Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 18, 2014

'Public interest groups are actively watching broadcast political advertising which could make this a very interesting year for broadcasters. The Sunlight Foundation , which only two months ago filed complaints against 11 television stations for alleged inadequacies in their online political files (see our summary here ), has now filed two new complaints alleging that television stations violated FCC rules in recent elections by not identifying the true sponsor of political ads.

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 24, 2014

'We’ve already written twice about the copyright issues being considered this summer before various agencies and branches of government – all dealing with music licensing issues (see our previous Summer of Copyright articles here and here ). The pattern continues, as the Copyright Office has now requested further comments on music licensing issues , following up on its roundtables held across the country during the month of June to discuss its music licensing inquiry begun in the spring (

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 31, 2014

'Time flies, and more regulatory requirements and comment deadlines in regulatory proceedings are upon us in the month of August. The regular regulatory deadlines include license renewal for TV and LPTV stations in California , and EEO Public Inspection File yearly reports for stations in California, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 30, 2014

'Next week, on August 6 , the FCC will be taking the initial comments on its Quadrennial Review of the multiple ownership rules – looking at what limitations should be placed on the ownership of broadcast stations by one individual or company. As we have written , this Review follows the FCC’s resolution of the last Quadrennial Review, started in 2011, where the FCC made joint sales agreements between TV stations in the same market “attributable interests” – meaning that you can’t enter into a

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 17, 2014

'We wrote last week about the FCC’s determination of which applicants are to be preferred in several groups of mutually exclusive applications for new Low Power FM stations. We warned full-power FM broadcasters to review the preferred applicants as broadcasters have 30 days from last week’s public notice to file petitions to deny against such LPFM applications citing interference concerns or other issues with those applications.

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 15, 2014

'The FCC fees that must be paid by commercial broadcasters when they file most applications with the Commission went up as of July 3. See our article here about the July 3 effective date , and our article here about the adoption of the new higher fees. The FCC yesterday released a full guide to those fees – setting out how much broadcasters must pay when seeking any particular action from the FCC (including applications for approvals of assignments and transfers , construction permits , STA re

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 13, 2014

'The FCC on Friday voted to extend its rule about captioning TV video repurposed to the Internet so as to cover not only full television programs, but also clips of those programs. While the rules already require that TV programming that is captioned when broadcast to be captioned when retransmitted in full over the Internet, the new rules, to be phased in as described below, require that clips of TV programs that were broadcast with captions also be captioned when repurposed for online use.

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 10, 2014

'More LPFMs are on the way, and broadcasters have 30 days to file any objections to the coming new stations. In an order just released by the FCC, the FCC applied its “point system” to select the winning applicant in groups of mutually exclusive applications filed in the recent LPFM window in Western states (as far east as Nebraska and Kansas). Future selectees in other parts of the country will come in later public notices.

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 8, 2014

'The FCC yesterday issued an order imposing a $2.25 Million fine on a set of companies that operated a system that retransmitted TV signals to households in large housing units in the Houston area. The system had paid retransmission consent fees to the TV stations, then stopped doing so, claiming that it was changing so as to operate as a Master Antenna Television System (MATV).

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 2, 2014

'The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee last week finished its second hearing on music licensing (written witness statements and a link to the webcast can be found here ). Congressional hearings usually are not in-depth proceedings looking to establish detailed facts as done in a hearing in a court proceeding. Instead, they are formalized proceedings where parties get to make their canned statements setting out positions on issues.

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Broadcast Law Blog

JULY 11, 2014

'The Supreme Court decision in the Aereo case seemed to be the end of the line for the service that was retransmitting television stations signals without consent, as it found that the broadcasters were entitled to an injunction to force Aereo to cease the public performance of their signals without consent. In fact, Aereo itself seemed to think so too, shutting off its service soon after the decision.

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