Could the FCC’s children’s programming requirements (colloquially known as “kidvid”) be on their way out? If Commissioner O’Rielly gets his way, it seems that they might be; Or at the very least they will be subject to some significant revision. In a blog post released on Friday, O’Rielly argued that the rules are outdated, impose...… Continue Reading
The amount paid to songwriters and publishing companies for the making of “phonorecords” will be going up after a Copyright Royalty Board decision just released to the parties to the case. A summary of the findings have been published on the CRB website, here. The new rules are available here. A full decision explaining the...… Continue Reading
At its December meeting, the FCC adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to review the national ownership cap for over-the-air television, which limits one owner from having attributable interests in television stations reaching more than 39% of the national audience. That Notice was published in the Federal Register on Friday, setting February 26 as the...… Continue Reading
Last week, Commissioner O’Rielly published an article on the FCC blog, suggesting that one of the next steps in the FCC’s Modernization of Media Regulation initiative should be the review of the FCC rules setting obligations for television stations to air educational and informational programming directed to children. Stations are required to air an average...… Continue Reading
As we wrote last week, Prometheus Radio Project and the Media Mobilizing Project have filed an appeal of the FCC’s November decision to eliminate the newspaper-broadcast and radio-television cross-ownership rules and to relax the local TV ownership rules (see our summary here). These groups have now filed a request – an Emergency Petition for a...… Continue Reading
In looking at today’s deregulatory FCC, one might think that the Commission would look to the intent of a rule, rather than focusing on the details of the language implementing that rule. But in the case of a San Francisco TV station asking to be carried on DISH’s satellite television system pursuant to the rule...… Continue Reading
The FCC this week published a Small Business Compliance Guide for companies looking to take advantage of the FCC’s elimination of the main studio rules and the studio staffing requirements associated with those rules (see our articles here and here summarizing the rule changes). The Compliance Guide points out that stations looking to eliminate their...… Continue Reading
Three weeks into 2018, we’ll confess to still writing “2017” on the occasional check. Admit it: you probably have, too (we can’t be the ONLY ones still writing checks every now and again). Webcasters complying with the statutory licenses found in Sections 112 and 114 of the Copyright Act – which permit them to webcast...… Continue Reading
Attention, noncommercial educational (NCE, a/k/a “public”) broadcasters! If you have been wondering how much you’ll have to pay to broadcast musical compositions this year (and beyond), wonder no more. The rates for 2018 through 2022 were published in the Federal Register on January 19. For those new to the issue, these rates have been administered...… Continue Reading