Work by career FCC staffers on proposed media ownership rules is progressing, after an appeals court remand of previous regulations, industry and agency officials said. They said the last batch of studies the agency paid outsiders to do is heading toward completion, and a rulemaking notice will be issued later. The commission contracted to pay $725,000 for eight studies, according to contracting documents Warren Communications News, publisher of Communications Daily, got from the agency by a Freedom of Information Act request. The research is on local online content, “civic knowledge” and “engagement,” TV viewing, ownership and other areas. The FCC has released five studies dealing with the Web, TV and radio (CD June 16 p9).
The latest and one of the FCC few video news release fines on a 2006 complaint purporting to show widespread use of VNRs on broadcast TV again demonstrates stations must disclose who provides the material even if it is aired during news programs and no money changes hands. A News Corp. unit was fined $4,000 Friday by the Enforcement Bureau for not telling viewers of KMSP Minneapolis that the station didn’t get on its own 12 different shots of General Motors convertibles used in a segment on that type of car that didn’t mention autos from any other carmaker. The bureau disagreed with Fox TV Stations that it’s entitled to use such material without identification because KMSP wasn’t paid for running the VNR and because the outlet paid another unit of News Corp. to use the material through participation in a news service.
New FCBA officers: President Yaron Dori, Covington & Burling; President-elect Laura Phillips, Drinker Biddle; Secretary Ryan Wallach, Willkie Farr; Assistant Secretary Robert Branson, Verizon Wireless; Treasurer Joseph Di Scipio, Fox TV Stations; Assistant Treasurer David Gross, Wiley Rein; Executive committee members Parul Desai, Consumers Union; Erin Dozier, NAB; Ari Fitzgerald, Hogan Lovells; Rosemary Harold, FCC; Julie Kearney, CEA; Janice Obuchowski, Freedom Technologies; Thomas Power, NTIA; Megan Stull, Google; Bryan Tramont, Wilkinson Barker; and Christopher Wright, Wiltshire & Grannis.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sent the White House a letter asking President Barack Obama to nominate Ajit Pai for the Republican seat on the FCC vacated by Meredith Baker. Industry and government officials we spoke with Friday said Pai is likely to be nominated and should face a relatively easy time being confirmed, barring unforeseen complications. Pai’s nomination is likely to be paired with that of Jessica Rosenworcel, an aide to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.Rosenworcel is expected to be the nominee to replace Democrat Michael Copps on the commission. Copps must leave the FCC when the current session of Congress ends.
The potential FCC and Justice Department approval of the AT&T/T-Mobile deal likely wouldn’t have a significant effect on the regulatory review of a combined Dish Network and DirecTV, said Todd Stansbury and John Wyss, lawyers at Wiley Rein. They spoke about the hypothetical Dish/DirecTV deal on a conference call with Credit Suisse analyst Stefan Anninger Thursday. While Dish/DirecTV hasn’t been proposed, new Dish CEO Joseph Clayton told Bloomberg he wouldn’t “discount any possibility” when asked about such a deal, saying he believed the regulatory environment to be more favorable than when the FCC and DOJ blocked such a deal in 2002. The FCC would look at a Dish/DirecTV as totally different than AT&T/T-Mobile, said Stansbury, just as the recent approval of a combined Comcast/NBCUniversal likely doesn’t affect their review of AT&T/T-Mobile, said Stansbury. Combining the DBS companies would be a “tough putt,” but he wouldn’t rule out FCC approval without first looking at the extensive data the companies would likely present to the agency, Stansbury said. The DOJ would also look at each deal on its own merits, said Wyss. While combining the DBS companies would bring pay TV options from three to two in most of the country, AT&T/T-Mobile would take competitors from four to three with other regional players, a major distinction between the deals, he said.
New members of president’s National Security Telecom Advisory Committee: Matt Desch, Iridium; Joseph Fergus, Communication Technologies Inc.; Larissa Herda, tw telecom … Break Media online video and gaming firm hires Andrew Doyle, ex-Activision-Blizzard, as chief financial officer and David Subar, ex-Oversee.net, as chief technology officer … NBCUniversal integrated strategic marketing names Monica Halpert, ex-Bluefly.com chief marketing officer, as CMO in residence for the summer … Martha Stewart Living names Lisa Gersh, ex-NBC, president and chief operating officer, creates plan to name her CEO within 12-20 months and she likely will join board soon … Doyle Mitchell resigns from board of Radio One; Dennis Miller, Spark Capital, replaces him.
The FCC should redo an order making it harder to move radio stations from rural to urban areas, owners of hundreds of outlets said in petitions for reconsideration. A group of 45 station owners and other industry entities asked the agency to adopt what they called a “consistent standard” and update criteria of Tuck studies for such move-in requests (CD March 4 p10). Entravision, owner of 48 stations, said a presumption in the order, making such applications harder to get approved, should only apply when licensees outside an urbanized area seek to move to one and to transmit to much of one. A broadcaster with 10 radio stations that has a move-in request pending said the commission should change the new rules so they don’t apply to applications pending when the order was approved March 3.
The Supreme Court has ruled different ways in First Amendment cases, depending partly on what issue is at stake, so court observers said at an FCBA panel on Thursday that they can’t generalize across all cases. In the five years under Chief Justice John Roberts, the court has accepted 19 free-speech cases that don’t have to do with religion, said First Amendment lawyer Robert Corn-Revere of Davis Wright. Of the 14 cases where the court has ruled, it decided in favor of free speech in six of them and eight times against it, he said. Roberts’ tenure hasn’t been “entirely promising,” but recent cases give free-speech proponents more to cheer about, said Corn-Revere, who moderated a panel on the First Amendment and the high court.
Broadcasters and political advertisers likely would challenge a requirement that stations list the names of all donors funding at least a quarter of each political ad, industry lawyers predicted. The requirement would come if the FCC adopts a recent proposal made by the Media Access Project, which was backed by Commissioner Michael Copps (CD March 23 p13). “MAP’s proposal would represent a departure from current FCC requirements and the practices of most broadcasters,” who identify the organization claiming editorial control over the ad, Kathleen Kirby and Ari Meltzer of Wiley Rein wrote members of the Radio TV Digital News Association. “The FCC has broad discretion to waive this requirement” that the individual person who furnished the material be identified, they wrote: “By requiring broadcasters to obtain a sworn statement of an advertiser’s ownership, MAP would expand the ‘reasonable diligence’ obligation."
Proposed FCC fines late Thursday against two TV stations for airing video news releases (VNR) in 2006 without identifying the sponsors (CD March 25 p6) appear to have come now because a statute of limitations may soon run out, said industry lawyers. In 2006, the commission sent letters of inquiry to 77 stations on the VNRs, Kathleen Kirby and Ari Meltzer of Wiley Rein wrote members of the Radio TV Digital News Association. “To enforce a civil forfeiture, the Commission must bring a lawsuit within five years of the date when the claim ‘accrued’ —- generally the date of the incident. With this deadline approaching, it would not be surprising for the Commission to address many of these dormant inquiries in the coming months.” At the time the complaints against the VNRs were made, Kirby and Meltzer noted that RTDNA met with commissioners and made filings “raising the significant First Amendment concerns associated with these investigations."