A draft item that would seek comment on changing some broadcaster notice and reporting requirements is expected to get little pushback from inside or outside the FCC, broadcast industry and public interest officials said in interviews Thursday. The draft NPRM would seek comment on relaxing the reporting requirements for broadcast ancillary services and either eliminating broadcast application notice rules or allowing them to be satisfied with online postings rather than newspaper ads (see 1710030059). “It’s the lowest of low-hanging fruit,” said Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council President Emeritus David Honig. MMTC was among those asking the agency to relax such rules (see 1708040037). “This is a textbook example of a rule revision that will help small businesses with no harm to consumers,” Honig said. The item is on the tentative agenda for the commissioners' Oct. 24 meeting.
House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said she's pursuing her FCC reauthorization bill despite recent delays in work to revise a draft of the bill that circulated in July and was discussed at a House Communications oversight hearing (see 1707190051, 1707250059 and 1709220055). “Our proposed reauthorization bill includes relief from the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule, a proposal that has had some bipartisan support in the past,” Blackburn said during a Media Institute event Wednesday evening. “We should at least be able to agree to this slight nod to reality as a first step in considering further reform.” Also at the event, Tegna CEO Dave Lougee said localism is an antidote to America’s increased tribalism, and broadcasters need regulatory changes to continue providing locally focused content. “Localism undermines division,” Lougee said. He's “optimistic” the FCC will loosen ownership restrictions to allow broadcasters to better compete with large companies in other media. “We have to move away from archaic rules and anachronistic market definitions,” Lougee said.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating deaths Wednesday of three broadcast tower workers in Miami-Dade County, Florida, said Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue and OSHA spokesmen. OSHA doesn’t release preliminary information on investigations, but it confirmed the workers were employees of Texas-based tower company Tower King II. A Fire and Rescue spokesman told us the men were killed after equipment collapsed, causing them to fall hundreds of feet. In an interview last month, Tower King II CEO Kevin Barber told said his crew was preparing for a job in Florida connected with the post-incentive auction repacking, and his firm is one of a very limited number that could take on the most challenging tower work (see 1708160050). Tower King II, The National Association of Tower Erectors, NAB and tower owner Sunbeam Television didn’t comment. Commissioner Mike O'Rielly tweeted a link to TV news coverage of the incident Thursday morning. "May God please welcome them & bless their families. So sad," O'Rielly said.
Apple should “step up to the plate” and activate FM chips in iPhones to promote public safety, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Thursday. Broadcasters have long sought activation. “Apple is the one major phone manufacturer that has resisted doing so,” Pai said, and he hopes "the company will reconsider its position, given the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.”
Early results of the third nationwide test of the emergency alert system Wednesday indicate few problems and a response in line with expectations, according to interviews with officials from broadcast and pay-TV EAS participants, state EAS representatives and the equipment industry. Roughly half the participants received the alert through the internet-based Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) and half through the older, broadcast-based system, as expected (see 1708250053).
The full FCC unanimously approved a notice of apparent liability for a $144,344 fine for a repeat offender North Miami, Florida, pirate radio operator and his landlords at Tuesday’s meeting. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the fine is the first commission-level NAL for a pirate radio operator. The fine is the maximum amount allowable by statute, Enforcement Bureau staff said. Fabrice Polynice and landlords Harold and Veronise Sido will have an opportunity to respond to the NAL before the FCC votes on a final forfeiture order, bureau Chief Rosemary Harold said in a later news conference. She said she hopes other pirate radio operators will learn of the fine on social media.
The FCC needs to work toward immediately restoring communications service to affected areas in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands before it considers longer term issues, said Chairman Ajit Pai in a news conference after a Public Safety Bureau report on the FCC response to storms Harvey, Irma and Maria at Tuesday’s commissioners’ meeting. The commission is “focused like a laser beam” on restoration, Pai said, calling the situation in Puerto Rico "dire." Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the FCC should hold field hearings in affected areas on how best to prepare for such disasters. The agency should “have the guts” to get out on the ground, she said. “You don’t pull together a report with only the information you amass from sitting in front of your keyboard,” said Rosenworcel. “You get out.”
FCC Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Mike O’Rielly and Chairman Ajit Pai appeared to be in some disagreement about the goals of the newly empaneled Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment. The disagreement appeared in their remarks preceding the group’s first meeting Monday.
The General Services Administration and FCC landlord Parcel 49C are trying to get a Senate committee to authorize funds for a new tenant at the headquarters to get the stalled move to a new HQ rolling, said a status report (in Pacer) in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The FCC’s lease in the Portals building expires in October, but its new home won’t be complete until 2019. Negotiations over an interim lease in the Portals stalled while Parcel 49C waits for confirmation GSA’s plans to replace the FCC with another federal tenant -- Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. -- come to fruition, the filing said. Parcel 49C took the GSA to court for awarding the contract for the FCC’s new home to real estate developer Trammell Crow (see 1701120044), and the parties mutually agreed to a hold since the GSA began moving toward installing the PBGC in the Portals in the spring.
A U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit panel seemed skeptical Wednesday of Press Communications’ arguments that a station that lets its license expire forfeits rights to have its footprint protected by FCC spacing rules. Press deliberately chose not to seek a waiver of short spacing rules when it filed a minor modification application to move WBHX(FM) Tuckerton, New Jersey, to a new channel too close to another station with an expired license (see 1608100052), noted Judge Laurence Silberman during oral argument. “Costly choice, wasn’t it?” The FCC seemed to have made a “contrary determination” on whether considering the footprint of an expired license was in the public interest in considering WBHX’s move, Judge Cornelia Pillard said.