The FCC should act promptly on the Standard/Tegna deal, said a group of free market advocates from R Street Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and others in a joint letter to all four FCC commissioners posted Monday in docket 22-162. “Prolonged review can harm the public in delayed investment and innovation,” said the letter, signed by Roslyn Layton of Strand Consult, Steve Pociask of the American Consumer Institute, and Institute of Liberty President Andrew Langer, among others. The FCC is required to review deals expeditiously, but Standard/Tegna’s review included “not one, but two extensions of pleading cycles; two cycles of FCC document and information request; a rules waiver to allow the petitioners to raise new matters on reply; and two pleading cycles.” The FCC’s “failure to review this transaction in a timely manner carries great cost to the parties and diverts human and financial capital and human resources away from making productive investments,” the letter said. Standard General founder Soohyung Kim said last week the deal will grow more expensive for Standard the longer the FCC waits (see 2301230063).

Starting April 1, petitioners submitting filings to the FCC Audio Division must use the most recent 2020 U.S. Census Bureau data, said a public notice Thursday. “The U.S. Census releases census block, population and cartographic boundary data following each decennial census,” the PN said. Filings must use the most recent 2020 census data when “determining a particular community’s population in addition to the population served and overlap of service areas to communities and Urbanized Areas,” the PN said. “This requirement only applies to filings submitted to the Audio Division,” said a footnote. “The Video Division will issue a separate Public Notice at a later date to announce the use of 2020 Census data for television station filings.“

The FCC should dismiss a foreign ownership petition from America-CV Station Group without prejudice (see 2104270082) after an appeals court threw out the company’s bankruptcy reorganization, said the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector in a letter to the FCC posted in docket 22-317 Thursday. The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the company’s bankruptcy plans after an emergency motion stripped three of the company’s shareholders of equity and allocated full ownership to the fourth, said an opinion earlier this month. “When a modification to a Chapter 11 reorganization plan materially and adversely affects the treatment of a class of claim or interest holders, those claim or interest holders are entitled to a new disclosure statement and another opportunity to vote,” said the ruling. When the FCC asked about the ruling, ACV “was unable to provide a complete and accurate answer as to what the post-decision ownership structure will look like,” said the letter. “The Committee is unable to perform a risk analysis when the ownership structure of the application under review remains significantly in flux.”

The FCC should end the dual transmission requirement and create an FCC ATSC 3.0 task force to enable the agency to “effectively and efficiently focus” on the 3.0 transition, said NAB President Curtis LeGeyt and several broadcast CEOs in meetings with Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, and Commissioners Geoffrey Starks and Nathan Simington Monday, according to an ex parte filing posted Thursday docket 16-142. Without FCC action and commitment to ATSC 3.0, the transition is “in peril,” said the broadcasters, including Nexstar CEO Perry Sook and Graham Media CEO Catherine Badalamente. “A stalled transition is threatening the future of the broadcast industry altogether,” said the filing, which says broadcasters need to be able to offer 4K to remain competitive, and can’t do so without 3.0. “As the transition continues to stretch out, broadcasters risk losing sports and other high-value content to pay-tv platforms that are permitted to employ more advanced technologies.” The broadcasters also asked the FCC commissioners “to demonstrate the agency’s commitment to ATSC 3.0” and support the transition. The agency should create a plan to end the requirement that 3.0 broadcasters also must transmit a 1.0 feed, the broadcasters said. A 3.0 task force “could draw on expertise from multiple offices and bureaus to attack problems as they arise” and “focus on our shared concerns about viewers losing access to television signals.” Rosenworcel has said consumers losing access to over-the-air TV signals is one of her primary concerns about ATSC 3.0.

The FCC proposed a $504,000 penalty against Fox for transmitting false emergency alert system codes during an NFL promotion in November 2021, said a notice of apparent liability in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. A three-second clip of EAS tones was aired on the FOX NFL Sunday pregame show as part of “a short comedic advertisement for an upcoming game,” the NAL said. The broadcast aired on 18 Fox-owned stations and 190 network affiliates, and the audio went out over Fox’s radio and satellite radio programming, the NAL said. “This manner of appropriation of the EAS Tones is exactly the type of simulation that the Commission’s rules seek to address and prohibit in order to avoid diluting the EAS Tones’ real meaning over time,” the NAL said. “This self-promotion for the purposes of additional economic gain at the expense of the integrity of the EAS constitutes egregious misconduct warranting an additional upward adjustment.” Fox didn’t comment. An FCC spokesperson confirmed the NAL was the enforcement item that had been set for Thursday’s open meeting agenda. The FCC published a deletion notice for that item and an adjudicatory item on noncommercial educational window selectees (see 2301240037) Tuesday.

The FCC identified tentative selectees in 34 groups of mutually exclusive applications for noncommercial educational FM construction permits from the November 2021 NCE window, said a unanimously approved order Tuesday. The selectees include Gentry Communications Network’s application for Sulphur Springs, Arkansas; Remanente Broadcasting Network’s application for Boron, California; and Teleamerica Communications West Palm Beach’s application for Key West, Florida. The bureau made the choices using a ranking and point system based on which applicant would cover the largest area and population, and favors tribal groups and applicants with fewer other radio authorizations, the PN said. Petitions to deny the applications of the selectees are due 30 days after the order. The order had been listed on the FCC's January open meeting agenda as an adjudicatory item, an FCC spokesperson told us.

The FCC’s online database of “pirate” unauthorized broadcasters went live Monday, covering the period from Jan. 24, 2020 to Dec. 31, 2022. “Subsequent updates will be published semi-annually,” said the database webpage. The database stems from provisions in the 2020 Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement Act, which also increased penalties for unauthorized broadcasts and empowered the FCC to go after the landlords of properties hosting pirate broadcasts. While the Pirate Act database was originally due within 90 days of the bill’s 2020 approval, no funding was included for implementation and its enactment was closely followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, delaying FCC action, an agency spokesperson said. “Commission staff was nevertheless able to perform basic planning in anticipation of both conditions ending,” the spokesperson said. Funding for implementing the act was approved in March, the agency said. The database allows users to search for violations by state and links to individual citations, displaying violations on a map of the U.S. The database’s FCC page also includes a link labeled “Licensed AM and FM Radio Station Database” -- another database required by the Pirate Act -- that sends users to the “Facility Search” page of the FCC’s licensing and management system. The FCC also released a Pirate Act report to Congress Tuesday. According to the report, the agency has posted six full-time positions for pirate enforcement and is prepared to buy six mobile direction-finding vehicles for those hires to operate. “Purchase of the additional six vehicles has been delayed, however, until a GSA [General Service Administration] purchasing window opens.” The report also said the agency developed a plan for enforcement sweeps and issued 21 notices to property owners of potential enforcement action.

Competition from digital advertising and tech companies, broadcast ownership rules and FCC regulatory fees lead a list of policy priorities for the 118th U.S. Congress released by NAB Thursday. “Local broadcast stations must be available on all platforms and every device to remain relevant to audiences and advertisers,” said the NAB policy agenda. “But Big Tech platforms have a stranglehold on digital advertising.” The FCC should respond to rising competition from tech companies by relaxing ownership rules and increasing the payor base for regulatory fees, NAB said. The FCC should also refresh the record on applying retransmission consent to streaming services and “maintain a reasonable, flexible framework for NEXTGEN TV deployment,” NAB said. The policy agenda also calls for Congress to avoid imposing a performance tax on radio stations, to revive the minority tax certificate, and to oppose legislation that would change the way tax laws handle advertising expenses. Changes that would make advertising expenses nondeductible for businesses “raise significant First Amendment concerns and ignore the important consumer benefits that advertising provides,” NAB said. The policy agenda didn't specifically mention the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chair Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., unsuccessfully tried to pass via the FY 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (see 2212070056). The measure would create a limited antitrust exemption to allow news publishers to collectively bargain with tech platforms for the use of their content.

Comments on the 2022 FCC Quadrennial Review are due March 3, replies March 20, said the FCC Media Bureau in a public notice in docket 22-459 Tuesday. The 2022 QR order was released Dec. 22 and published in the Federal Register Tuesday.

The FCC Media Bureau’s latest report on broadcast ownership -- based on data from 2021 but released Friday -- shows few changes from the 2021 report, which was based on 2019 data (see 2109070051). The new report shows no change in racial minorities holding a majority interest in 4% of commercial broadcast stations while women have a majority ownership interest in 9% of commercial broadcast stations, up from 8%. Friday’s report says 3% of full-power commercial TV stations were Black-owned, and 2% of FM stations. In 2019 the TV figure was 1.3% and the FM number was the same. U.S. population data included in the report said the 2021 U.S. population “was almost evenly split between men and women,” and just over 40% identified as belonging to a racial or ethnic minority group, the report said.