Rosenworcel Condemns Sinclair, White House; O'Rielly Targets Subcaps, Kidvid
The FCC's changes to media ownership rules and President Donald Trump's tweets against NBC News and in favor of Sinclair add up to the broadcaster “getting special treatment from the FCC” and “getting a special call-out from the executive branch,”…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said in a speech at the NAB Show Monday. She condemned the pending Sinclair/Tribune deal and Trump's popularization of the term “fake news” as government “being used as a tool to attack the conditions that make it possible for news to serve as a check on power.” It took too long for some on the FCC to respond to Trump's tweet calling for NBC News to have its license pulled, she said. “On these matters, history won’t be kind to silence,” Rosenworcel said. Commissioner Mike O'Rielly remains “open-minded” about what the FCC will do to kids' video rules, he said in a separate speech Monday. Allowing the FCC's kidvid requirements to be fulfilled by dedicated multicast channels is a solution the FCC is examining, O'Rielly said. The FCC should take up the issue of AM/FM subcaps in its 2018 quadrennial ownership review later this year, O'Rielly said. Arguments that eliminating the caps would lead to a decline in the AM band are “speculative,” O'Rielly said. The radio industry and FM band are facing many challenges, and O'Rielly said he is “hesitant to embrace ideas that would bring about even more uncertainty into this space.” A draft proposal on introducing a new C4 class of FM station was circulated to the eighth floor (see 1802140060). O'Rielly praised the recent efforts to reform what some consider to be outdated FCC rules and said he has a list of 40 ideas for further FCC overhauls that he plans to take to Chairman Ajit Pai. License renewal holds based on enforcement actions are one place the FCC might be able to improve its rules, O'Rielly said.