Sinclair Broadcasting has reached an agreement with the FCC to pay $500,000 to resolve what was originally a $2.6 million forfeiture against the company over children's programming violations and to renew the licenses of numerous stations, said a consent decree Friday. Together with a Media Bureau order dismissing a petition to deny against several Sinclair-controlled stations, the agreement resolved a yearslong holdup in the license renewals of nearly all Sinclair stations. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has pointed to the lack of Sinclair license renewals under the previous FCC as the precedent for his actions against CBS and other networks (see 2502270076).
The elimination of federal funding for PBS stations would be a blow to the ATSC 3.0 transition, said commercial and noncommercial broadcasters and advocates for public TV stations and 3.0. The transition would survive the loss of PBS station participation, but removing it from the equation would affect the reach of 3.0 datacasting, emergency communications and the broadcast positioning system (BPS), commercial broadcasters told us.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the FCC’s USF contribution scheme in a 6-3 opinion Friday in Consumers’ Research v. FCC, but dissenting and concurring opinions from several conservative justices appeared to invite future challenges, attorneys told us.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Thursday that he's “open-minded” about the result of the agency’s proceeding on modifying the national broadcast-ownership cap (see 2506180082), while Commissioner Anna Gomez denounced it as “a sweeping effort to tip the scales even further in favor of a handful of powerful corporations.” Gomez said she knows broadcasters are facing economic pressures and the FCC may need to provide relief, “but this is where we need a scalpel, not a chain saw.” Broadcast officials told us that keeping the ownership cap in place only for network-owned stations -- as the public notice suggests -- could make the rule change more vulnerable in court.
The North American Numbering Council said Tuesday that it wouldn't be rechartered after its final meeting that day, and its functions will be absorbed into the FCC. The advisory committee has operated since 1995, and its charter expires Sept. 8.
The FCC Media Bureau’s move to seek comment on relaxing national broadcast ownership limits just a day after the confirmation of incoming Commissioner Olivia Trusty is an indication that the agency will act quickly to enact Chairman Brendan Carr’s agenda now that he has a majority, industry officials told us. That agenda likely “picks up some pace” in the next couple of months as Carr can move on items he couldn’t advance with a 2-2 FCC, said former Commissioner Mike O’Rielly. The FCC is likely to swear in Trusty as a commissioner on Monday or Tuesday, a former Republican FCC aide told us.
Former FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington told broadcasters Thursday that Chairman Brendan Carr has chosen not to take steps to ease the ATSC 3.0 transition. Carr could have long ago had the agency issue guidance to speed the approval of ATSC 3.0 channel-sharing applications, even without a Republican majority, Simington said in a speech at the ATSC NextGen Broadcast Conference.
The FCC should “act to restore public trust in those who use public airwaves” in the wake of an ABC News journalist publicly criticizing President Donald Trump (see 2506090054), the Center for American Rights said Tuesday in a letter to Chairman Brendan Carr. ABC reportedly released correspondent Terry Moran after he described Trump as a "world-class hater" and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as one in a social media post.
Conservative groups and the Consumer Technology Association argued in reply comments filed by Friday’s deadline that a mandatory transition to ATSC 3.0, as NAB proposed, would fly in the face of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s deregulatory agenda. In its own comments, NAB argued that a mandate is necessary for broadcast competition, saying it's no different from the DTV transition.
Low-power TV (LPTV) broadcasters said in FCC comments that their industry is dying, and ATSC 3.0 won’t be enough to save it. Those comments, in docket 25-168, were in response to HC2’s petition proposing LPTV stations be allowed to switch to 5G broadcast. NAB disagreed, saying 5G broadcast advocates haven’t done enough to show that it won’t cause unacceptable interference.