Selected New Developments in Broadband – through June 16 Capitol Hill The Trump Administration has again voiced support for a $2 trillion stimulus and infrastructure package (that would presumably have a broadband component), but Senate Republicans are not there yet. In May, the House passed the Democrats’ multi-trillion dollar Heroes Act on a party-line vote....… Continue Reading
Here are some of the FCC regulatory and legal actions of the last week—and a congressional action in the week ahead—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 on June 9 held an Open Meeting where it... 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…
In April, the FCC modified a number of its rules regarding LPFM stations, and also modified its processing policies as to considerations of interference between Channel 6 TV stations and noncommercial FM stations operating on the reserved band (the low end of the FM dial). We wrote about those changes here and here. The changes... Continue Reading…
The FCC at its open meeting this week adopted the Declaratory Ruling and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that we wrote about here when the draft order was released. The Declaratory Ruling makes clear that the leasing of television spectrum for datacasting uses does not trigger FCC multiple ownership issues (in other words, one entity can... Continue Reading…
On June 9, we posted a discussion of the FCC’s invitation to comment on cost reimbursements for C-Band satellite rebanding expenses. We noted a short comment deadline, with Comments due Tuesday, June 16. Today, the FCC published a correction in the Federal Register, moving the Comment deadline back to Monday, June 15. We are not sure that...… Continue Reading
The FCC yesterday released another of its regular EEO audit notices (available here), this time targeting only about 35 radio stations. Those stations and the station employment units (commonly owned stations serving the same area) with which they are associated must provide to the FCC (by posting the information in their online public inspection file) their last two year’s EEO... Continue Reading…
Three years ago, the FCC authorized deployment of a new IP-based broadcast TV standard, ATSC 3.0, with the hopes that TV broadcasters would implement innovative new data transmission services. That has not yet happened to any significant extent; so today the FCC voted to issue a Declaratory Ruling (“Ruling”) that it hopes will remove what...… Continue Reading
As is well known, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) has decided to truncate the C-band satellite downlink band (3.7-4.2 GHz) from a bandwidth of 500 MHz to 200 MHz, with the other 300 MHz to be auctioned for terrestrial wireless services. Earth station (satellite dish) operators who have licensed or registered their dishes will be...… Continue Reading