Industry players look forward to working with the incoming administration and lawmakers on policies to encourage broadband investment and communications sector innovation, even after some criticized Donald Trump before he became president-elect (see 1611090038). Associations, lobbyists and others in telecom said Wednesday that they would work with the new administration regardless of political disagreements.
An FCC proceeding on Entercom's KDND(FM) Sacramento license renewal application likely will take years and is seen as unlikely to result in the station losing its license, despite a 2007 radio contest that led to the death of a listener, attorneys told us. Though hearing designation orders such as that issued against KDND are exceedingly rare, larger companies such as Entercom generally are able to handle the burden of the expensive litigation required and reach some sort of resolution with the commission that allows them to keep the license, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Peter Tannenwald. But Tannenwald, who has defended clients in such proceedings, said the process probably will be difficult, comparing the hearing process to a “death ray.” Such hearing proceedings are rare, Tannenwald said, but when the FCC “gets really mad” at a licensee, it “lets them have it,” he said. The order directs the ALJ to commence the hearing within nine months.
Internal voting rules mean it’s likely to be at least several weeks before the FCC approves the set-top draft order unexpectedly pulled from Thursday’s meeting (see 1609290076), said former and current FCC officials in interviews Monday. That’s several weeks that entities won’t be able to lobby the commission on the item because it remains restricted under sunshine rules after being pulled, which a coalition of civil rights leaders called “highly unusual” in a petition filed Sunday and in an accompanying news release. The petition asks Chairman Tom Wheeler to release the text of the draft order and allow the public to comment. Wheeler’s decision to “impose rules that silence our voices, while decisions impacting our community are settled behind closed doors, is unacceptable,” said National Urban League CEO Marc Morial. “The FCC must unlock the plan and allow for meaningful feedback.”
Internal voting rules mean it’s likely to be at least several weeks before the FCC approves the set-top draft order unexpectedly pulled from Thursday’s meeting (see 1609290076), said former and current FCC officials in interviews Monday. That’s several weeks that entities won’t be able to lobby the commission on the item because it remains restricted under sunshine rules after being pulled, which a coalition of civil rights leaders called “highly unusual” in a petition filed Sunday and in an accompanying news release. The petition asks Chairman Tom Wheeler to release the text of the draft order and allow the public to comment. Wheeler’s decision to “impose rules that silence our voices, while decisions impacting our community are settled behind closed doors, is unacceptable,” said National Urban League CEO Marc Morial. “The FCC must unlock the plan and allow for meaningful feedback.”
The FCC took a series of votes at last week’s commissioner meeting on personnel items, actions apparently having nothing to do with "burrowing" -- the practice in which non-career employees are moved to career jobs -- a senior FCC official said Monday. Instead, all of the personnel items approved at the commission’s meeting Thursday involved staff receiving promotions under Chairman Tom Wheeler. The moves were OK'd along party lines (see 1609290071).
FCC inaction on violations of the online political file rules led broadcasters to conclude they face “no consequences” for filing incomplete or inaccurate information on buyers of political ads, said a joint letter Monday to Chairman Tom Wheeler from the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Sunlight Foundation and the Benton Foundation. It referenced 11 violations filed by the entities in May 2014 (see 1405130044) and 16 new complaints against Scripps' WCPO-TV Cincinnati. At the time of the 2014 complaints, Wheeler promised to address the problem expeditiously, but that hasn’t happened, said Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman, who represents the groups. “The FCC, in its failure to enforce laws that protect voters’ right to know, has clearly led broadcasters to freely ignore existing regulations with impunity,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Campaign Legal Center, in a news release.
Charter Communications is opposing the part of FCC's set-top box proposal that would require cable modems be broken out on customers' bills and their cost unsubsidized. Saying it would be "more than happy" to note on customers’ bills that its modems are free, Charter in a blog post Wednesday said it "doesn’t stand to reason that customers will benefit from forcing companies to start charging for modems they currently give away." Compared with much of the set-top proceeding, cable modems are "a sleeper issue, but it offers a road map to undermining the retail market [for set-tops] and kill[ing] off the set-top box retail market before it ever gets off the ground," Andrew Schwartzman, outside counsel for Zoom Telephonics, told us Wednesday. Zoom repeatedly pushed the FCC for cable modem conditions on Charter's buys of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks (see 1511270051, 1511240028 and 1511040045) and has backed the FCC on the cable modem portion of the set-top proposal.
Charter Communications is opposing the part of FCC's set-top box proposal that would require cable modems be broken out on customers' bills and their cost unsubsidized. Saying it would be "more than happy" to note on customers’ bills that its modems are free, Charter in a blog post Wednesday said it "doesn’t stand to reason that customers will benefit from forcing companies to start charging for modems they currently give away." Compared with much of the set-top proceeding, cable modems are "a sleeper issue, but it offers a road map to undermining the retail market [for set-tops] and kill[ing] off the set-top box retail market before it ever gets off the ground," Andrew Schwartzman, outside counsel for Zoom Telephonics, told us Wednesday. Zoom repeatedly pushed the FCC for cable modem conditions on Charter's buys of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks (see 1511270051, 1511240028 and 1511040045) and has backed the FCC on the cable modem portion of the set-top proposal.
The apps-based set-top box plan outlined in an FCC draft order circulated Thursday (see 1609080085) is different enough from the plan proposed in the preceding rulemaking notice filed in docket 16-42 that it could be vulnerable to an Administrative Procedure Act challenge, some attorneys and industry officials told us Friday. By circulating an order instead of a further NPRM, the FCC is preventing anyone but large programmers, companies and trade associations with the means to lobby the agency from weighing in, said cable consultant Steve Effros, who has been backing a different set-top solution. “This totally lacks integrity, and it makes a mockery of the Administrative Procedure Act,” Effros said. “What about the rest of us?”
The apps-based set-top box plan outlined in an FCC draft order circulated Thursday (see 1609080085) is different enough from the plan proposed in the preceding rulemaking notice filed in docket 16-42 that it could be vulnerable to an Administrative Procedure Act challenge, some attorneys and industry officials told us Friday. By circulating an order instead of a further NPRM, the FCC is preventing anyone but large programmers, companies and trade associations with the means to lobby the agency from weighing in, said cable consultant Steve Effros, who has been backing a different set-top solution. “This totally lacks integrity, and it makes a mockery of the Administrative Procedure Act,” Effros said. “What about the rest of us?”