Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.
- The FCC released a draft Report and Order, which if adopted at its August 6 regular monthly Open Meeting, would repeal the 39% national TV ownership cap. Instead of the cap, the FCC will do a case-by-case review of any proposed TV combination exceeding the current cap to see if it is in the public interest by weighing factors including the transaction’s potential benefits (e.g., increased local programing and innovation) and its potential harms (e.g., decreased local programming, increased retransmission consent fees, and loss of communications workers). The draft order states that the national cap is no longer needed because of changes in the media marketplace. According to the draft order, repealing the cap would allow TV broadcasters to better fulfill their public interest obligations, including through increased investment in local programming and by providing leverage (through increased audience reach) in the local broadcasters’ negotiations with the national networks. Even though the cap was set by Congress, the draft finds that the FCC can repeal it as the FCC has broad authority to adopt, modify, or eliminate its broadcast ownership rules and to act in the public interest, and Congress did not eliminate this authority when it set the cap.
- The FCC published a News Release highlighting points made in FCC Chairman Carr’s published op-ed in Breitbart announcing the FCC’s upcoming vote to repeal the cap. Carr pointed to a purported lack of trust among Americans in legacy national media as the justification for repealing the cap, claiming that “New York and Hollywood interests have steamrolled those local TV stations and the broader media market in recent years in ways that run directly counter to the regulatory framework that Congress and the FCC put in place.” Carr also said that national networks’ “programs naturally reflect the values of the New York and Hollywood executives that produce them,” and that “this power imbalance has contributed to a steady decline in locally produced news—and with it, a weakening of the public’s trust in the media.”
- FCC Commissioner Gomez released a statement signaling her opposition to the repeal of the cap. Gomez called the repeal an “unlawful effort to hand control of the public airwaves to billionaire buddies of this administration [who] will destroy local newsrooms, silence community reporting, and drive-up costs for the American families who depend on local stations for news and emergency alerts.” Gomez stated that “a free and diverse media landscape depends on real limits on how much of the public airwaves any one company can control,” and that “Congress set the 39 percent national ownership cap in federal law, and only Congress has the authority to raise or eliminate it.”
- In his speech on election integrity issues, President Trump said “In a rare move, NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech. They knew what it was about, because of the fact that they don’t like the topic, because they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to reveal it. They and the others in the media are part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left. They can’t have a great country and that’s true; you can’t have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multibillion dollar in value airways for absolutely no money. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.”
- When asked in an interview (at about 4:50) before the speech about whether networks had an obligation to carry it, Chairman Carr stated that broadcast TV networks “should want” to carry President’s primetime speeches. Carr said that “Anytime the president of the United States stands up there in prime time to deliver information or news or content, I think broadcasters should want to make sure the American public can see that,” and that “I do think that this is something that the American people have every right to be able to get over the airwaves.” As to whether airing the President’s speech is part of broadcasters’ public interest obligations, Carr said that “I’ll avoid sort of generating the headline on this one, but I do think it’s one that a lot of people are going to be interested in and want to see.”
- On BlueSky, Commissioner Gomez said about the President’s call for revocation: “The FCC has no authority to punish a station for refusing to air a blatantly political speech. This is a naked attempt to bully broadcasters, and the FCC should have no part in it” and “It is ridiculous to call for broadcasters to lose their license simply for making the same editorial decisions they’ve made under presidents of both parties, especially when the remarks were still available to anyone who wanted to watch them online.”
- The FCC released its Quarterly Broadcast Station Totals. The release shows that compared to the same release from a year ago, there were 60 fewer AM stations and 42 fewer commercial FM stations, but 117 more noncommercial FM stations. There were also 12 more commercial UHF TV stations but 6 fewer VHF TV stations; 1 more noncommercial UHF TV station, and 3 more noncommercial VHF TV stations.