FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel Tuesday condemned a letter from the Florida Department of Health threatening a TV station over an advertisement. Sent to Nexstar's WFLA-TV Tampa and other Gray Television stations, the letter claimed a political ad running on the station critical of Florida's abortion policies constituted an illegal “sanitary nuisance” and threatened the station with criminal prosecution. The station's First Amendment right “does not include free rein to disseminate false advertisements which, if believed, would likely have a detrimental effect on the lives and health of pregnant women in Florida,” the DOH letter said. Rosenworcel, in a release, responded, “The right of broadcasters to speak freely is rooted in the First Amendment.” She continued, “Threats against broadcast stations for airing content that conflicts with the government's views are dangerous and undermine the fundamental principle of free speech.” The ad, the DOH letter said, characterized a Florida law that strictly limits abortions as banning them and leading to the deaths of pregnant women. The ad is “not only false, it is dangerous.” Women faced with pregnancy complications posing a serious risk of death “may and should seek medical treatment in Florida,” the letter said. Nexstar, Gray and NAB didn't comment.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should reject broadcaster arguments that collection and disclosure of demographic data violates the U.S. Constitution, said the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and a host of other civil rights groups in an amicus brief filed Monday supporting the FCC’s equal employment opportunity data collection order. “Petitioners seek to shield the collected information from public scrutiny despite the importance of accurate demographic data to the federal government, investors, the general public, and the industry’s various stakeholders,” said the joint amicus filing, in which the Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Office of Communications for the National Church of Christ, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other groups joined the NAACP. “By promoting, rather than restricting, the flow of information, Form 395-B promotes the First Amendment goal of the discovery of truth and contributes to the efficiency of the ‘marketplace of ideas.’” Disclosing a broadcaster’s workforce diversity data is comparable to other legal disclosures such as cigarette warning labels and stock buyback rationales, the filing added. “Data about workforce composition is uncontroversial and factual." The National Religious Broadcasters, Texas Association of Broadcasters and American Family Association filed a petition for review against the EEO order.

The Media and Democracy Project has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FCC for any records of Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington communicating with Fox and the Heritage Foundation or that mention Project 2025 or the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, among other things. MAD has opposed the license renewal of Fox’s WTXF Philadelphia (see 2407250056), and filed the FOIA in the docket on that proceeding Monday, docket 23-292. A number of prominent officials, including former FCC Commissioner Ervin Duggan, former FCC Chairman Alfred Sikes and former Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol, co-signed the MAD FOIA request. The request should be granted because the policy positions of a future Trump administration are “matters of extreme interest for members of the public who wish to ensure that the Commission impartially applies its policies” to MAD’s petition and the matter of station licensing, it said. “It is obvious that candidate and former President Trump would oppose the MAD Petition, even though he has suggested that content- and viewpoint-based station licensing decisions are appropriate,” MAD said, noting Trump’s recent statements about ABC (see 2409230022). Simington dealt a blow to the FCC’s credibility when he “prejudged” the MAD petition in a recent letter to lawmakers (see 2409130062), MAD said. In addition, MAD said, Carr's and Simington’s involvement in Project 2025 (see 2407050015) also calls the agency’s objectivity into question. “It is essential that the FCC’s ethical integrity be confirmed through full disclosure of Commissioners’ official and personal communications related to the MAD petition and standards for station licensing, so there is no suspicion that any Commissioner has been influenced with respect to these important issues by partisan political interests or by partisan efforts to staff an upcoming administration,” the FOIA filing said. Fox, Carr and Simington didn’t comment.

The FCC narrowed the scope of outage reporting for Hurricane Helene Thursday, deactivating the Disaster Information Reporting System for Florida and Virginia, as well as 16 counties in Georgia and one in Tennessee. However, the system remains active for numerous counties in Georgia, Tennessee and both Carolinas. Thursday’s DIRS update showed 598,411 cable and wireline customers without service in the affected area, and 8.4% of cell sites down. Those numbers are improved from the previous day, when 11.3% of cell sites were down and 654,220 subscribers were reported as without service. The update showed 5 TV stations down, compared to 6 Wednesday, and 22 radio stations down, compared to 38. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr visited the North Carolina Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, to meet officials and telecom providers who are coordinating disaster response efforts, a release from Carr's office said Friday. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel also visited North Carolina Friday (see 2410030051). Carr discussed coordinating communications restoration efforts with representatives of federal, state and local government agencies during the visit, including FCC actions to promote roaming across networks, the release said. "Ensuring the quick restoration of communications services remains a top priority for government agencies," Carr said. "I am grateful for the work that these government officials and service providers alike are doing to help restore communications services in the wake of Hurricane Helene."

The FCC Enforcement Bureau’s Miami office sent a warning to two North Miami, Florida, landowners over pirate radio broadcasts from their property, said an agency notice of violation issued to Toussaint Orius and Marie Orius in Thursday’s Daily Digest. EB agents found unauthorized radio broadcasts coming from the Orius’ property in March. The notice said the landowners could face a fine of up to nearly $2.4 million for hosting an unauthorized radio broadcast.

The FCC has congressional authorization to collect Form 395-B data and didn’t violate broadcasters' constitutional rights in issuing its equal employment opportunity order, the agency said in a brief filed Friday in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The brief responds to challenges against the EEO order brought by the National Religious Broadcasters, the American Family Association and the Texas Association of Broadcasters. “The mere fact that a regulation takes account of race or sex does not make it suspect,” said the FCC. Adding a nonbinary option to gender choices on the form is a “minor change in terminology” for “a category of information that the Form 395-B already collected in 1992,” and thus is well within the agency’s authority, the FCC said. “Nothing about the collection or disclosure of Form 395-B data interferes with a broadcaster’s ability to communicate its own message or suggests the broadcaster agrees with the FCC’s views.” The agency said it “has a legitimate public interest” in collecting workforce diversity data “to facilitate analysis and reporting on broadcast industry workforce trends.”

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said Thursday that his objection to granting broadcaster Audacy a temporary exception to the FCC’s foreign-ownership requirements in connection with a bankruptcy restructuring involving a George Soros-affiliated fund (see 2409250051) doesn’t conflict with denunciations he's made in the past against involving partisan politics in FCC decisions. “My position is straightforward in all of those cases, which is that we should apply the law in the books consistent with the First Amendment,” Carr told reporters following the commissioners' open meeting. The Media Bureau granted similar exceptions to Cumulus, iHeart, Alpha and other broadcasters under multiple administrations during Carr's tenure as a commissioner, though he did not raise objections. Carr said Thursday he was unaware of those grants at the time. “This is the first time that this issue has been raised to my attention,” he said, adding that bureau-level decisions aren’t precedent for the commission. “As a commissioner, for better or worse, there are a lot of things that the bureaus do that, as commissioner -- particularly a non-chair commissioner -- that you're not read in on.” Carr also defended his repeated statements that the Audacy matter is unprecedented, pointing out that this is the first time the full commission has voted on such a petition. Initially, the Audacy item was set as a bureau-level decision but was circulated to the full commission after pressure from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas (see 2408150047). Carr said that he doesn’t object to Cruz forcing the matter before the full FCC and that the senator's action reflects lawmakers' concerns about big decisions getting made at the bureau level, such as the designation of the Standard General/Tegna deal for hearing. “I think what Senator Cruz was saying, [is that] this is the type of decision that the people that sit on this dais, who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate should make,” Carr said. Audacy and Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s office didn’t comment on Carr’s remarks.

The FCC unanimously approved an order streamlining the process for letting digital FM stations transmit at different power levels on the upper and lower digital sidebands. “This asymmetric sideband operation will allow stations to operate with different power levels on the upper and lower digital sidebands, as a way to facilitate greater digital FM radio coverage without interfering with adjacent-channel FM stations,” the order said. The item stems from a NAB and Xperi petition (see 2308010060). It doesn't take up related proposals to increase power levels for such stations, citing unresolved interference concerns the aviation industry raised. The item had been set for Thursday’s agenda.

Dish Network and its CEO Charles Ergen want Standard General (SGCI) and its attorneys to be sanctioned over the broadcaster’s lawsuit against Dish, Byron Allen, the FCC and several unions and public interest groups (see 2409100008), said a motion for sanctions Tuesday. The Standard filing is “frivolous,” violates federal rules of civil procedure and infringes on Dish’s First Amendment rights, the filing said. Dish wants the court to sanction SGCI and its attorneys to cover all of Dish’s expenses from the case and dismiss the complaint. “Frustrated that SGCI’s transaction financing expired and the merger agreement terminated, Plaintiffs have concocted a false narrative that the FCC’s actions must have been caused by a vast racist conspiracy against Mr. Kim,” said the Dish filing, referring to Standard founder Soohyung Kim. The Standard complaint doesn’t show any evidence of a conspiracy but rather disparate parties that disliked the Standard/Tegna deal for different reasons, Dish said. “There is absolutely nothing actionable about a desire to see a deal fail, especially a deal that was artificially engineered to raise DISH’s costs,” Dish said. Standard’s conspiracy claims “rest on the mere fact” that attorney David Goodfriend, who represented unions against the Standard deal, has also worked for Ergen and Allen, Dish said. “This ‘conspiracy’ theory offends the First Amendment’s right to association,” Dish said. “This action was commenced in retaliation, as a rich man’s manifestation of a temper tantrum, in order to harass the parties that Plaintiffs hold responsible for the failure of their merger deal.” Standard didn't comment.

Reply comments in the AI political ads proceeding are due Oct.11 (see 2409200054).