Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose - If you’re a webcaster, you’ve got until February 2 to wrap up your annual SoundExchange homework. Sigh. Every year brings us another year closer to death. It sure feels tha...
In odd numbered years like 2015, most broadcast stations don’t think about the FCC’s political broadcasting rules. But they should – and we have been receiving many calls from clients about the perhaps surprising number of elections that are taking place this year. These include many races for state and local political offices, everything from school … Continue Reading
Demonstrating that “mostly retired” clearly doesn’t mean “completely inactive”, our colleague Mitchell Lazarus has published yet another article in IEEE Spectrum magazine. (Regular readers will recall that articles by Mitc...
According to SNL Kagan, recognized as one of the preeminent sources of financial analysis in the media business, in 2014 Fletcher, Heald and Hildreth served as legal adviser in more media/entertainment/new media transactions than any other law firm &nd...
This week, several notices of the intent to audit the records of several webcasters and other digital music services were published in the Federal Register, indicating that SoundExchange was planning on having the royalty payment records of these services reviewed. Notices were sent to services including Live365, iHeartMedia and CBS). Those notices have prompted several … Continue Reading
Last week, the Copyright Royalty Board asked for comments on a proposed settlement agreement between Sirius XM and SoundExchange, and some articles about that announcement have not been entirely clear about what the deal covers. It has nothing to do with webcasting royalties for 2016-2020, which are still being litigated (see our article here about … Continue Reading
But increase in antitrust review thresholds is the smallest inflation adjustment in years. Another annual ritual is upon us: the Federal Trade Commission has announced the dollar value thresholds that will trigger automatic federal review of mergers an...
Five months ago we reported that, in a bit of regulatory tidying up, the Office of Engineering and Technology had updated the FCC’s rules. The Commission had, in 2012, incorporated by reference into its rules a standard – ANSI C63.17-2006, ...
By Scott R. Flick I wrote in March of last year that the FCC had proposed fines of $1,120,000 against Viacom, $530,000 against NBCUniversal, and $280,000 against ESPN for airing ads for the movie Olympus Has Fallen that promoted the movie with an EA...