This Week in Regulation for Broadcasters:  December 16, 2024 to December 20, 2024

Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.

• Congress failed to include the AM For Every Vehicle Act in their year-end omnibus spending legislation, meaning that the bill is dead for this Congress.  The legislation will have to be reintroduced in the new Congress that begins in January and must again go through committee consideration and other procedural steps before it could become law.  According to press reports, the NAB now intends to turn its focus to pushing for this legislation to be reintroduced and passed in 2025.
•  The FCC’s Media Bureau granted the National Association of Broadcasters’ request for an retroactive extension of the waiver of the FCC’s audio crawl rule, extending the waiver through May 27, 2025 or until the FCC rules on the NAB’s separate request to pause the effect of the rule while the FCC considers the NAB’s proposal that broadcasters comply with the rule by providing “textual crawls that provide emergency information duplicative or equivalent to the information conveyed by the visual image” (see our discussion here).  The FCC’s audio crawl rule requires TV stations to provide an aural description transmitted on the station’s SAP channel of non-textual emergency information, such as maps or other graphic displays, conveyed outside of station newscasts.  For years, broadcasters have asked for extensions of the effective date of this rule as there is no technological way to reliably convert graphics to speech.  The Bureau granted the new extension because of the public safety issues that would arise if TV stations stopped airing visual images about emergencies because they could not comply with the rule’s requirements.  The Bureau also stated that TV stations would not be subject to any enforcement action for failing to comply with the rule during the brief period from November 26 until December 20 when it was in effect.
• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit announced that oral argument in the appeal of the FCC’s reinstatement of the FCC Form 395-B has been scheduled for February 4, 2025. In February 2024, the FCC reinstated the Form 395-B, which requires that broadcasters yearly prepare a report for a station’s online public file classifying all of its employees by race, gender, and employment position (see our Broadcast Law Blog article here about that decision).  As we discussed on the Blog here and here, the decision is being challenged by several broadcasters who argue that the report is unconstitutional because it unlawfully pressures broadcasters to engage in race- and sex-conscious employment practices.  FCC Chairman-designate Carr vigorously opposed the reinstatement of the Form and recently tweeted on X that the agency would deprioritize “DEI” (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) efforts under his leadership (see our article here for more on the new Chair’s policy priorities), so it will be interesting to see how his FCC defends the February decision in Court.
• The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau entered into a Consent Decree with Paramount Global, which owns CBS, to resolve its investigation of whether CBS violated the FCC’s Emergency Alert Service rules by transmitting false EAS tones during three programs: the Young Sheldon episode broadcast on May 18, 2023; the Entertainment Tonight program broadcast on October 25, 2023; and the Top of the Hour broadcast on June 6, 2024.  To settle the matter, Paramount admitted that the Entertainment Tonight and Top of the Hour broadcasts violated the FCC’s EAS rules by including a few seconds of what sounded like an EAS tone, but not the Young Sheldon broadcast – for which Paramount only admitted to certain facts regarding the date and content of the broadcast, and that it was delivered to affiliate TV stations across the country.  The Consent Decree requires Paramount to pay a $244,952 civil penalty and enter into a compliance plan to ensure that future EAS violations do not occur.  As we have noted many times (see for instance our articles here and here), the FCC forbids the use of real or simulated EAS tones except in connection with real emergencies, and it issues heavy penalties to those that misuse those tones.
• Petitions to deny, comments, and other pleadings were filed in response to the amended Paramount-Skydance Media transfer applications proposing that David Ellison acquire a controlling stake in the company, in addition to serving as its Chairman and CEO (see our reference to this acquisition in our weekly updates here and here).  The Center for American Rights requests that the FCC only grant the applications on the condition that the company rectify CBS’s purported political bias in their news programming, citing its own complaint alleging that CBS News manipulatively edited an interview with then-Presidential candidate Kamala Harris.  CAR also expressed concerns regarding a minority investor in Ellison’s company with alleged close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.  CAR is the organization that filed complaints during the 2024 election cycle against ABC, CBS, and NBC raising allegations including news distortion, bias, and equal time violations.  Fuse Media asserts that the merger will exacerbate Paramount’s anticompetitive treatment of independent programmers – ultimately harming competition and viewpoint diversity.  Replies to these comments will be filed in early January. 
• The Media Bureau entered into two Consent Decrees with broadcasters to resolve issues arising from their license renewal applications:
  • One Consent Decree, with a group of three Washington TV stations, resolved an investigation into the stations’ failure to timely upload several Quarterly Issues/Programs Lists to their Online Public Inspection Files, and their failure to disclose these violations in their license renewal applications.  The Consent Decree requires the stations to pay a $29,000 civil penalty and to enter into a compliance plan to ensure that future OPIF violations do not occur.  See our article here on the importance that the FCC has historically placed on the Quarterly Issues/Programs Lists.
  • The Bureau also entered into a Consent Decree with a group of four Utah TV translator stations for filing their license renewal applications over fourth months late.  The Consent Decree requires the translator licensee, for the entirety of their next license terms, to submit a certification every six months to the Bureau stating that they remain compliant with all FCC rules applicable to TV translator stations.
• The Media Bureau and the FCC’s Managing Director issued an Order to Pay or Show Cause to a Texas AM station proposing to revoke the station’s license unless, within 60 days, the station pays its delinquent regulatory fees and interest, administrative costs, and penalties, or shows that the debts are not owed or should be waived or deferred.  The station has an unpaid regulatory fee debt totaling $27,492.48 for fiscal years 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.
• The Media Bureau denied an objection filed against a new Wisconsin noncommercial educational FM station construction permit application claiming that the applicant failed to demonstrate that it was an established local applicant (meaning that the applicant was local and established in the community for at least two years before filing the application), and thus could not claim points in the FCC’s point system analysis used to evaluate mutually exclusive applications (applications that cannot all be granted consistent with the FCC’s technical rules) filed during the 2021 NCE Filing Window.  The Bureau found that the applicant showed that it was local by submitting a map demonstrating that its headquarters was within the required proximity to its proposed community of license, and it showed that it was established for at least two years because it was the licensee since 2016 of an LPFM station located in the proposed station’s service area.  The Bureau ordered the applicant and another mutually applicant to submit a proposed a time-sharing arrangement by January 25, 2025 to share their proposed channel.
• The Media Bureau also took actions in two cases affecting new LPFM station applications filed in the 2023 LPFM filing window:
  • The Bureau affirmed its dismissal of a new Connecticut construction permit application for failing to comply with the LPFM minimum distance separation requirements.  The applicant requested waiver of the rule on the grounds that its contours protected other stations and that the minimum distance separation requirements should be changed as those rules did not serve the public interest.  The applicant also argued that the LPFM station would provide needed minority-oriented programming.  The Bureau affirmed its dismissal of the application and denied the waiver request because it was really a challenge to the rule itself, which cannot be resolved in the consideration of an individual application, and the applicant failed to show any special circumstance justifying a waiver.
  • The Bureau dismissed a construction permit application for a new LPFM station at Jackson, Mississippi, for violating the FCC’s application signature rules.  The Bureau found that the individual who signed the application was unable to so because he was not an officer or director of the applicant.  Due to the application’s dismissal, the Bureau granted the mutually exclusive application for a new LPFM station at Clinton, Mississippi.

With the upcoming holidays, we do not plan to publish this weekly update next week.  Watch for our next summary of regulatory actions relevant to broadcasters on January 3, 2025.  We will write about any significant regulatory actions on our Broadcast Law Blog in the interim.  Also watch our Blog in the coming weeks for a look ahead at January regulatory dates for broadcasters and for and for our calendar of regulatory deadlines for all of 2025.