Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 17, 2014

'The FCC issued a Forfeiture Order this week, fining a station $7000 for violations of the main studio rule. The facts of the case were set out in a Notice of Apparent Liability issued back in February, where the licensee had claimed that its studio was in a location that was shared with another broadcaster who had agreed to lease it space. The supposed landlord, however, said that the lease agreement had expired and the licensee had no employees or equipment at the location of the studio.

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 22, 2014

'A decision by the US Court of Appeals on the appeal of the Copyright Royalty Board decision as to the Sirius XM and Music Choice royalties for the public performance of sound recordings is one of the many year-end decisions important to broadcasters and digital media companies that seems to be flooding out from Courts and agencies in DC and elsewhere.

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 21, 2014

'We recently wrote about the proposed changes in the FCC’s rules about station-conducted contests , here. The FCC has proposed that much of the required disclosure about the material terms of these contests be allowed to be conducted online, rather than having to be announced on-air often enough so that listeners to the station are likely to have heard such announcements.

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 21, 2014

'Two fines for EEO violations released Friday were among the rush of actions coming from the FCC last week as it tries to finish its work of 2014. Incentive auction procedures, MVPD redefinition, online public file issues , approvals of long-pending TV company mergers and so many other actions were taken in the last week that we can’t keep up. Now, we can add EEO violations to the list of year-end actions, as the FCC’s Media Bureau on Friday released two Notices of Apparent Liability to radio

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Attorney

Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 19, 2014

'The online public inspection file for radio is moving closer to reality at an unusually fast pace. Yesterday, the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking , seeking to expand the online public file requirements that now apply to broadcast TV stations to radio (see our summary of the obligations here , and a presentation that we did on those requirements, here ).

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 18, 2014

'An FCC Regional Director of its Enforcement Bureau this week issued a Forfeiture Order fining a New Mexico broadcaster $25,000 as three of his Studio Transmitter Link auxiliary stations were operating from an unauthorized location – each located about half a mile from where they were supposed to be according to their FCC licenses. While the amount of the fine may have been increased as the licensee, when notified of the problem following an FCC inspection, filed an application to correct

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 17, 2014

'In a case decided last week , the FCC decided to clarify its policies on typos in FCC applications for radio stations. While one might not think that a typo is such a big idea, in connection with FCC application filing windows, when multiple applicants may be seeking the same frequency or channel in the same general location, and only one application can be granted, it can be crucially important.

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 12, 2014

'In 2011, licensees of FM translators who wanted to move those translators to areas where there was a need for their service thought that the FCC had done a great thing by authorizing the use of the “Mattoon” waiver (see our article here ). The Mattoon waiver allowed the processing of an FCC application to move the location of a translator as a minor change (meaning that it could be filed at any time, rather than having to wait for a window for the filing of major changes and new translator app

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 11, 2014

'Perhaps Sunday’s anniversary of Pearl Harbor made the FCC want to make this week one which concentrated on emergency communications issues , or perhaps it is just a coincidence. But the FCC has been active in the past 7 days dealing with emergency communications related items for broadcasters. On Wednesday, it issued a consent decree by which a broadcaster agreed to a $46,000 fine for the use of EAS tones in a commercial message.

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Education 40

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Finance

Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 7, 2014

'On Friday, the FCC released an Order and Consent Decree by which Journal Broadcasting agreed to pay a fine of $115,000 and to enter into a compliance program to settle complaints that it had not adequately identified that a program aired on its Las Vegas TV station was sponsored by a local car dealership. According to the FCC press release issued at the same time as the Order and Consent Decree, the program was labeled a “Special Report,” was hosted by a station employee who stated that she wa

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 7, 2014

'We are often asked by television broadcasters if specialty programming – particularly local programming, like a local church’s broadcast of its Sunday morning church service – is covered by the FCC’s closed captioning obligations. In a decision released on Friday , the FCC staff denied the request of a church for an exemption from the rules requiring the closed captioning of most television programming, and may have helped to make clear an answer to those questions.

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 4, 2014

'Last week, the Senate approved a reauthorization of STELA , the new bill called STELAR (the “STELA Reauthorization Act of 2014”), adopting the version that had been approved by the House of Representatives earlier in the month. In addition to simply giving satellite television companies (essentially DISH and DirecTV) the a five-year extension of their rights to rebroadcast the signals of over-the-air television stations without authorization from every copyright holder of the programming broad

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Broadcast Law Blog

DECEMBER 15, 2014

'The FCC on Friday adopted a Fact Sheet on tentative procedures for the incentive auction , by which it plans to buy back spectrum from broadcasters and resell it to wireless companies for wireless broadband uses. The tentative procedures, along with the recent “ Greenhill Report ” setting possible prices to be paid to television stations who are willing to surrender their channels for the FCC to resell to wireless companies (see our summary here ), are setting the stage for a series of meeting

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