Kidvid Expected July or August, EEO FNPRM OK'd

Negotiations on the kidvid item are ongoing, and that could cause the order to fall to the Aug. 2 meeting, FCC and industry officials said. The item is still expected this summer. Broadcasters and child advocacy groups are lobbying the eighth floor with the hope of shifting the order, according to broadcast attorneys and filings. “The Commission should now align its rules with current marketplace realities,” NAB said in a meeting last week with an aide to Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, who is overseeing the kidvid proceeding. It then followed up with the aide the next day.

Details of the draft kidvid order remain in flux. Broadcast industry officials and proponents of the kidvid rules expect a final order to incorporate many of the industry asks, such as relaxed reporting requirements and preemption rules, and expansion of the time periods during which children’s programming can be aired. The order is expected to allow broadcasters to satisfy kidvid requirements with programming shown much earlier in the morning.

Under the proposed change, stations could meet their kidvid requirements by airing educational/informational programming “only on Saturdays and Sundays from 5:00 am to 6:30 am,” said Georgetown University Institute for Public Representation co-Director Angela Campbell in a call with an aide to Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, said a filing in docket 18-202. “Teenagers don’t get up that early,” Campbell told us. Campbell is on the board of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. The FCC didn't comment Monday.

The draft item currently wouldn’t allow broadcasters to satisfy kidvid requirements with content aired only on multicast secondary channels, industry officials said. The recent NAB filing shows the trade group lobbying to change this, alluding to the possibility that broadcasters won’t get their way on that issue. “If, however, the Commission declines to provide this relief, it should expand its ‘breaking news’ exemption to include other public interest programming, and no longer require stations to reschedule core programming that is preempted due to live, locally produced, non-regularly scheduled programming,” NAB said. Since the item is still being negotiated, that provision could change.

The multicast issue was one of the only proposed rule relaxations to get pushback from broadcasters as well as advocacy groups. Most of that lobbying came from Hearst-owned content company Litton Entertainment, which said pushing all kidvid content to multicast streams would destroy the market for children's content.

The kidvid item is seen as likely to be controversial, and both Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., spoke against some of the agency’s proposed changes at a Senate Commerce Committee FCC oversight hearing last week (see 1906120076). The Children’s Television Act that created the kidvid rules “still matters,” Rosenworcel said, while Markey mentioned the issue of timing. E/I TV should be shown “during a time of day when kids are watching television,” Markey said.

The OK'd Further NPRM on EEO enforcement would seek comment on the FCC’s record of enforcing those rules and on how EEO compliance and enforcement can be improved, officials told us. The item closely follows requests made by the Multicultural Media Telecom and Internet Council, which used an EEO media modernization item to press for improvements to the FCC EEO regime starting last year. The item is expected to be released this week or the next, officials said.

The FNPRM was announced by Chairman Ajit Pai in February as part of a compromise reached with Starks and Rosenworcel. The Democratic commissioners said then that the item should include comments on the agency’s collection of workplace diversity data (see 1902140053). MMTC didn’t comment.