Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past two weeks, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau partially granted NAB and REC Networks’ waiver request (discussed in our last update here) of the December 12, 2023 deadline for compliance with the FCC’s new Emergency Alert Service (EAS) rules – which require that, when a station receives an over-the-air EAS alert, it must wait at least 10 seconds to determine if a CAP alert has bee ..read more

Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. The Senate Commerce, Science, and Technology Committee announced that it will hold a hearing on June 22, 2023 on the nomination of Anna Gomez to fill the long-vacant seat on the FCC, as well as on the renominations of Commissioners Carr and Starks.  We wrote about these nominations, and the broadcast issues that a full Commission might tackle, in a recent article on our Broadcast Law Bl ..read more

As summer begins to wind down, just like the rest of the world, the FCC and other government agencies seem to pick up speed on long delayed actions.  Broadcasters can anticipate increased regulatory activity in the coming months.  For September, there are a few dates to which all broadcasters should pay attention, and a few that will be of relevance to a more limited group.  As always, pay attention to these dates, and be prepared to address any other important deadlines that we may have overlooked, or which are unique to your station. All commercial broadcasters will need to pa ..read more

Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. Both the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the FCC released public notices, available here and here, alerting broadcasters and cable companies that they recently became aware of certain vulnerabilities in EAS encoder/decoder devices which, if not updated to most recent software versions, could allow an intruder to issue unauthorized EAS alerts. Broadcasters are urged to update t ..read more

Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. The FCC has released a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that, if adopted at the FCC’s July 14, 2022 regular monthly open meeting, would seek comment on whether to update its rules to identify a new publication for determining a television station’s designated market area (“DMA”) for satellite and cable carriage purposes. Current FCC rules direct commercial TV stations to use Nielsen’s ann ..read more

Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. The FCC rejected a request that it reconsider its December 2020 decision to end a proceeding to set aside one vacant TV channel in each market for exclusive use by unlicensed wireless microphones and white space devices. The Commission concluded that, following the incentive auction and repacking, there was insufficient television spectrum left for there to be a set-aside channel in every ma ..read more

Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, and a look ahead at an important deadline next week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. New FCC sponsorship identification rules that impose obligations on almost all broadcast licensees took effect on March 15. The new rules require that programming that has been sponsored, paid for, or furnished by a “foreign governmental entity” include a clear, standardized disclosure. The rules also set “reasonable diligence” steps a bro ..read more

Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. The FCC proposed a $32,000 fine to a subsidiary of Cumulus Media for EEO and public file violations by a group of stations it previously owned. The Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture details the station group’s failure to timely upload one annual EEO report to the stations’ online public files, to timely post the annual report on the stations’ website, and to analyze its EEO program ..read more

March is one of those months where no regularly scheduled FCC deadlines fall.  But there are still plenty of other deadlines and dates of importance to broadcasters that fall during this month, from comment dates in rulemaking proceedings, to the start of an auction for new TV stations and the completion of the reimbursement cycle for certain stations involved in the TV repack, to deadlines for radio stations to sign up for the GMR license agreement, and even, with daylight savings time upon us, the time for certain AM stations to adjust their operating parameters. Let’s start with the ru ..read more

Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the last week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations. The FCC issued a Public Notice urging all communications companies to take steps to ensure the security of their facilities and operating systems. The Notice points to an advisory, Understanding and Mitigating Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Threats to U.S. Critical Infrastructure, authored by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a ..read more