NAB is shifting its staff to prioritize the development and deployment of the Broadcast Positioning System (BPS), an ATSC 3.0-based U.S. backup for GPS that's seen by broadcasters as an important justification for shifting U.S. consumers to 3.0. “By investing more resources in BPS, we are accelerating a technology that strengthens national resilience while creating meaningful long-term opportunities for our members,” said NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt in a release Tuesday.

The Media Bureau has extended the deadline for broadcasters to comply with the FCC’s foreign-sponsored content rules until June 7, said a public notice Friday. “Only new leases and renewals of existing leases entered into on or after the compliance date must comply with the rule modifications,” it said. The deadline had been set for Monday.

Law firm Kressin Powers’ recent white paper (see 2512040058) calling for strict broadcast-ownership regulation is “obviously sponsored by the pay-TV industry” and “so confident in its paid-for arguments that not a single attorney attached their name to it,” wrote NAB Chief Legal Officer Rick Kaplan in a blog post Friday. If “genuine harm existed” from the proposed Nexstar/Tegna deal and broadcast consolidation, “the authors could show market-by-market evidence, the only place where harm could occur,” Kaplan wrote. “Instead, we get sweeping national aggregates that mean nothing in a [designated market area]-based regulatory system. It’s statistical cosplay dressed up as scholarship.” The paper “reads like pay TV-funded fan fiction about restoring a broadcast world that hasn’t existed since Reagan’s first term, complete with cherry-picked numbers, nostalgia-soaked storytelling and an extraordinary amount of confidence for a report no one was willing to sign,” Kaplan said.

The Media and Democracy Project (MAD) petitioned the FCC to deny the renewal of a Fox-owned earth station as a continuation of its prior efforts against the license of WTXF Philadelphia.

Approving mergers between the largest broadcasters and rolling back broadcast-ownership rules will increase retransmission consent fees and “further increase concentration and the prospect of anticompetitive conduct at local and national levels,” said antitrust law firm Kressin Powers in a white paper released Thursday. “Today, the formerly 'local' TV industry is dominated by publicly traded, multibillion-dollar conglomerates owning and controlling hundreds of local-in-name-only affiliate stations,” said the paper, titled "From Local Stations to Nationwide Conglomerates: The High Cost of TV Mega-Mergers."

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr “acted responsibly in reminding broadcasters of their public interest obligations” when he urged stations to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! in September, said the Center for Renewing America in a paper filed in docket 22-459 and posted Tuesday.

The FCC Media Bureau has kicked off the pleading cycle for Nexstar’s proposed $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna, said a public notice Monday. Petitions to deny the transaction are due Dec. 31, opposition filings Jan. 15, and replies Jan. 26. Under FCC rules, the combined company would reach 54.5% of U.S. households, so Nexstar has asked the agency to waive the 39% national ownership cap (see 2511190056).

NAB Chief Legal Officer Rick Kaplan said on an NAB podcast released Monday that he expects a relaxation of FCC broadcast-ownership rules “sometime in the next year or so” and that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and his staff “understand” the problems that broadcasters face. Kaplan predicted that the FCC will relax local radio and TV ownership limits, as well as the national TV ownership cap. “It's the only thing that makes sense. It's in line with what the chairman has talked about repeatedly, both when he was a commissioner and now as chair."

The FCC Public Safety Bureau has issued a public notice reminding broadcasters that they're responsible for securing their networks against cyberattacks after a series of hacking incidents led to “obscene materials” and EAS tones being broadcast by stations in Texas and Virginia. WVTF Roanoke said its feed was hacked Nov. 19, broadcasting music with obscene, racist phrases to listeners in Richmond. “We had some dead-air that triggered the switch to back-up audio where an unauthorized audio loop was placed by the hacker,” said the station. In Mont Belvieu, Texas, KFNC's feed was reportedly hacked to play a loop of EAS tones during an NFL broadcast.

The full FCC has rejected a broadcaster’s appeal of a Media Bureau decision denying reconsideration of a New Jersey AM radio station’s license cancellation, said an order Tuesday. The Media Bureau ruled in 2024 that Forsythe Broadcasting’s license for WNJC Washington Township was automatically canceled because the station had been off the air for more than a year without seeking FCC permission to temporarily go silent. Forsythe had argued that its silence was due to economic complications from the COVID-19 pandemic and the expiration of the lease to its transmitter site. In its application for review asking the commissioners to overturn the bureau's decision, Forsythe repeated the same previously rejected arguments, said Tuesday’s order. “We deny the AFR because Forsythe has failed again to demonstrate the Station’s silence is the result of circumstances beyond its control. Therefore, we decline to exercise our discretion in this situation to reinstate the Station’s license.”