The FCC will vote at its Sept. 30 open meeting on an NPRM that would kick off its 2022 quadrennial review of broadcast ownership rules, Chairman Brendan Carr said Monday in a blog post. Commissioners will also consider the NPRM looking at allowing correctional facilities to jam cellphone signals, which Carr unveiled Friday at a news conference in Arkansas (see 2509050055).
Since April, NAB has aired “nearly a quarter million” TV and radio spots across 192 media markets pushing for Congress and the FCC to relax broadcast ownership rules, the trade group said in a release Thursday. A campaign spot released last week called on viewers to “keep football free” by texting in support of relaxing the rules. “Supporters have sent more than 174,000 emails and 34,000 tweets directly to members of Congress and FCC commissioners,” NAB said. A national survey of likely voters conducted in August showed that 83% of respondents preferred games on broadcast over streaming, the group said. “The FCC must act quickly to level the playing field, so broadcasters can continue investing in the content communities rely on most,” NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt said in the release.
Regulatory changes being pushed by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr will likely have little effect on broadband deployment, New Street’s Blair Levin said during an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation webinar Tuesday. Other speakers noted that for the most part, the U.S. broadband market is highly competitive and getting more so, as fixed-wireless access and satellite broadband become more widespread.
Nexstar’s profitability and plans to acquire Tegna undercut broadcaster arguments for doing away with the national ownership cap, said MVPDs, civil rights groups, Newsmax and others in comment filings in docket 17-318. Replies were due Friday.
Nexstar agreed to purchase Tegna in a $6.2 billion deal that could receive regulatory approval only if the national ownership cap is relaxed or eliminated, Nexstar said in a news release and conference call Tuesday. If the deal is consummated, Nexstar would control 265 TV stations, become the largest owner of affiliates for "all four of the biggest networks, and reach 80% of U.S. households. The current rule caps audience reach for a single station owner at 39%, but the FCC has a proceeding that will possibly change the cap. Reply comments in the proceeding are due in docket 17-318 Friday. Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said he doesn't “want to presume where [FCC Chairman Brendan Carr] will come out in his national ownership proceeding” but also that Nexstar feels “very, very positive about moving forward to the regulatory approval process.”
The FCC’s top telecom priorities include the components of Chairman Brendan Carr’s “Build America Agenda,” stabilizing USF and deregulation, agency Chief of Staff Scott Delacourt said. NTIA Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Adam Cassady said finishing BEAD "is job one," but other tasks include space policy revisions and identifying spectrum for commercialization. The two spoke Monday at Technology Policy Institute’s annual Aspen Forum.
TV broadcasters are positioning for a wave of deals in anticipation of changes to FCC limits on broadcast ownership, according to broadcasters, media brokers and recent announcements from station groups. Sinclair Broadcast announced in a release Monday that it's evaluating “all value-enhancing opportunities,” and Nexstar and Tegna are reportedly negotiating a possible deal. The rumors are likely an indication of pent-up demand but could also be aimed at mollifying shareholders, said broadcasters and media brokers.
The current administration's position on race- and gender-based governmental affirmative action obligations makes it unlikely that there will be future filings of the biennial ownership reports from broadcasters, Wilkinson Barker broadcast lawyer David Oxenford wrote Friday. The reports were instituted in large part to obtain race and gender information about broadcast ownership, as the data could potentially be used for FCC affirmative action considerations, Oxenford noted. In late July, the Media Bureau waived the requirement to file those reports for 18 months; they were to be due Dec. 1 (see 2507300070). Oxenford said the FCC's "Delete" proceeding has teed up a variety of other routine required filings from broadcasters that could be axed, such as the annual children's TV reports and the annual equal employment opportunity public inspection file reports.
Broadcasters called for the FCC to save their industry by immediately eliminating the national TV ownership cap in comments filed in docket 17-318 by Monday’s deadline. Meanwhile, MVPD groups, labor unions, public interest groups and conservative entities Newsmax and the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) disputed the FCC’s authority to alter the cap and said doing so would hurt localism, retransmission consent rates and journalism.
Ending the collection of biennial ownership data through Form 323 would eliminate virtually the only source of information about broadcast-ownership diversity, several civil rights and public interest groups told us. The FCC Media Bureau on Tuesday announced an 18-month pause on collecting Form 323 and seemed to indicate that the requirement to submit the data will be permanently deleted (see 2507300070). Halting Form 323 collection would be “yet another structural policy decision to brush civil rights under the rug, to obscure discrimination in the broadcast industry,” said Free Press co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez in an email. “It's a shameful and brazen dereliction of the FCC's duty to serve all Americans.”