A draft further NPRM on expanding audio description requirements to all broadcast markets within 10 years is expected to be unanimously approved at Thursday’s FCC commissioners’ meeting with few changes, said agency and industry officials. The proposed expansion is the most the FCC can do for audio description within the bounds of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, said Clark Rachfal, American Council of the Blind director-advocacy and governmental affairs, urging Congress to pass legislation to require audio description for all video. The 10-year phase-in in the NPRM means blind and visually impaired consumers in smaller TV market state capitals such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or Juneau, Alaska, may not have audio-described broadcasts until 2035, he said. “These are not insignificant places within the U.S.,” said Rachfal.
The Standard/Tegna broadcasters’ motion seeking a full FCC vote on the Media Bureau’s hearing designation order (HDO) (see 2303060051) is considered a long shot due to the deal’s tight clock and the agency's current makeup but could have a slim chance, attorneys told us. The matter could also threaten the FCC’s merger review powers and use of administrative law judges, attorneys and academics said. Challenges to the constitutionality of ALJs “are happening at every agency right now,” said American University administrative law professor Jeffrey Lubbers: “If you’re facing a hearing, why wouldn’t you?”
Commenters in the FCC's 2022 quadrennial review urged the FCC to act on local broadcast ownership rules, condemned it for starting the 2022 QR without finishing the 2018 iteration, and largely took the same stances they had for the 2018 QR, according to filings by Friday’s deadline in docket 22-459. Several cited the agency’s recent hearing designation order (HDO) on Standard/Tegna.
The FCC will move to the fourth and final phase of its COVID-19 reentry plan March 13, described as a return to pre-pandemic operations, said an agency-wide email memo obtained by Communications Daily. Stricter telework provisions won’t take effect until May 15. Former and current FCC employees expect a wave of staff departures once the FCC returns more fully to in-person work, though they said the extent won’t be clear for some time. Another potential concern is whether the new FCC headquarters will be able to handle all the virtual meetings being conducted each week. The move is “consistent with recent movement by other federal agencies to complete their reentry process,” the memo said.
Standard General Managing Partner Soohyung Kim vowed to continue pursuing the purchase of Tegna and urged the FCC to vote on the deal, in a release Monday, but Tegna’s earnings earnings release that morning said the company is “currently evaluating its options.”
The FCC Media Bureau designated the $8.6 billion proposed Standard General/Tegna deal for hearing, said a release Friday. “The Hearing Designation Order [HDO] focuses specifically on material concerns in the record related to how the proposed transaction could artificially raise prices for consumers and result in job losses,” said the release. Designating a deal for hearing has been historically perceived as dooming the transaction because hearing proceedings take months or years and have uncertain outcomes. “As part of the FCC’s mission, we are responsible for determining whether grant of the applications constituting this transaction serves the public interest," said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in the release. “That’s why we’re asking for closer review to ensure that this transaction does not anti-competitively raise prices or put jobs in local newsrooms at risk,” she said. Tegna's stock price dropped after hours by 25.6%
The FCC’s Communications Equity and Diversity Council is preparing final reports and recommendations to the FCC as the advisory committee’s two-year charter approaches its end, said CEDC Chair Heather Gate at the group’s penultimate meeting Thursday. CEDC working groups updated the body on several planned forums and reports on best practices for digital upskilling, improving diverse access to capital, and providing broadband to underserved populations. The reports will eventually go to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel who will take them “under advisement,” said CEDC Designated Federal Officer Jamila Johnson. The agency didn't comment on whether the CEDC would be rechartered.
Tegna’s announcement Tuesday that it would pass on Wednesday's chance to exit the long-stalled $8.6 billion Standard/Tegna deal and stay in for an additional three months is considered an indication the acquisition has a chance, but the final result is far from certain, broadcast industry officials told us. DOJ also allowed the transaction’s Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period to expire without objecting to the deal, said a Tegna news release. Standard General founder Soohyung Kim said in January he was “optimistic” the deal would close before Tegna’s merger agreement-enshrined exit ramp (see 2301230063), but that didn't happen. Tegna told the SEC Tuesday “the Merger is expected to close in March or April of 2023.” The FCC’s tracker lists the deal as being at Day 307, which is 127 days over the agency’s 180-day shot clock.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit judges appeared skeptical Friday of separate oral arguments from NAB, the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee and SoundExchange against the Copyright Royalty Board’s ruling on rates for webcast music (dockets 21-1245 for NAB, 21-1243 for NRBNMLC, and 21-1244 for Sound Exchange). Judge Patricia Millett told SoundExchange's attorney that evidence in the record "blows up" his arguments and had a back-and-forth disagreement with another lawyer over whether asking the court to calculate a rate that wasn't in the record was permissible. “Should we be doing that as a court?” Judge Florence Pan asked in response to an NRB argument that the court should use data in the record to calculate an extrapolated royalty rate. “Are you asking us to make a fact-finding that the board did not?” Millett added.
Decisions in the two interlinked cases involving the Communications Decency Act's Section 230 being argued before the Supreme Court next week could lead to many conflicts with state and international laws, force Congress to act, spawn waves of litigation or cause the cases to “dissolve like alka seltzer,” said legal and tech experts on a Brookings Institute virtual panel Tuesday on Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh. “I think it is correct this will be the most important Supreme Court decision about the Internet possibly ever,” said Alan Rozenshtein, associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota Law School.