Though the FCC voted 2-1 Thursday to restore the UHF discount and re-examine the rule later this year along with the national broadcast ownership cap, both Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who dissented from the vote, and Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said in news conferences after the meeting they believe altering the national cap is the province of Congress. “Something of that significance, I would appreciate additional guidance from Congress,” said Clyburn in response to a question from Communications Daily. O’Rielly reaffirmed his view the agency doesn’t have authority to change the cap, and said he's interested to see how the matter “gets litigated out.”
Incentive Auction Task Force Chairman Gary Epstein while planning and running the auction had concerns about funding FirstNet and whether the FCC should skip a clearing target to get the auction to finish faster, he said at Wednesday’s Media Institute luncheon. The talk was Epstein’s first public speech since the end of the incentive auction last week, and at its end he announced that he will leave the FCC at the end of April. Despite its complications, the incentive auction “achieved its major goal” of using a market-based mechanism to determine the price and demand for wireless spectrum, Epstein said. He said he's “neither happy nor disappointed nor anywhere in-between,” about the amount of money raised by the auction.
The restoration of the UHF discount and two rule changes for noncommercial broadcast stations are expected to be approved with minimal changes at Thursday’s FCC commissioners’ meeting (see 1703300066), broadcast attorneys and industry officials told us. Along with restoring the discount, the commission is expected to allow noncommercial education stations to hold third-party fundraisers and to remove a requirement that board members of NCE stations provide personal information to the FCC as part of an ownership data collection effort. Though the vote count on the NCE items is unclear, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is expected to dissent on restoring the UHF discount, a forecast she supported in a tweet calling April “industry consolidation month at the FCC” (see 1704120062).
The extent of the incentive auction’s effect on low-power TV isn’t known, but after Thursday’s release of the closing and channel reassignment public notice (see 1704130056), industry officials were pessimistic. “There are a lot of people who are extremely disappointed in the outcome,” said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Peter Tannenwald Friday. LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition Director Mike Gravino sought legal action and outright resistance. “The auction winning bidders need to hear loud and clear that LPTV will NOT be moving when they want to start testing in a [partial economic area] PEA, but when we are ready,” said Gravino in an email titled “Resist the Repack!” The displacement of LPTV will affect minorities disproportionately in major markets, said Ravi Kapur, CEO of Diya TV, a network targeting Indian Americans. “The fallout from this is going to be massive.” Meanwhile, many experts aren't sure what the Dish and Comcast auction results say about those companies' plans.
The FCC is considered likely to grant Fox’s request for a temporary waiver of the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule despite objections raised by a number of public interest groups (see 1703090049), numerous broadcast attorneys told us. Fox wants the waiver to allow it to continue operating the New York Post and running TV stations in the same New York market while awaiting an FCC decision on petitions for reconsideration of the FCC’s 2014 quadrennial ownership review. In a joint opposition filing in docket 07-260 for Monday’s comment deadline, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Free Press, the United Church of Christ Communication Office and Voice for New Jersey said the waiver is unjustified and granting a temporary waiver that's dependent on a pending reconsideration process would “violate long-standing, sensible Commission policy.”
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn doesn’t support a proposal to eliminate the AM/FM subcaps that has recently been the focus of an industry push (see 1703020052), she told us Monday. “The Commission’s local radio ownership rule was designed to uphold the core principles of competition, localism and viewpoint diversity,” Clyburn said in an emailed statement responding to our question. “These values are at the heart of the Communications Act which is why I continue to believe we must preserve our media ownership rules.”
An item added to the FCC list of circulating proposed rules Friday appears to be a declaratory ruling on a petition requesting that broadcasters be allowed to satisfy equal employment opportunity requirements with postings only online. An FCC spokesman confirmed the petition for rulemaking "Seeking to Allow the Sole Use of Internet Sources for FCC EEO Recruitment Requirements, Declaratory Ruling,” refers to a petition requesting the rule change that was filed in December by Sun Valley Radio and Canyon Media (see 1612190062). "The daily newspaper, previously cited by the FCC as the presumptive way to reach all groups within a community, now pales in its reach within the community compared to the Internet,” said the petition. Currently, broadcasters must widely disseminate job postings, and can't advertise them only online or on their own airwaves, a broadcast attorney told us. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly repeatedly has endorsed loosening the rules.
Broadcaster opposition mounted last week to Prometheus Radio Project’s (PRP) request for a stay of upcoming FM translator siting rules (see 1704040046). NAB now seeks to kill it on procedural grounds, said an opposition filing posted by the FCC Friday. And two broadcast lawyers opposed it earlier last week.
A draft item set for April’s commissioners' meeting that would allow some public broadcasters to hold fundraisers for third-party nonprofits (see 1703300066) was enthusiastically supported by its original proponents, the National Religious Broadcasters. It likely won’t be welcomed by its longtime opponents in public media, according to FCC filings and interviews. “It would be a disservice to public broadcasters’ mission to become a fundraising outlet for others,” said Todd Gray of Gray Miller, who represents public broadcasters. The draft item is an outgrowth of an FCC policy that granted temporary waivers to public media stations to raise funds for disaster relief, NRB said. “We’ve seen how well these stations do in connecting those who want to give with charitable causes; we see a benefit in connecting them to everyday causes," said NRB Vice President-Government Relations Aaron Mercer.
Public media advocates, station managers and a Republican senator on the Appropriations Committee told us they believe the CPB will maintain its funding in the face of President Donald Trump’s FY 2018 budget proposal. A huge national campaign is drumming up support for meeting CPB’s funding request, including an online petition asking legislators to support public media that’s up to more than 250,000 signatures, said America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) President Patrick Butler. “I’m increasingly confident that we’ll be able to win this battle,” said Butler, conceding the struggle over the budget almost certainly will go on for months. Funding for public media has “strong bipartisan support” in Congress, said Rick Johnson, general manager of WGCU Fort Myers, Florida. “Though I would never want to take that for granted.”