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While relief won’t come as soon as radio broadcasters had hoped, the FCC gave AM stations a shot in the arm with the release of an Order designed to provide assistance to the struggling AM radio service.

The Order, released on October 23, 2015, comes a full two years after the October 2013 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) that launched the effort.  In the Order, the FCC adopted a number of proposals (with some modifications) from the NPRM.  The most significant of these are exclusive AM filing windows in 2016 to allow AM stations to move an FM translator up to 250 miles to rebroadcast that AM station’s signal, and 2017 windows exclusively for AM stations to apply for a new FM translator construction permit.

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The FCC today announced the application procedures to be used for broadcast stations wishing to participate in the spectrum auction, as well as application procedures for those wishing to purchase that spectrum in the forward auction.  Of particular interest to broadcast stations wishing to participate in the reverse auction is the announcement that the window for filing those auction applications will run from 12 noon Eastern Time on December 1, 2015 to 6pm Eastern Time on December 18, 2015.

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September 2015

Pillsbury’s communications lawyers have published FCC Enforcement Monitor monthly since 1999 to inform our clients of notable FCC enforcement actions against FCC license holders and others. This month’s issue includes:

  • FCC Admonishes TV Station Licensees for Violating Commercial Limits in Children’s Programming
  • Telecommunications Provider Agrees to $1.175 Million Payment to Resolve Investigation of 911 Call Failures
  • Pirate Radio Operator’s Repeated Disregard for the Rules Results in $15,000 Proposed Fine

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We tend to focus on regulatory and legislative issues here at CommLawCenter, as that is the common ground for many of our media clients.  However, the truth is that—just like our clients—we spend more time working on business issues than regulatory ones.  Whether it’s mergers and acquisitions informed by regulatory rules, program negotiations, or novel business arrangements like channel-sharing agreements, the transactions are driven by business needs, regulatory needs, or both.

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[UPDATE:  The FCC just released its Report and Order defining the requirements for stations wishing to meet their contest disclosure obligations by posting their contest rules online.  The revised FCC rule requires a licensee to (i) broadcast the relevant website address periodically with information making it easy for a consumer to find the material contest terms online; (ii) establish a link or tab to material contest terms on the website’s home page; (iii) maintain contest terms online for a minimum of thirty days after the contest ends; and (iv) where applicable, within 24 hours of a material change in contest rules (and periodically thereafter), announce that the material terms have changed and direct participants to the website to see the changes. 

The FCC also noted that the “relevant website” for posting rules should be the station’s or licensee’s website or, if there is no station or licensee website, then any other website that is “designed to be accessible to the public 24/7, for free, and without any registration requirement.”

In the Report and Order, the FCC agreed with commenters that a literal interpretation of the “complete and direct” website announcement requirement would be unduly burdensome for broadcasters and confusing to the public.  It therefore concluded that broadcasters could satisfy the requirement by identifying the relevant address “through simple instructions or natural language (e.g., ‘for contest rules go to kxyz.com and then click on the contest tab’).”

The Report and Order did not, however, shine any light on how frequently a broadcaster must announce the web address.  Instead, the FCC decided that “the public interest would be better served by providing licensees with flexibility to determine the frequency with which they broadcast the website address where contest terms are made available to the public.”  The FCC cautioned, however, that if it finds “that licensees are failing to broadcast the website address with adequate frequency,” the Commission will revisit the issue in the future.]

[EARLIER POST BELOW]

As we wrote last month, the agenda for the FCC’s September open meeting included consideration of its proposal to modernize the 40-year-old broadcast contest rule. Today, after more than three and a half years of (unopposed) anticipation, the FCC adopted rules that “allow broadcasters to disclose contest rules online as an alternative to broadcasting them over the air.”

As the FCC has not released the text of its decision yet, the precise form of disclosure that will be required is not fully known.  However, it appears the FCC did hear the suggestions made by numerous commenters regarding how often a station must air the web address for contest rules. The FCC’s original proposal would have required that the online location of the full contest rules be mentioned every time the contest itself is mentioned.  Numerous parties complained that such an approach would clutter the airwaves with repetitive mentions of the website address where the rules could be found, and would be of little use to a public well-attuned to finding information on the Internet.

Today’s Public Notice hints that less frequent website mentions will be adequate, stating that broadcasters will be required only to “periodically announce over the air the website address where their contest rules can be found.”  Once the text of the rules is released, broadcasters will learn if the FCC has provided any guidance as to how often a “periodic” announcement must run.

Also left open until the text of today’s decision arrives is the issue of whether the FCC will stick with its original proposal that “the complete and direct” website address (e.g., “http://www.WXYZ.com/contest123/rules”) be aired, or if broadcasters will instead be allowed to use a shorter web address, such as the station’s main website, where a link to the contest rules can be found.  In either case, we would expect the FCC will require that a link to the contest rules be featured prominently on a station’s website.

While today’s action still permits broadcast stations to comply with the rules by airing the material terms of a contest on-air, it opens up an additional option that many stations will prefer to use, if for no other reason than to put an end to debates at the FCC about whether what a station aired constituted the “material terms” of a contest’s rules.  That has been a major subject of FCC enforcement decisions related to station-conducted contests, and one that should go away if the station has posted the full contest rules online.  As a result, the main focus of any FCC investigation involving a station contest will likely be limited to whether the station followed its published rules in conducting its contest.  That is a far more objective question, and should eliminate some of the risk that has been inherent in running a station contest for the past 40 years.

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As we wrote last month, the agenda for the FCC’s September open meeting included consideration of its proposal to modernize the 40-year-old broadcast contest rule. Today, after more than three and a half years of (unopposed) anticipation, the FCC adopted rules that “allow broadcasters to disclose contest rules online as an alternative to broadcasting them over the air.”

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As we reported here, the FCC released its proposals regarding 2015 regulatory fees last May. As August turned into September, licensees were getting anxious as to when the FCC would get around to issuing an order setting the fees and opening the “Fee Filer” online payment system. That happened today with the release of this Public Notice and this Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (note that for the reasons discussed below, these FCC website links will not function correctly until the FCC’s website resumes normal operation on September 8th).

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August 2015

Pillsbury’s communications lawyers have published FCC Enforcement Monitor monthly since 1999 to inform our clients of notable FCC enforcement actions against FCC license holders and others. This month’s issue includes:

  • FCC Again Cracks Down on Wi-Fi Blocking at Conference Centers
  • Licensee Faces $27,000 Fine for Repeatedly Failing to File Kidvid Reports
  • Too Little Too Late: FCC Dismisses as Late (and Meritless) Antenna Structure Owner’s Petition for Reconsideration

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The FCC today released a tentative meeting agenda for its September 17, 2015 Open Commission Meeting.  The agenda includes consideration of a Report and Order granting broadcasters greater flexibility in making rule disclosures required by the FCC for station-conducted contests.

As we posted here and here, the Commission previously adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking looking to “modernize” its nearly 40-year-old station-conducted contest rule.  The current rule requires broadcasters conducting a contest to “fully and accurately disclose the material terms of the contest” by airing them a “reasonable” number of times.  As readers of our Enforcement Monitor know, differing opinions on what is “material” and “reasonable” have led to numerous FCC enforcement actions, typically resulting in $4,000 fines.

The NPRM proposed to alleviate some of that confusion by allowing broadcasters to post contest rules on any publicly accessible website and then announce the web address on-air in lieu of broadcasting the rules themselves.  In addition to easing the burden on broadcasters, who must often resort to speed reading contest rules on-air to cover all material terms while putting their audiences to sleep in the process, the proposed rule will give audience members the opportunity to review the contest rules at a more leisurely pace and at their convenience on the Internet.

The key question that remains is what the Commission’s Report and Order will say regarding how often a station must air the web address for the contest rules.  The NPRM originally proposed including the contest rule web address with every mention of the contest, which could clutter the airwaves even more than the current rule’s requirement to air all of the material terms a reasonable number of times.  Commenters in the proceeding pushed back, suggesting less frequent website mentions, and asking the FCC to modify its NPRM proposal that each mention include “the complete and direct website address” to instead allow use of a shorter web address (e.g., the station’s main website) where a link to the contest rules can be found.

The Report and Order under consideration has been a long time coming.  The original petition for rulemaking was filed in January of 2012 and encountered no opposition, with all parties seeing the benefit of maximizing the respective strengths of broadcasting and the Internet in conducting a contest.  With the ability to easily post the full contest rules online, station licensees will no longer need to stress over which contest rules are “material”, and audience members will no longer have to be speed readers (or speed listeners) to participate in a station-conducted contest.

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FCC Chairman Wheeler released a blog post today discussing a number of changes and proposed changes to rules impacting TV and radio broadcasters. While his blog contained good news for the radio industry, TV broadcasters are likely to be less pleased.

On the TV side there are two major initiatives. First, the Chairman is proposing to his fellow Commissioners that the FCC adopt an order eliminating what he termed “outdated exclusivity rules”–the FCC’s network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules. These “non-dup” and “syndex” rules, as they are more commonly known, essentially provide a process by which TV broadcasters can efficiently implement the geographic exclusivity they negotiated in their programming agreements without the need for expensive court actions.  The purpose of these rules is to prevent multi-channel video program distributors (MVPDs) from violating that exclusivity by importing the exclusive programming from out-of-market TV stations.

These rules are of particular importance during retransmission negotiations, since without such rules, MVPDs could import, for example, a distant affiliate of the same network (one which obviously did a poor job of negotiating its own retransmission agreement) to violate the local station’s exclusivity.  With the rule change proposed by the Chairman, the local station could no longer quickly and efficiently resolve the problem by filing a complaint at the FCC. Instead, it would need to initiate a long and costly court battle that would inevitably pull in (1) the distant affiliate, and (2) the network whose contract the distant affiliate breached by entering into a retransmission agreement exceeding that affiliate’s geographic right to the network’s programming.

It’s not hard to understand why an MVPD would like blocking the importation of exclusive programming to be a complex, time-consuming, and expensive proposition for a local TV station, but it’s less clear why the federal government would want to create a less efficient process that further clogs up the courts with multi-party litigation.  The obvious answer is that it is not merely a procedural change, but one meant to alter the balance of substantive rights that existed when Congress created the retransmission consent process.

The second major TV-related item is the Chairman’s circulation among his colleagues of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to review the process used to determine whether broadcasters and MVPDs are negotiating retransmission consent rights in “good faith”. The purpose of the good faith regulations is to determine whether a party is negotiating with an intent other than that of reaching a deal (e.g., stalling for time).  To implement this requirement, the FCC created a list of bad faith tactics that are prohibited (for example, refusing to show up for negotiations), as well as a “totality of the circumstances” test which seeks to determine whether a party’s conduct as a whole indicates that the party has not made “good faith” efforts to reach a deal.

While only cable systems have been found to have engaged in bad faith negotiations by the FCC, the MVPD industry has long sought to alter the traditional meaning of “good faith” in an effort to limit certain negotiating tactics that have nothing to do with whether a party is intent upon reaching a deal.  Indeed, the focus has been on limiting the negotiation options available to broadcasters, even where, perversely, the result would be longer MVPD program blackouts.

The NPRM proposed by Chairman Wheeler, responding to a congressional directive to examine the matter, will apparently seek to alter the FCC’s approach to determining whether parties are engaging in good faith retransmission consent negotiations. Networks, local TV stations, and MVPDs all will no doubt eagerly await release of this NPRM to determine how the FCC’s proposals are likely to affect negotiating leverage and fees in the retransmission consent world–an odd result given that Chairman Wheeler’s blog post said the reason for eliminating the network non-dup and syndex rules is to “take [the FCC’s] thumb off the scales” in retransmission negotiations.

Call us cynics, but we’ll be surprised if “importing a station into a market where that station has no program rights” joins the list of bad faith negotiating tactics, even though it is the epitome of seeking a way around entering into an agreement with the local broadcaster.

From the broadcast industry’s “glass is half full” perspective, the Chairman’s blog post also indicated that the FCC will soon conclude a nearly four-year effort to update the FCC’s station contest rule.  That rule requires broadcasters to regularly describe the material terms of station contests on-air.  After long consideration, it appears the FCC will allow contest rules to be posted online as an alternative to speed-reading contest rules on-air. We earlier wrote about this proceeding at various stages in FCC Proposes to Clear Airwaves of Boring Contest Rules, But State Law Issues Remain and Bringing the FCC’s Contest Rule Up to Date. This rule change has had broad support, and while applicable to both TV and radio, is of greater practical importance to the radio industry, which tends to run more station contests and doesn’t have the option of airing written rules onscreen.

Finally, following up on his promise before the NAB Show in April, Chairman Wheeler indicated that he will also recommend to his colleagues that the FCC move forward with adopting several proposals in the 2013 AM Revitalization NPRM. This was a hot topic at the NAB Show in Las Vegas earlier this year when the Chairman signaled that the establishment of a window specifically for AM stations to apply for FM translators was essentially off the table, as Scott Flick wrote last April. Most considered an AM-only filing window to be the most practical and effective path to AM revitalization, particularly for AM daytime-only stations.  In fact, the outcry in response to the Chairman’s dismissal of that option appeared to have stalled the AM Revitalization proceeding. While it looks like AM radio broadcasters can expect some relief from the FCC soon, most will be watching to see if an FM translator window for AM stations is part of that relief.  Regardless, today is one of those days where you’d rather be a radio station than a TV station.