Monty Tayloe

The timing of the FCC’s move to new headquarters remains uncertain, and 87% of frontline FCC employees hope to telework full time until an effective COVID-19 vaccine is in wide use and the pandemic “subsides,” said a survey by the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 209, which represents FCC employees. “At this juncture, I can’t provide you with a definite timeline for these next steps” in the agency's relocation, wrote FCC Chief of Staff Matthew Berry in an agencywide email at the end of September. “But I hope to be able to do so in mid-October.”

Entertainment Studios Network CEO Byron Allen wants to invest $10 billion in acquiring big four network TV and radio stations, he said during a streamed interview for the Radio Show Thursday. Allen said he has invested $500 million in network TV stations over the past 18 months. Radio is “a great business” that's often “underestimated,” he said. “A lot of folks are down on local radio.” Streaming services will have “a tough time” replicating radio’s connection to local communities, Allen said. “I’m chasing Rockefeller,” he said, drawing a line from oil and steel fueling the industrial revolution to “the insatiable appetite” for content on digital platforms. Asked about racism in business, Allen said boardrooms don’t have true economic inclusion. Inequality is hurting the U.S. because the country needs all its citizens to stay afloat in the face of emerging global competition, he said: “Unfortunately, most Americans are set up to fail, especially Black Americans.” Allen wants free healthcare, free education and access to business startup capital, and he described climate change as the No. 1 threat to humanity.

The radio industry doesn’t know what to expect going forward, said Hubbard Radio CEO Ginny Morris and Connoisseur Media CEO Jeff Warshaw during the virtual Pillsbury Broadcast Finance panel Wednesday for the Radio Show. “We don’t think we have much visibility” into the industry outlook for the rest of this year and afterward, said Warshaw. “We don’t expect '21 to be a year like '19,” he said. “We don’t know what a norm is.”

An FCC order on allowing AM stations to go all-digital wouldn’t codify a specific technical standard or impose additional interference restrictions on the fledgling service and would require a 30-day waiting period for stations to provide notice, said the draft Tuesday. The order was released with other drafts for the Oct. 27 commissioners’ meeting (see 2010060056).

Radio’s biggest companies say the medium has largely come back from the lows of the early COVID-19 slowdown, and its position may have improved, according to a Q&A panel with iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman, Entercom CEO David Field and Cumulus CEO Mary Berner that helped kick off the virtual Radio Show. “Broadcast radio has made a nearly complete recovery. We’re at nearly 90% of pre-pandemic levels” of listenership, said Berner. Brands in the pandemic have an increased need for local advertising, affordable ways to reach lots of customers, and ads that run on multiple platforms, said Pittman. “It’s a terrible situation to be in, but it does play to our strengths.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari in the FCC’s and NAB’s appeals of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Prometheus IV case (see 2004170065) could indicate the court has concerns about the 3rd Circuit’s 17-year retention of the broadcast ownership case, said academics and broadcast and public interest attorneys in interviews Friday. The high court issued an order Friday saying it will take up the matter, consolidating the NAB and FCC cases into one and setting one hour for oral argument. That argument could take place early in 2021 or hold off until spring, attorneys said.

A draft order on streamlining and standardizing the process by which FCC applications from foreign-owned companies are reviewed by the “Team Telecom” executive branch agencies is expected to be approved unanimously at Wednesday’s commissioners' meeting, said commission and industry officials.

The FCC Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment has had to adjust its focus to grapple with COVID-19 and its outsize effects on minorities and small business owners, members told its Friday meeting. “We’ve had to tweak our plans,” said Beasley Broadcast CEO and Access to Capital working group head Caroline Beasley. “Getting access to capital to buy a broadcast property in the world of COVID is literally impossible.” The pandemic “illustrated as nothing else has the importance of connecting communities,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

Commissioner Mike O’Rielly's impending exit from the FCC hasn’t made industry lobby him less, according to interviews with attorneys from a wide swath of industries and our examination of filings. O’Rielly used his written House Commerce testimony Wednesday (see 2009160043) to indicate he expects to exit the commission, after President Donald Trump nominated a replacement (see 2009160064).

The goal of the FCC Communications Decency Act Section 230 proceeding is to “push back on concentrations of power” held by big tech companies, said FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr during a virtual Lincoln Network Q&A Wednesday. Carr said his push for “light-touch regulation” represents a growing shift among conservatives, and existing conservative Washington think tanks are dominated by “abject corporatism” and opposition to all regulation. “My approach to net neutrality is consistent with my approach to big tech,” Carr said. “It’s easy to say ‘let's not change anything,’” Carr said. “This is not simply competition in a free market; this is taking advantage of a landscape skewed by law to favor their business model.”