A petition on relaxing interference rules to make it easier for ATSC 3.0 broadcasters to use single frequency networks (see 1910040038) has LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition President Mike Gravino “very concerned." In an emailed newsletter Monday, Gravino called for a “crowd sourced impact analysis” to gauge the effect of the petition on low-power TV, Class A and TV translator stations. He's seeking information on whether LPTV will be able to benefit from the proposal, whether any efforts have been made to study the effects on LPTV, and what will happen to LPTV stations “displaced” by the signals from distributed transmission systems outside their full-power station’s contour. “During the next two years LPTV will still be moving around, and many with government funding to move,” Gravino emailed us. “While I am very concerned about this Petition, I am open to seeing to how it could benefit us, also.”
The FCC Media Bureau is working on a revised form for annual children’s TV reports, said Legal Adviser Evan Morris at an FCBA event Monday. Reports will move from a quarterly requirement to annual after OMB gives final Paperwork Reduction Act approval to several provisions of the new rules approved by commissioners in July (see 1907100067). The forms are expected to be submitted to OMB for PRA OK in November, Morris said. The bureau will issue a public notice on the new form, staffers said. They should be ready for the first reports in 2019, said Media Bureau attorney Kathy Berthot. The documents are expected to look and function similar to the current ones but will have many more entries since they now account for four times as much time, attorneys said. Some large broadcast groups will still require stations to internally submit quarterly kidvid reports to make the task of compiling the annual report easier, Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman said. FCC officials told us they aren’t aware of any submitted or pending appeals or recon petitions for the kidvid rules, and the deadline for appealing the rules at the agency has passed.
The FCC should seek comment on relaxing restrictions on distributed transmission systems (DTS) to let stations transitioning to ATSC 3.0 better use single frequency networks, said a petition for rulemaking from NAB and America’s Public Television Stations posted in docket 16-142 Friday. Changing the rules to allow broadcasters to set up SFNs on the edges of their station contours would improve coverage throughout station coverage areas, increase spectrum efficiency, and reduce the need for TV translators, they said. NAB and APTS want the FCC to seek comment on redefining station coverage areas to allow DTS transmitter signals to reach outside the service area of a station’s central transmitter, so they can better fill in gaps in the edges of an outlet’s coverage. The rule change won’t result in more interference for low-power TV stations, the groups said. “Stations could enhance service to viewers by improving coverage throughout their service areas and offering improved mobile coverage without the risk of encroaching on the service of stations in adjacent markets.” Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Peter Tannenwald said more flexibility for DTS is probably a good thing for the public, but that it’s not clear what the proposal could mean for LPTV. Low-power s could lose some viewers outside their protected contour to interference from DTS transmitters, he said. “If the FCC encourages DTS to replace translators, new channels could open up that would benefit LPTV stations.”
The FCC has to challenge California and other state net neutrality rules, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s ruling last week, to keep the internet from being shaped by “the lowest common denominator,” said Commissioner Mike O’Rielly on the C-Span’s The Communicators taped hours after the ruling Tuesday. The episode was scheduled to have been shown Saturday. O’Rielly also discussed 5G, media ownership and FCC pre-emption of state and local rules to promote nationwide deployment of broadband infrastructure. “Saying that a particular boundary of a state which may have been decided decades or hundreds of years ago based on geography or some military conflict ... it’s just artificial,” O’Rielly said.
The FCC should take up the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' directive to gather evidence on how broadcast ownership rules affect diversity as part of the agency's pending 2018 quadrennial review order (see 1909250064), said Commissioner Geoffrey Starks Thursday at the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters Fall Broadcast Management Conference. The ruling was the dominant regulatory topic, along with the QR and the state of the radio industry.
A bill that would restore the minority tax certificate and require the FCC collect data on broadcast ownership diversity could be the industry's answer to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals chronic issue with FCC ownership rules (see 1909250064), said National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters President Jim Winston at the group's conference Wednesday. “The tax certificate can develop the record the court says it wants.” Along with creating a tax credit for broadcasters that sell stations to minorities and women, the Expanding Broadcast Ownership Opportunities Act (see 1704120027) would require the FCC report to Congress on ways to increase viewpoint diversity, said Timothy Graham, legislative counsel to Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-North Carolina. Butterfield and Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-New York, are sponsors. The bill is HR-3957and the Senate version is S-2433. NAB President Gordon Smith and both Democratic FCC commissioners endorsed the bill, said Graham. Broadcast industry officials said a renewed tax credit is likely to be struck down on constitutional grounds as the previous one was, but Graham said the certificate proposed in the bill will be able to survive legal challenge. “We believe it's narrowly tailored,” he said. Fear the bill will face a court challenge shouldn't stop Congress from pursuing it, he said. Graham said there has been FCC “pushback” on the issue. The agency previously rejected proposals from its own Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment that the agency support the minority tax credit as part of an incubator program.
The FCC won’t release the votes tally for commissioners' decision to hire Administrative Law Judge Jane Halprin, or the December order hiring her, the Office of General Counsel replied Monday to our Freedom of Information Act request made nearly a year ago. We plan to appeal the denial, and we responded Wednesday to a separate and almost complete FOIA denial received on the same day. Experts who reviewed the ALJ FOIA expressed concerns about the FCC's justifications for withholding the information, and the judge herself gave us some of what the document request sought.
DALLAS -- Broadcasters and broadcast attorneys are pinning their hopes on the FCC's appeal of Monday's 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion (see 1909230067) to undo the “monkey wrench” the ruling threw into broadcast ownership deregulation, according to panel discussions and interviews at the 2019 Radio Show.
The biggest industry question mark going into the Tuesday to Thursday 2019 Radio Show in Dallas is the future of the AM/FM subcaps, said broadcasters, media brokers and broadcast attorneys in interviews. An NAB spokesperson said the trade group doesn’t announce show attendance, but it’s generally 1,500-2000.
The FCC’s fourth court loss on quadrennial updates to media ownership rules (see 1906130052) rolls those updates back and could have consequences for pending and just-completed deals such as Nexstar/Tribune and Apollo/Cox and for future radio deregulation, said broadcast attorneys on both sides of the issue in interviews Monday.