s action this morning, the FCC’s ultimate order will hew closely […]
As Lauren Lynch Flick wrote here several weeks ago, the FCC announced in October that it would be lifting its 2013 freeze on certain TV station modification applications that would increase a station’s coverage area. Lifting the freeze would let full-power and Class A TV stations that weren’t able to expand facilities in the just-ended […]
This evening the FCC released the Agenda for its November 16 Public Meeting, and as anticipated, the two Media items on it are the Reconsideration of the FCC’s Broadcast Ownership Rules and the FCC’s proposed approval of ATSC 3.0. More importantly, the FCC released the proposed draft orders for each item and an associated “Fact […]
In a move that would have once been stunning, but which now was so expected as to be anticlimactic, the FCC today voted to eliminate the Main Studio Rule. In doing so, it also eliminated various associated requirements such as the mandate that a station’s main studio be staffed during normal business hours with at […]
No, I’m not referring to the fact that physically writing a letter seems to have joined button hooks and slide rules in the dustbin of history. Instead, another relic of history–the requirement that letters and emails from the public be kept in the public file–disappeared from the FCC’s rulebook today. Even more consequentially, that change […]
As we wrote about at the time, in April the Pai FCC continued its efforts to modernize broadcast regulation by restoring an old rule–the UHF Discount–until it can take a broader look at its national ownership cap later this year. While restoration of the Discount merely reinstated the status quo that existed before the Wheeler […]
While the great American songwriter Sammy Cahn felt it was Love and Marriage that were inseparable (as they “go together like a horse and carriage”), the FCC today found the UHF Discount just as inseparable from its 39% National TV Ownership Cap. By a 2-1 party-line vote, the FCC this morning restored the UHF Discount, […]
It took a while to get to this point, but at the first public meeting of the Pai FCC, the Commission voted today to eliminate the requirement that stations maintain “Letters and Emails from the Public” in their public inspection files. As discussed below, that decision will have differing impacts on TV and radio stations, […]
With little fanfare, the FCC today released a Public Notice changing the deadline for television stations to file Form 177 to participate in the spectrum auction. The original filing window had run from December 1 to December 18. The newly-announced window will run from 12:00 noon Eastern Time on December 8, 2015 to 6:00 p.m. […]