Take-home message: Do as we say, NOT as we do! Pursuant to “clarifications” provided in a recent FCC Declaratory Ruling on the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the FCC and FTC are both in violation of the TCPA’s prohibition against making autodialed calls to a consumer’s wireless phone without prior express consent. Whose phone? You … Continue Reading
… this time to a lot of his friends. [Blogmeister’s Note: A few months ago our colleague and friend, Mitchell Lazarus, used this space to thank an anonymous donor who provided blood stem cells to help treat his leukemia. Mitchell was in the middle of his treatment then, so his post left us all hanging: … Continue Reading
Forget what the rules say – this year 323s are due on December 2, NOT November 1. Get out your calendar and some Wite-Out®. We’re coming up on the deadline for full-power commercial AM, FM, TV, LPTV and Class A TV stations to file their biennial Ownership Reports (FCC Form 323) and, as tradition dictates, … Continue Reading
[WARNING! While Auction 98 has closed, strict federal anti-collusion rules remain in effect for several more weeks, until the down payment deadline, which should be announced shortly. Parties who were involved in any way in the auction – including folks who filed applications but then elected not to participate in the auction – should refrain … Continue Reading
The FCC today released an Order setting December 2 as the date for the filing of FCC Form 323 Ownership Reports by commercial broadcast stations. All commercial broadcasters must submit this report. While the report is technically supposed to be filed by November 1 every other year, that date has routinely been extended as the… Continue Reading
Whether an FM antenna that is purportedly nondirectional should be reclassified as a directional antenna, requiring that the station which uses it back down its power, was a question that the FCC addressed a few months ago in a case we wrote about here. There, the FCC concluded that the antenna was in fact designed to… Continue Reading
We recently reported on the FCC’s proposal to overhaul its equipment authorization processes. (Also as we reported separately just yesterday, that proposal includes provisions for possible expansion of the FCC’s e-labeling rules as mandated by Congress.) The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking has now made it into the Federal Register which, as we all know, means … Continue Reading
Following Congressional directive, FCC would allow e-labeling for most devices with integrated electronic displays. As attentive readers will recall, late last year Congress passed the E-LABEL Act (yes, that is indeed an acronym; it stands for “the Enhance Labeling, Accessing, and Branding of Electronic Licenses Act”). That Act directed the FCC to provide some means … Continue Reading
With tomorrow’s FCC meeting to detail dates and procedures for the TV incentive auction dominating the headlines, there are other August regulatory dates that should not be overlooked. While we never can get to all of the relevant dates in our monthly highlight article, here are a few items worth your consideration. For one, we… Continue Reading