The FCC Media Bureau is seeking comment on channel substitutions for WLOV Licensee and One Ministries, said NPRMs in Tuesday's Daily Digest. One Ministries wants to switch the community of license for KQSL Fort Bragg, California, to Cloverdale, California, said an NPRM in docket 25-246. WLOV Licensee wants to change the channel of WLOV-TV West Point, Mississippi, from 16 to 26, according to an NPRM in docket 25-247.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau is warning Jacob Sanford of Brooklyn, New York, about pirate radio broadcasts allegedly coming from property he owns in Newark. Continuing to allow or engaging in pirate radio broadcasts could result in a fine of up to $2.45 million, the bureau said in a letter dated Friday and published in Monday's Daily Digest.
The current administration's position on race- and gender-based governmental affirmative action obligations makes it unlikely that there will be future filings of the biennial ownership reports from broadcasters, Wilkinson Barker broadcast lawyer David Oxenford wrote Friday. The reports were instituted in large part to obtain race and gender information about broadcast ownership, as the data could potentially be used for FCC affirmative action considerations, Oxenford noted. In late July, the Media Bureau waived the requirement to file those reports for 18 months; they were to be due Dec. 1 (see 2507300070). Oxenford said the FCC's "Delete" proceeding has teed up a variety of other routine required filings from broadcasters that could be axed, such as the annual children's TV reports and the annual equal employment opportunity public inspection file reports.
Alleged pirate radio operators in two New England states face a total of $45,000 in proposed FCC fines, the Enforcement Bureau said in notices of apparent liability in Friday's Daily Digest. The agency proposed a $25,000 fine against Noah Opoku Gyamfi of Worcester, Massachusetts, and a $20,000 fine against Amoce Pamphile, Alemy Mondestin and Radio Evangelique de la Grace of Providence.
Emergency Alert System Test Reporting System (ETRS) Form One filings are due Oct. 3, said the FCC Public Safety Bureau in a public notice Monday. The ETRS is open for filings, it said. Form One “includes identifying and background information such as EAS designation, EAS monitoring assignments, facility location, equipment type, contact information, and other relevant data.”
Gray Media will buy Block Communications’ seven TV stations for $80 million and separately acquire two stations from SagamoreHill Broadcasting, Gray announced in two news releases Thursday and Friday. The Block deal includes Fox and CW affiliate stations in Louisville, where Gray already owns an NBC affiliate. The sale also involves Block’s NBC affiliates in Decatur, Illinois, and Lima, Ohio, and three low-power TV stations, some of which are also network affiliates. That could mean the deal would require a waiver from the FCC, though the top-four prohibition was recently vacated by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (see 2507230063). “Gray anticipates closing these transactions in the fourth quarter of this year following receipt of regulatory approval, including certain waivers of the FCC’s current ownership rules, and other customary closing conditions,” a release said.
Skydance’s agreement to appoint an anti-bias ombudsman in order to secure merger approval isn’t a violation of press freedoms, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in an interview Thursday with PBS NewsHour. He noted that the bias monitor will report directly to CBS, not the FCC. “It's going to be for the broadcaster in the first instance to deal with it. If there's a complaint around news distortion ... then we would look at that complaint as it comes in,” he said. “It's not direct regulation by the FCC in terms of regulation of the newsroom itself. It's the company saying we want to put forth an ombudsman to help us do our job.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has rejected NAB’s challenge of the FCC’s 2024 foreign-sponsored content rule, said an opinion Friday. “We reject NAB’s challenges,” wrote Judge Karen Henderson (see 2504070019). “Procedurally, the rule complied with the [Administrative Procedure
Ending the collection of biennial ownership data through Form 323 would eliminate virtually the only source of information about broadcast-ownership diversity, several civil rights and public interest groups told us. The FCC Media Bureau on Tuesday announced an 18-month pause on collecting Form 323 and seemed to indicate that the requirement to submit the data will be permanently deleted (see 2507300070). Halting Form 323 collection would be “yet another structural policy decision to brush civil rights under the rug, to obscure discrimination in the broadcast industry,” said Free Press co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez in an email. “It's a shameful and brazen dereliction of the FCC's duty to serve all Americans.”
ABC and NBC “should look to the Paramount precedent recently set by this Commission,” said Center for American Rights President Daniel Suhr in a letter Thursday praising the FCC’s probe into Comcast NBCUniversal’s relationship with affiliates. “At a time of New York-Hollywood-Silicon Valley dominance over the vast majority of news and entertainment content, what makes local broadcast stations special is precisely their localness,” Suhr said. “The networks should be encouraging that unique market advantage, not undermining it with programming diktats or must-carry contract provisions.” Because Carr warned ABC about its relationship to affiliate stations in December, it would be “doubly disappointing” if Comcast “ignored those concerns after they were on the record regarding another network,” Suhr said. "The Center for American Rights applauds your decision to direct the Media Bureau to open an inquiry into Comcast’s treatment of NBC’s local affiliates."