This Week in Regulation for Broadcasters:  January 13, 2025 to January 17, 2025

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.

• The FCC’s Enforcement and Media Bureaus, under a new Docket opened by the Commission called “Preserving the First Amendment,” dismissed complaints by the Center for American Rights and other parties against TV stations owned by ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, alleging that their news coverage violated the FCC’s rules governing, among other things, broadcast news distortion and equal opportunities for political candidates.  FCC Chairwoman Rosenworcel (citing calls by President-Elect Trump to revoke broadcast licenses for content that he did not like, stated “First, the FCC should not be the President’s speech police. Second, the FCC should not be journalism’s censor-in-chief”) and Commissioner Gomez released statements supporting the dismissal of the complaints. 
  • The Enforcement Bureau dismissed CAR’s complaint against the Philadelphia ABC station alleging news distortion during its broadcast of the Presidential debate on September 10, 2024.  The Bureau found that ABC’s fact checking during the debate was not evidence that ABC intentionally distorted its debate coverage.
  • The Enforcement Bureau also dismissed CAR’s compliant against the New York CBS station alleging news distortion in its broadcast of a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.  The Bureau found no evidence that the CBS decisions were intentional attempts to falsify news as opposed to the exercise of its editorial discretion. 
  • The Media Bureau dismissed CAR’s complaint against the New York NBC station alleging that NBC violated the FCC’s equal opportunities rule when Vice President Harris and Senator Tim Kaine appeared on Saturday Night Live without also inviting competing candidates President-Elect Trump and Hung Cao to do so.  The Bureau reviewed precedent that said that equal opportunities does not require that competing candidates get exactly the same access, but instead only requires that competing candidates, upon request, get access to airtime with comparable audiences.  NBC did so by running Trump and Cao’s ads in the days after the SNL episode during broadcast programming with comparable, and likely larger, audiences. 
  • The Media Bureau also dismissed a petition to deny and informal objections filed against the Fox’s Philadelphia station license renewal application.  The petition and objections argued that the station’s renewal application should be denied principally because cable channel Fox News aired false statements regarding Dominion Voting Systems following the 2020 Presidential Election.  The Bureau granted the renewal application after finding no evidence that the station aired false information regarding Dominion and that there was no final Court decision in the Dominion case finding egregious conduct that could be attributed to the character of the station’s owner.
• President Trump nominated Olivia Trusty as the FCC’s third Republican Commissioner.  Trusty currently serves as a staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee under Chairman Roger Wicker.  If confirmed by the Senate, Trusty will assume outgoing Chairwoman Rosenworcel’s seat on the Commission.  FCC Commissioners Gomez and Starks issued statements congratulating Trusty on her nomination. 
• The National Association of Broadcasters released The Future of Television Initiative Report detailing the findings of a process initiated by the NAB and FCC to bring together stakeholders from across the television industry (including consumer advocates) to make recommendations for the successful deployment of the ATSC 3.0 NextGen Television standard.  According to an NAB Blog about the report, it explores “market-based and other solutions to minimize the cost to consumers of ATSC 3.0 equipment, ramping up consumer education on the benefits of ATSC 3.0 and encouraging further collaboration between MVPDs and broadcasters and within industry standards bodies to resolve MVPD carriage concerns.”
• Reply comments were filed in response to the amended Paramount-Skydance Media transfer applications proposing that David Ellison acquire a controlling stake in the company and become its Chairman and CEO.  CAR urges the FCC to condition the transaction’s approval on the company ensuring viewpoint diversity by: (1) including individuals from different ideological backgrounds on its board of directors; (2) locating its executive and editorial staff outside of New York and Los Angeles; (3) targeting conservative universities and media companies for employee recruiting; and (4) appointing an independent overseer of the company’s efforts on this issue.  CAR also urges the FCC to scrutinize the company’s non-voting foreign investor (which the FCC normally does not do when a foreign investor has less than a 25% interest in a licensee and lacks influence over the company’s management) because the Department of Defense considers this investor to be a Chinese military company.  FUSE Media suggests that the FCC should designate the transaction for hearing to examine whether the new company’s intended use of Oracle technology could cause it to favor its own programming over unaffiliated programming.  An unsuccessful bidder for Paramount claims that the applicants’ failure to disclose certain matters in separate litigation proceedings raised questions regarding its broadcast licensee qualifications.  See our updates here, here, here, and here on the transaction and the comments previously filed in this proceeding.
• The FCC announced that January 15 is the effective date for the increased fines for violations of statutorily-set FCC requirements that were adopted to reflect inflation earlier this month.  This includes an increase in the maximum fine for broadcast indecency to $508,373 for each day of a violation, with a maximum of $4,692,668 for a continuing violation; and for pirate radio to a maximum fine of $2,453,218.
• The FCC submitted its annual report on pirate radio to Congress summarizing its enforcement efforts against pirate radio operators in FY 2024: issuing six fines, proposing 18 fines, and issuing 41 Notices of Illegal Pirate Radio Broadcasting – of which 22 resulted from pirate radio sweeps by the Enforcement Bureau’s field offices.
  • The Enforcement Bureau also issued two Notices of Illegal Pirate Radio Broadcasting this week to landowners in Boston, Massachusetts (for an unlicensed AM radio station) and Norwalk, Connecticut.  The Bureau warned the landowners that the FCC may issue fines of up to the previously maximum fine of $2,391,097 under the PIRATE Radio Act if the landowners continue permitting pirate radio broadcasts from their properties.
• The Media Bureau announced that certain device manufacturers and Multichannel Video Programming Distributors must make closed captioning display settings “readily accessible” to individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing beginning on August 17, 2026.  The FCC adopted the requirement last year, which applies to all U.S.-manufactured devices using a picture screen that receives or plays back video programming simultaneously with sound (such as TVs, smartphones, tablets, and computers) and to MVPDs providing their customers with covered devices to use their services.  We last noted this proceeding in a weekly update in September, when the FCC released a compliance guide for entities subject to the rule,
• The Enforcement Bureau issued a Notice of Violation against a Virginia AM station after an inspection revealed that its tower’s lights were out, the station failed to maintain the tower’s perimeter fence, and the station did not notify the FAA of the light outage.  The Bureau also found that the station was not operating pursuant to its license and did not file a transfer of control application after its owner’s death.  The station must now explain to the Bureau how it will correct the rule violations and prevent future violations from occurring. 
• The Media Bureau and Office of Managing Director issued an Order to Pay or to Show Cause against a Texas FM 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 $7,553.84 for fiscal years 2014, 2015, 2016, 2020, 2021, and 2022.
• The Media Bureau issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing the substitution of UHF channel 29 for VHF channel 13 at Monroe, Louisiana due to the inferior quality of VHF channel signals.  The petition serves as another example of the superiority of UHF channels for the transmission of digital TV signals.
• The Media Bureau dismissed a new Georgia LPFM construction permit application for failing to meet the FCC’s LPFM localism requirement because the applicant’s headquarters and all of its directors’ residences were located more than 10 miles from the proposed station’s transmitter site (the limit for LPFM applicants outside of the top 50 urban markets). 

On our Broadcast Law Blog, we discussed how the FCC’s $369,190 proposed fine against a Texas TV station for improper participation in Emergency Alert Service tests demonstrates that ignorance of the FCC rules does not provide an excuse for noncompliance – even when the broadcaster makes a misguided attempt to comply with the FCC’s rules.  This is particularly true for violations of rules dealing with public safety matters, like those here involving EAS.