The FCC Media Bureau granted Alpha Media’s request for a declaratory ruling allowing it to have up to 100% aggregate foreign investment, said an order in Thursday’s Daily Digest. The Media Bureau in 2021 approved Alpha’s chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization with a waiver that the company must petition for foreign ownership declaratory ruling once it emerged from the bankruptcy. With Thursday’s ruling, the Media Bureau approved the final step of the company’s bankruptcy plan, after which it will be owned by several funds and equity groups, including the Cayman Islands-based ICG North America Holdings and the British Virgin Islands-based BigSur Capital Partners Three. Several entities based in the U.K. and Jersey are also affiliated with ICG, the ruling said. Alpha’s request drew no objections or comments, and the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector found no security concerns, the ruling said. “We find that the public interest would be served by permitting foreign ownership of New Alpha in excess of the 25% benchmarks,” said the ruling.

Apple City Broadcasting will pay a $1,000 fine for failure to get FCC approval for a non pro forma transfer of control after three of its shareholders died between late 2020 and early 2022, the Media Bureau ordered Monday. Apple City is licensee of WACB-AM and WTLK-AM, both Taylorsville, North Carolina.

Starting Oct. 2, the FCC Media Bureau will discontinue issuing the daily lists of filings submitted or actions taken using the consolidated database system, and all remaining filings that were still being submitted through CDBS must instead be submitted through the licensing and management system (LMS), said a public notice in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. The Media Bureau completed the transition from CDBS to the LMS in July. If there are future filings or actions involving pending applications that were submitted using "CDBS, the Media Bureau will announce those matters in the relevant LMS ‘Applications’, ‘Actions’ or ‘Pleadings’ Public Notices,” the bureau said Wednesday.

An FCC rule change updating rules for low-power TV stations and translators took effect Tuesday, said a public notice in docket 03-185. Approved in April, the order updated the language of FCC rules for clarification and to reflect the digital transition. Portions of the rules took effect June 12, but others required Paperwork Reduction Act approval from the Office of Management and Budget, which was handed down Tuesday.

Tennessee radio station WJBE(AM) Powell -- the only black-owned station in its area -- won’t lose its license over a 2016 felony tax fraud conviction by owner Joseph Armstrong, ruled FCC Administrative Law Judge Jane Halprin Thursday. “The station has an overall positive record of public service and the evidence suggests a sincere commitment to its listeners,” wrote Halprin. “As a result, the Presiding Judge finds that Mr. Armstrong’s felony conviction does not warrant revocation of Arm & Rage’s license for WJBE.” said the decision. Armstrong -- a former Tennessee state legislator -- was convicted over failing to include $300,000 in profits on a tax form. The profits came from Armstrong buying and then flipping cigarette tax stamps as the legislature increased the state’s cigarette tax. Armstrong committed the crime in 2007, bought the station in 2013, and was convicted in 2016, which he reported to the FCC 14 days later than required. The FCC granted WJBE’s renewal in 2020, and only designated the matter for hearing in 2022. In her decision, Halprin rejected Enforcement Bureau arguments that the EB should have been permitted to investigate other possible tax issues involving Armstrong. “In pursuing wide-ranging discovery regarding other tax issues, the Enforcement Bureau essentially asked Arm & Rage to perform a self-audit to identify other potential federal income tax violations,” wrote Halprin “This proceeding is not intended to relitigate the crime or second-guess the trial court’s findings.” Halprin also pushed back on EB arguments that minor violations of FCC procedural rules by the station showed a pattern of dishonest behavior, and denied what she called “overly broad” discovery requests about possible rule violations. The station’s FCC compliance is relevant to the case but “it does not follow” that “virtually unlimited discovery regarding other potential violations of the Commission’s rules was warranted.” The EB should have presented additional evidence to justify forays into Armstrong’s tax history and FCC compliance, she said. “Absent Mr. Armstrong’s felony conviction, it is doubtful that this matter would have been designated for hearing,” Halprin wrote.

The FCC’s authority over broadcast license transfers doesn’t apply to Gray Television’s 2020 purchase of another broadcaster’s CBS network affiliation because no licenses were transferred, said Gray's reply brief late Wednesday (docket 22-14274) at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The FCC’s rule barring affiliation swaps, called Note 11, “is a freestanding and unbounded prohibition on certain programming purchases that has no basis in the FCC’s licensing authority,” said the brief. Congress didn’t grant the agency power over sales of network affiliation and the FCC “cannot fall back on” arguments that it has ancillary authority over other transactions “whenever it wants to do more than Congress allowed,” Gray said. By interpreting Note 11’s language against swaps to also apply to affiliation purchases and applying the rule to Gray’s deal with Denali media, the FCC “improperly redefined and expanded” Note 11 to bar any deal that creates a new top-four combination while the text of Note 11 states that the rule applies to transactions that result in a broadcaster owning two top-four stations. Since Gray already owned two top-four stations in the Anchorage market in 2020, it has argued that Note 11 doesn’t apply. With this interpretation of Note 11, the FCC “violated the principle that an agency must give fair notice of prohibited conduct before imposing penalties,” Gray said. The agency also “botched” the calculation of the $518,000 forfeiture by adding to the penalty for every day of the violation and adding the explanation that the violation was egregious “only after Gray responded to the NAL,” said the brief. “None of the FCC’s unauthorized transfer of control precedents supported the imposition of such a penalty,” Gray said. The FCC’s assertion it considered Gray’s efforts to mitigate the violation in calculating the forfeiture is an “empty boilerplate statement" and the agency provided only “incompetent evidence” that the Denali transaction led to substantial economic gain for Gray, the brief said.

A recent FCC Media Bureau Audio Division notice of apparent liability confirms that agency permission isn’t needed for gradual changes in noncommercial educational broadcaster governing boards, said Wiley broadcast attorney Kathryne Dickerson in an interview and blog post. In an August NAL proposing a $20,000 forfeiture (see 2308280071) for Olympia, Washington, translator owner Northwest Rock N Roll Preservation Society (NWR), the Audio Division rejected an accusation that the broadcaster had changed ownership without the FCC’s go-ahead because the multiple changes to the NWR board had happened over time rather than all at once. “We find that, because the nature of the changes to the NWR board were gradual, no unauthorized transfer of control of NWR occurred,” said the NAL. Though the agency made a similar ruling in a tentative conclusion in a 1989 notice of inquiry, it has never adopted the policy as a formal ruling, Dickerson said. In the August NAL, the agency said that though it isn’t bound by the 1989 NOI, the FCC “has hewed to them in later policy-making decisions.” With biennial ownership reports due soon, that acknowledgment should give some certainty for many NCE stations unclear on their status, Dickerson said. The decision is particularly notable because the NWR board gradually underwent a total changeover between 2010 and 2022, without FCC authorization, Dickerson said. The NAL's providing clarity on the agency’s view of such changeovers could save many NCE organizations time and money in preparing their ownership reports, Dickerson said.

Protecting broadcasting “should not mean inviting hedge funds, private equity, and other predatory investors to undermine local broadcasting in order to extract profits,” said Claude Cummings, president-Communications Workers of America (CWA), and Charlie Braico, president-National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-CWA, in a news release Wednesday responding to testimony and a blog from NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt. Both unions were part of the successful opposition to Standard's proposed buy of Tegna. Any efforts at the FCC or Congress to change the merger review process should ensure unions have standing to oppose broadcast deals, include labor markets as part of public interest review, and preserve the fact-finding hearing process, the unions said. “In his call for a simple ‘up or down vote,’ LeGeyt is more concerned with rushing the process than with transparency and thoroughness,” the unions said. “Employment at broadcast TV stations is material to determining whether localism, and therefore the public interest, is being served by a transaction.” NAB didn't comment.

Fox Television Stations didn’t properly maintain WTXF-TV Philadelphia’s online public file and then misrepresented whether it had done so, said the Media and Democracy Project in a letter to the FCC Monday. MAD conceded in the letter that online public file violations aren’t typically a basis for license renewals to be designated for hearing but said they are relevant when considered alongside the other allegations raised against parent company Fox. “Material misrepresentations however minor add to the disqualifying grounds already set forth,” said the letter. MAD argued that political advertising contracts were uploaded to the file late -- in some case after the ads had aired -- and said FTS misrepresented those contracts as inquiries to bolster its contention the filings weren’t late. MAD also took aim at FTS arguments that technical difficulties with the online public file affected filing times. The FCC and numerous attorneys have experienced issues with the agency’s filing systems throughout 2023 (see 2306200063), but FTS didn’t adequately document such a problem, MAD said. “If FTS truly was unable to timely file political contracts due to technical difficulties, it should have included the details in its renewal application,” MAD said. “FTS did none of this and is now offering post hoc excuses to justify its repeated failure.” Fox didn’t comment.

With the FCC now at five commissioners (see 2309070081), the agency should act on “ambitious and necessary reforms” to preserve local broadcasting, said NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt in a blog post Friday. The FCC “must actively consider whether their policies, which value a strong system of local broadcasting, are keeping pace” with modern competition, LeGeyt said. The five-person commission should ensure the agency’s merger review process “will conclude with an up or down vote in a timely fashion,” said LeGeyt, likely referencing the failed Standard General/Tegna merger (see 2306010077). “Opaque and shifting guidelines about broadcaster transactions can deter potential buyers from investing in new and established entrants,” he wrote. The agency should also refresh the record in docket 14-261 on reclassifying streaming services -- sometimes called virtual MVPDs -- as MVPDs bound by retransmission consent requirements, LeGeyt said. “The system of regulations applied to legacy pay-TV providers recognizes the importance local broadcasters play in their communities.” LeGeyt also urged the agency to relax broadcast ownership rules so broadcasters can scale up to compete with larger digital media companies. “As broadcasters fight for audiences and advertisers with much larger competitors, having the scale to compete will allow us to continue to improve the quality and local focus of programming,” LeGeyt said.