Initial comments on the FCC 2018 quadrennial review order were due Monday in docket 18-349. Those filed early show broadcasters and interest groups largely holding to their positions. The Multicultural Media Telecom and Internet Council said "failure to remedy the lingering effects of its past history” kept minorities almost entirely out of broadcasting for 50 years. Connoisseur Media called again for the FCC to eliminate rules on broadcasters in embedded markets (see 1710100057). Crawford Broadcasting argued that FCC proposals to relax AM/FM subcaps could “have an unanticipated detrimental effect on the industry and on the values of AM stations in particular.” Crawford owns 15 AM stations and 9 FM stations. MMTC defended its proposal to apply cable procurement diversity rules to broadcasting (see 1811200048), calling the Office of Economics and Analytics the “ideal” entity to create an innovative way to measure diversity. “The rudimentary methodology the Commission uses to measure competition and diversity is little more than ‘station counting," MMTC said.
An equal employment opportunity enforcement item listed as circulated to FCC commissioners’ offices is the draft Further NPRM on EEO enforcement announced by Chairman Ajit Pai during the FCC’s February approval of an item eliminating midterm EEO reports (see 1902140053), FCC officials told us Monday. Pai promised the FNRPM as a compromise in response to a request from Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks; it was the latter’s first full-length meeting as a commissioner. Though Starks and Rosenworcel sought a 30-day turnaround, Pai promised it within 90 days of EEO order adoption. Pai said then the FNPRM would seek broad comment on the agency’s EEO enforcement, while Starks and Rosenworcel hoped for comments on the agency’s collection of EEO data. Starks and Rosenworcel said in February the agency should take the final steps to begin collecting data on workforce diversity and resolve a 15-year-old open proceeding. In the midterm report EEO order, the FNPRM was described as seeking comment on the FCC’s “track record” on EEO enforcement and “how the agency can make improvements to EEO compliance and enforcement.”
During a massive emergency like California’s 2018 Thomas Fire, people are “just hungry” for information, said Brian Uhl, emergency manager for the Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management. “It’s extremely important to provide alerts in multiple languages if your jurisdiction has people who speak multiple languages.” The county gets emergency alert system messages in both Spanish and English. But it's one of the few localities where this happens. And that concerns some. The reasons multilingual EAS isn't common are complex, and though some support FCC action, others are focused on local control.
During a massive emergency like California’s 2018 Thomas Fire, people are “just hungry” for information, said Brian Uhl, emergency manager for the Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management. “It’s extremely important to provide alerts in multiple languages if your jurisdiction has people who speak multiple languages.” The county gets emergency alert system messages in both Spanish and English. But it's one of the few localities where this happens. And that concerns some. The reasons multilingual EAS isn't common are complex, and though some support FCC action, others are focused on local control.
The 78 percent national TV-station ownership reach cap proposal supported by Nexstar, several other such owners and NAB would create additional room for the company above the current rules, though it’s being couched as maintaining the status quo, CEO Perry Sook Tuesday. With a baseball cap touting “78 percent” sitting on the podium, Sook backed the threshold and discussed ATSC 3.0, Nexstar buying Tribune and DOJ’s definition of broadcast competition. “It is in our national interest to allow a regulated industry such as ours to compete on a level playing field serving our video content, at least domestically, with the virtually unregulated companies that do so,” Sook told a Media Institute lunch.
The FCC released formerly confidential information about incentive auction reverse auction bids that didn’t win, said a public notice Monday. The information is being released because a promised two-year deadline, dating from the April 13, 2017, close of the auction, has now passed. The agency released the data only on winning bidders when the auction closed in 2017. “Today we are making available information about non-winning bids and other related data regarding bidding in the reverse auction,” the PN said. The information will be useful to non-winning broadcasters to see how close they came to getting an auction payout, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Peter Tannenwald in an interview. The details also could show which broadcasters were open to unloading their stations but didn’t get the chance, BIA/Kelsey Chief Economist Mark Fratrik told us.
The FCC’s draft order on FM translator interference would create a 45 dBu contour limit for interference complaints, establish a minimum number of such complaints based on population served, and allow translators to move channels with a minor change application, according to the version released Thursday. The FCC also posted the China Mobile and other items also set for a vote at the May 9 open meeting.
LAS VEGAS -- FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated draft FM translator rules to the other eighth-floor offices to be voted on at the May 9 commissioners' meeting, he told a crowded auditorium at the NAB Show Tuesday. Pai said long-awaited forms to allow broadcasters to transition to ATSC 3.0 (see 1904100043) will be ready “by the end of Q2” and urged broadcasters to increasingly think of themselves as digital media companies. “You find yourselves in a war for attention with well-funded media giants, internet companies, and telecom companies,” he said. The show had 91,460 attendees, down from 92,912 in 2018.
LAS VEGAS -- DOJ's view of broadcast competition as concerned only with spot TV advertising is narrowly defined and unlikely to change, broadcasters and broadcast attorneys told us Tuesday. Their remarks followed an NAB 2019 panel headlined by Owen Kendler, chief of the Antitrust Division's Media Entertainment and Professional Services Section.
LAS VEGAS -- Radio license renewals are moving to a new system, the delayed FCC decision on a top-four combination in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, isn't related to the quadrennial review, and the chairman's office nixed a prison phone company deal before it reached other eighth-floor offices, said commissioners and Media Bureau staff on panels Monday and Tuesday at NAB 2019. There was heated onstage back-and-forth between Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Geoffrey Starks on pirate radio. And Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman suggested broadcasters walk back calls to relax some reporting requirements.