The Media and Democracy Project petition against Fox’s station WTXF-TV Philadelphia isn’t “remotely similar to the occasional complaints by politicians about the political slant of a particular network or channel,” said former telecom lobbyist Preston Padden in an informal filing Tuesday responding to a recent statement from FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington (see 2409130062). “There is nothing political about the MAD Petition,” Padden said, adding that Simington was "mistaken" when he implied MAD's challenge of WTXF-TV’s license renewal wasn’t in line with the First Amendment. The petition “is not about speech,” Padden said. “It is about Fox’s conduct -- its business decision -- to knowingly and repeatedly choose to present false news, rather than the truth, in order to protect its profits.” Simington and Fox didn’t comment.
The FCC’s 2018 quadrennial review order “reasonably” found that competition hasn’t diminished the need for the agency’s broadcast ownership rules. Moreover, the agency was within its authority to expand rules limiting broadcasters from owning multiple top-four network affiliates, the FCC said in a respondent's brief filed in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The agency was responding to challenges of the QR order that multiple broadcasters brought (see 2407160069). Though filed Friday, the brief wasn’t public until Monday. “The record showed that despite the proliferation of non-broadcast sources of audio and video programming, broadcast radio and television remain virtually the only providers of local programming,” the FCC said. Broadcasters “provide the lion’s share of the local news and community-oriented programming that is essential to achieving the FCC’s goals of promoting localism and viewpoint diversity,” therefore justifying the retention of limits on local radio and TV ownership, the agency said. The FCC dismissed broadcaster arguments that its approach means broadcasters could never obtain relief from agency ownership restrictions even if the industry were on the brink of death. “This doomsday scenario is purely hypothetical,” the FCC said. “Neither broadcast radio nor broadcast television is currently in such dire straits.” In future Quadrennial Review proceedings, “if non-broadcast providers of audio and video services start offering more of their own local news and community-oriented programs in competition with the local programming of broadcast stations,” the FCC could revise its market definitions, the filing said. The agency expanded the top-four prohibition to include multicast channels and low-power stations to prevent broadcasters from exploiting workarounds to limits on owning multiple top-four stations in the same market, the brief said. MVPDs “have first-hand experience of the harm caused by certain broadcasters’ end-runs around the rule,” said NCTA and the Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance in an intervenor brief supporting the FCC position. “Those end-runs cause the same public interest harms that the Top-Four Prohibition was meant to prevent and should therefore be prohibited for the same reasons.” The court should reject broadcaster arguments that the expansion of the top-four rules regulates content and violates the First Amendment, the FCC said. The rule change “targets transactions involving network affiliations that may be used to evade the local television rule, and it applies regardless of the content of programming.”
The FCC said it has opened the window for filing applications to participate in the agency’s three-year, $200 million cybersecurity pilot program for schools and libraries. It closes Nov. 1. “School districts and libraries across the country have proven to be prime targets for cyber criminals” and “vulnerabilities in the networks are real -- and growing," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said Tuesday. “Through this pilot program, we’ll have a chance to better understand what equipment, services, and tools will help protect school and library broadband networks from cyberthreats,” she said. Commissioners approved the program 3-2 in June with Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington dissenting (see 2406060043).
“We’re not waiting for federal leadership in privacy,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (D) during a Silicon Flatirons event Wednesday. Amid congressional inaction, Colorado was the third state to enact a comprehensive privacy bill, after California and Virginia. The AG office has sought to be transparent as it’s worked on rules for implementing the Colorado Privacy Act, said Weiser, quipping that the FCC is a “poster child [for] how not to do rulemaking.” Colorado plans to watch how state government manages data at the same time as it oversees the private sector, he said. The AG office will take the same approach with AI, he added. Also, as the AG office moves toward enforcement, it is focused on educating businesses. Weiser's “memo” for businesses: “Stop collecting so much data … Stop storing it for so long. Stop giving so many people access to it.” The AG said the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on Chevron deference doesn’t formally affect states. “Informally, it’s possible that some state supreme courts will look at it.” However, Weiser finds the decision “entirely unpersuasive,” he said. “I am confident that [Colorado’s] supreme court will continue to provide agency deference.” The Colorado AG office recently set a Nov. 7 hearing on the latest proposed amendments to the Colorado Privacy Act (see 2409160036).
Samsung Electronics America representatives met with FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel about the company’s request for a waiver on a 5G base station radio that works across citizens broadband radio service and C-band spectrum (see 2309130041). “Samsung emphasized its dedication to the success of CBRS in the United States,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 23-93. “The proposed device -- which has been before the Commission for over two years -- would simply enable operators to deploy one radio where they would otherwise deploy two radios with substantially similar performance characteristics,” Samsung said.
The FCC’s Broadband Data Task Force and Office of Engineering and Technology sought comment Tuesday on an application for approval of a Georgia Institute of Technology third-party mobile speed test app for use in the FCC’s broadband data collection mobile challenge process. Comments are due Oct. 17, replies Nov. 1, in docket 24-2. “We note that Georgia Tech has submitted only a beta version of the app, and has not made a production version of the app available for download,” said an FCC notice: “Any approval of the CellWatch v1.0 app by OET will be conditional and subject to submission of the production version of the app and review by OET to ensure that it complies with applicable technical requirements.”
AT&T agreed to pay $13 million and strengthen its data retention practices to settle an FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation into the integrity of the carrier’s supply chain and “whether it failed to protect the information of AT&T customers in connection with a data breach of a vendor’s cloud environment,” said a Tuesday news release from the FCC. The agency refers only to “Vendor X.” In January 2023, the vendor “suffered a data breach that exposed information” of nearly 9 million AT&T wireless customers, according to a consent decree. “AT&T failed to ensure the vendor: (1) adequately protected the customer information, and (2) returned or destroyed it as required by contract,” the FCC said. “The Communications Act makes clear that carriers have a duty to protect the privacy and security of consumer data, and that responsibility takes on new meaning for digital age data breaches,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. Protecting customer data is a top AT&T priority, a spokesperson said in an email. “A vendor we previously used experienced a security incident last year that exposed data pertaining to some of our wireless customers,” the spokesperson said: Though AT&T systems weren’t compromised “we’re making enhancements to how we manage customer information internally, as well as implementing new requirements on our vendors’ data management practices.”
CTIA representatives believe the FCC should reconsider proposed rules requiring blocking texts, set for a vote at the commissioners' Sept. 26 open meeting (see 2409050045). In a filing Tuesday, CTIA reported on a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Nathan Simington. “The wireless ecosystem’s efforts to combat spam and scam text messages are working, as evidenced by the significant drop in consumer complaints reported over the last few years,” said the filing posted in docket 21-402 : “The best way the Commission can protect consumers from spam and scam texts is to pursue enforcement actions against bad actors, either directly or through partnerships with other law enforcement agencies.” CTIA made similar points in a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Brendan Carr before the order was circulated (see 2409060055).
T-Mobile and UScellular jointly filed data at the FCC about their spectrum holdings, broken down on a cellular market area (CMA) basis. The filings were posted Tuesday in docket 24-286, one day after the companies filed a public interest statement and other documents about T-Mobile’s proposed buy of “substantially all” of the smaller carrier’s wireless operations, including some spectrum (see 2409160029). “Based on the FCC’s criterion, out of these 157 CMAs, there are 33 CMAs where T-Mobile or UScellular (or both) are considered to lack a competitive presence,” they said. AT&T has a “competitive presence” in each of the 124 CMAs T-Mobile or UScellular serve and Verizon [has] a competitive presence in 116, according to the filings (see here and here). “Based on this analysis, it should be evident that robust competition will continue to exist in all CMAs overlapped by the proposed transaction.”
The “must-vote” clock on radio group Audacy’s request for a temporary waiver of FCC foreign-ownership rules is set to expire Wednesday, and FCC officials told us they're expecting its approval, though at least one Republican will dissent on what in several past proceedings has been a routine request. Audacy, which owns more than 200 stations and is the second-largest radio group in the U.S., is seeking the waiver to allow it to first complete a bankruptcy restructuring that has George Soros-affiliated entities purchasing its stock. The FCC’s Democrats have already voted the item, agency officials told us.