FCC Media Deregulation Should Tackle Kidvid, Biennial Ownership, Attorneys Tell FCBA
Broadcast attorneys would like the FCC’s monthly media deregulation effort to tackle kids' video rules, quarterly issues and program lists and ownership reports, an FCBA event was told Tuesday. Those issues would likely receive more pushback than the “low-hanging fruit” regulations targeted so far, they conceded. Increased flexibility for the filing requirements for such rules would be “helpful,” said Covington & Burling's Ann Bobeck.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Broadcasters aren’t seeking elimination of children’s TV requirements, but updates to the rules that reflect changes to viewing habits and the content available, said NAB Assistant General Counsel Emmy Parsons. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai tasked Commissioner Mike O’Rielly to spearhead a review of kidvid rules last month (see 1802130034). Interest in relaxing the rules isn’t based on avoiding public service requirements, Parsons said. With content for kids available on nonbroadcast platforms and time-shifted viewing common, it’s a good time to update those rules, Bobeck said. There's a great deal of “public interest sentiment” about kidvid rules that could make the item contentious, Lerman Senter's Sally Buckman said. The FCC is still seen to be in “information-gathering mode” on children's video rules, and it’s not clear when the agency would take up the matter, Bobeck said.
Relaxing requirements for filing biennial broadcast reports was teed up in the initial comments in docket 17-105 (see 1707060060), and is also likely to receive pushback from groups opposed to consolidation, Buckman said. The data collected from ownership reports is connected with the repeated court challenges to FCC quadrennial broadcast ownership review orders, and may also be part of the effort to create incubators for new entrants, Bobeck said. Broadcast lawyers in the audience said they would prefer quadrennial collection of such reports instead of biennial, or the option to avoid resubmitting ownership data that hasn’t changed. Suggestions to relax ownership reporting were a particular point of contention for the self-described public interest groups in the original media modernization comments, and Buckman said the likelihood of the agency relaxing ownership report requirements is “relatively low.”
The agency also could change requirements that stations file quarterly issues and program lists, Buckman said. Broadcasters indicated support for the filing requirement to become a certification, she said. Broadcasters are seeking to “streamline” the requirement, Bobeck said. There are also less controversial media modernization issues left for the FCC to tackle, such as station identification requirements, attorneys said. Though it might not fall under the media modernization proceeding, they expect the FCC to move on interference issues involving FM translators and full-power stations (see 1803120055), Buckman said.