Public interest attorney and former Media Access Project head Andrew Schwartzman will join Georgetown’s Institute for Public Representation (IPR) to lead the new Public Interest Communications Law Project, said the Benton Foundation and Georgetown Law in a news release Tuesday. The project is a joint creation of the foundation and school, and Schwartzman will be Benton senior counselor, funded through grants from the Alphawood Foundation, Ford Foundation and the Media Democracy Fund, the release said. Schwartzman’s appointment will “expand IPR’s capacity to provide public representation in such critical areas as the transition of traditional wireline telephone service to broadband (known ’the IP transition'), Universal Service Fund reform, particularly of Lifeline and E-Rate, Diversity of Media Ownership and Spectrum Policy,” he said. Schwartzman will be able to continue as senior adviser to other Washington-based public interest groups, along with his private law practice, the release said. “I have long sought to help create a new generation of public interest advocates able to promote the public’s First Amendment rights to have access to a diverse and vigorous debate on important issues,” said Schwartzman. “This position is an ideal way to continue and extend that mission."
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s office had planned to circulate a draft order Thursday that would attribute TV joint sales agreements (JSAs) for the purposes of calculating ownership, but the item is expected to be delayed until March, an agency official told us. The order would have treated the attribution of TV JSAs the same way as for radio, counting as 15 percent toward ownership, the official said. It’s not clear why the item may be delayed. The item would also have included a further notice of proposed rulemaking on media cross-ownership, the official said.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has a big decision ahead in coming months -- whether to seek en banc and, ultimately, Supreme Court review of Tuesday’s decision rejecting the agency’s 2010 net neutrality rules. Longtime FCC watchers disagree on the likelihood of an appeal. Some say an appeal carries a risk since the panel’s majority offered an expansive reading of FCC authority under Section 706 of the Communications Act. The decision is not the FCC’s alone to make because the solicitor general, not the commission, would have to file the appeal before the high court.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has a big decision ahead in coming months -- whether to seek en banc and, ultimately, Supreme Court review of Tuesday’s decision rejecting the agency’s 2010 net neutrality rules. Longtime FCC watchers disagree on the likelihood of an appeal. Some say an appeal carries a risk since the panel’s majority offered an expansive reading of FCC authority under Section 706 of the Communications Act. The decision is not the FCC’s alone to make because the solicitor general, not the commission, would have to file the appeal before the high court.
An appeals court granted a partial stay of the FCC prison phone order (CD Aug 12 p1) Monday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit kept in place the interim rate cap of 21 cents per minute for debit and prepaid calls, and 25 cents a minute for collect calls. It put on hold three other sections of the FCC’s rules: the requirement that rates and ancillary services be “cost-based”; low safe-harbor rates that presume charges are reasonable; and the annual reporting requirement.
A U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C., opinion in the FCC’s favor may also be a bad omen for the commission’s must-carry regime, several attorneys told us Friday. In a unanimous decision in Agape Church v. FCC (http://1.usa.gov/19ojjp3), a three-judge panel upheld the commission’s authority to sunset its dual carriage “viewability” rule, which required cable operators to downconvert the digital signals of “must-carry” channels for subscribers with analog television sets.
The FCC Media Bureau will approve the proposed Tribune/Local and Gannett/Belo broadcast deals this week, said agency officials in interviews Wednesday. The $2.73 billion Tribune/Local transaction will be approved without any additional conditions or divestitures, and the bureau won’t impose additional conditions on the $2.2 billion Gannett/Belo deal beyond the single station divestiture handed down by the Department of Justice earlier this week (CD Dec 17 p6), said the officials. Both deals will be approved on the bureau’s delegated authority, the officials said. Public interest groups had argued that because both deals involve sharing arrangements between stations, they should be handled by the full commission. Bureau staff found that the deals were “within the zone of existing precedent,” and so didn’t require a vote by the full commission, said an FCC official.
An FCC Media Bureau letter pointing out problems with some sharing arrangements involved in Sinclair’s deal to buy Allbritton probably doesn’t represent a policy shift in the commission’s stance on mergers and acquisitions, said industry attorneys and an analyst in interviews. But public interest officials said questions about Sinclair’s financial arrangements that were raised in the letter (CD Dec 9 p5) --after they were pointed out by Free Press and others -- might point to a stricter stance on ownership rules. “Asking about financial relationships is significant,” said public interest attorney Andrew Schwartzman, who consults for Free Press. The FCC’s stance though could be “deal-specific,” he said.
A panel of judges upheld the FCC ban on political ads on public radio and TV stations. The opinion, issued Monday following a rehearing, came from a panel of 11 judges in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. One judge presented a partial dissent and partial concurrence, and two judges dissented completely. The en banc court overturned a previous 9th Circuit decision that struck down the ban (CD April 13/12 p2). The decision stemmed from a case brought by the Minority Television Project, owner of KMTP-TV San Francisco, against an FCC order that found the station liable for a $10,000 fine when it ran ads for for-profit companies (CD April 13/12 p2). The Justice Department requested the rehearing (CD Nov 29/12 p17).
The “nuclear option” invoked in the U.S. Senate Thursday will likely add three President Barack Obama-appointed judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, but that new Democratic majority is unlikely to strongly improve the FCC’s chances in defending net neutrality rules, industry observers told us Friday. Stifel Nicolaus analysts said the 7-4 D.C. Circuit Democratic majority could make it easier for the FCC to appeal a negative ruling by the three-judge panel that heard the case in September. But industry attorneys said that wouldn’t make a meaningful difference in the outcome, which could ultimately be determined by the Supreme Court.