Low-power TV broadcaster Lowcountry 34 Media agreed to pay $250,000 penalty and relinquish nearly 100 low-power TV and translator stations over allegations it abused FCC licensing processes to relocate large numbers of stations from rural underserved areas to denser, more urban markets, said a consent decree Monday. Lowcountry erected temporary stations, operated them only a few days and filed multiple requests for minor modifications -- moves of 30 miles or less -- to inch those stations into bigger markets, said the consent decree. Between June and August, LPTV station W29EN-D Beaufort-Lady’s Island, South Carolina, moved more than 99 miles from original community of license Soperton, Georgia, via a series of eight minor modification applications, the consent decree said. Moving stations in this way violates the intent of the minor change rule and denies the public the opportunity to comment on major relocations, the agency said. Low-power broadcasters have said the lack of flexibility in FCC rules for LPTV stations to relocate leads to broadcasters attempting to move through “hops” [see 2112280050). Under the consent decree, Lowcountry will relinquish close to 100 stations to the FCC, and sell just over 30 more, retaining close to 80 stations. It must also create a compliance plan that includes employee training on compliance with communications laws and reporting to the FCC for three years. Lowcountry declined to comment.

Comments are due April 6 in docket 22-78 on Gray Television’s petition to change the channel of KSCW-DT Wichita, Kansas, from 12 to 28, said Monday’s Federal Register. Replies are due April 21.

The FCC shouldn’t anonymize the equal employment opportunity data collected from licensees if it approves a proposal to collect such data, said the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council in an ex parte virtual meeting Tuesday with Media Bureau Chief Holly Saurer, acting Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal, and MB and EB staff, said a filing posted in docket 98-204 Friday. "The EEO data should be able to be organized by industry type, by job category, by company, by market, and by state," the filing said. Broadcasters argued EEO data must be kept anonymous. The data should also be made public so the FCC can better determine if job outreach rules have been violated, MMTC said. It also urged the agency to increase scrutiny of industry hiring practices, extend EEO requirements to tech companies, and create a civil rights division in the Enforcement Bureau.

An NAB-led group of nearly 40 broadcasters and state broadcast association representatives lobbied the FCC on broadcast regulatory fees, geotargeted radio, equal employment opportunity rules and multilingual alerting, said an ex parte filing posted in docket 17-105 Friday. The group included representatives of iHeartMedia, the Oregon Association of Broadcasters, Nexstar, Hearst, Alpha Media and E.W. Scripps, and met with FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington, an aide to Commissioner Geoffey Starks, Media Bureau Chief Holly Saurer and Public Safety Bureau Chief Debra Jordan.“It is especially galling that Big Tech and broadband providers pay no regulatory fees, even though these companies benefit substantially from FCC activities,” said the filing. “Imposing yet another government data collection would be an ineffective use of everyone’s time,” the filing said of EEO data collection proposals. The FCC and broadcast industry “could jointly undertake more concrete efforts” to address diversity, the filing said. A proposal to allow geotargeted radio ads would trigger “a race to the bottom of ad rates,” and raise interference concerns, the filing said. The FCC should “immediately close this proceeding,” the filing said. A proposal to pair radio stations with non-English stations in their markets to translate emergency information in disasters -- an approach sometimes called a “designated hitter” proposal -- is impractical, the filing said. The agency should instead work to help at-risk non-English stations improve their resiliency, the filing said.

Recent proposed fines from the FCC appear to signal enhanced scrutiny on large companies, said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford in a blog post Thursday. A proposed $32,000 fine against Cumulus over a late-filed equal employment opportunity report and a proposed $20,000 one for an iHeart station that concerned the language of radio contest rules “seem to signal a robust enforcement policy by the new FCC administration,” Oxenford said. The FCC is “holding companies, particularly big companies like those involved in these cases, to a high standard of regulatory compliance.” They also “demonstrate that the FCC will hold the violations of any station in a station group against the group as a whole in the event of a future violation.” Broadcasters should carefully review their compliance with FCC rules “as the FCC seems ready to take strong actions when it finds violations of its rules in areas that it believes materially impair the rights of the public,” Oxenford said.

The FCC Media Bureau’s approval of Dominion Broadcasting’s channel substitution request for WLMB Toledo took effect Wednesday, said that day’s Federal Register. WLMB switched from 5 to 35.

The FCC Media Bureau chose The Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation as the tentative selectee for a noncommercial educational FM construction permit for Little Browning, Montana, using rules that prioritize tribal applications, said an order Wednesday. The tribe’s application was mutually exclusive with an application from Holy Spirit Radio proposing a station at Conrad, Montana. Both applications were filed during the November NCE window. The Blackfeet application qualified for the tribal priority in part because the station would be the first local tribally owned NCE station in the area and because Little Browning is on Blackfeet tribal land, the order said. Petitions to deny the selection are due 30 days after the order is published in the Federal Register.

Funding for public broadcasting is no longer “a hot-button issue” on Capitol Hill, said Rep. Earl Blumenauer, R-Ore., on a virtual panel for America’s Public Television Stations Public Media Summit Tuesday. “I don’t think it has the heft it once had.” It's extremely unlikely the House would vote to defund NPR as it did in 2011, said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa. “The overwhelming majority of people in Congress would come out against any type of move like that.” Blumenauer said the profile of local public broadcasters has been enhanced by commercial broadcast consolidation. “There’s a lot of attention” on local stations “getting gobbled up” by large companies, he said. Both lawmakers conceded that the funding process had, in general, become more complicated and affected by partisan rancor. Appropriations “get muddied up a lot,” said Fitzpatrick. With Congress gridlocked and divided, a bright spot is that it has encouraged individual citizens to get more involved in government, Blumenauer said.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau proposed a $20,000 penalty against iHeartMedia-associated broadcaster IHM Licenses over violations of the agency’s contest rules by WBGG(FM) Fort Lauderdale, said a notice of apparent liability released Tuesday. The station allegedly disqualified a contest entrant in May 2019 because the same person had won a previous contest two months earlier. Station staff told the would-be contestant that winners of contests in the previous 90 days were barred from participating, but the contest’s written rules set that limit at only 30 days. The station also didn’t keep the contest’s rules posted online for 30 days after the contest’s end, the NAL said. The broadcaster argued the rules were ambiguous, but FCC precedent “makes clear that ambiguous rules are to be construed against the interests of the promoter of the contest,” said the NAL. The proposed forfeiture was adjusted upward due to iHeart’s history of violating contest rules and ability to pay, the NAL said.

Roughly 20,000 attendees and 700 exhibitors have signed up to take part in the April 23-27 NAB Show in Las Vegas, said NAB Managing Director-Global Connections and Events Chris Brown on an episode of NAB’s podcast posted Monday. Brown said he’s projecting 60,000 to 70,000 attendees and hoping for 1,000 exhibitors. Brown said the registered exhibitors include Adobe, AWS and Canon. The 2021 show was canceled after many of those exhibitors announced they weren’t attending. More than a fifth of the registered attendees are from outside the U.S., Brown said. The show is still planned to require participants to be vaccinated, but that could shift “if things continue to improve,” Brown said. The show will confirm vaccination status via an app, he said. Masks will be recommended but won’t be required after Nevada dropped mask mandates, he said. The show will still include additional cleaning protocols, and COVID-19 tests will be sold at the Las Vegas Convention Center, NAB said. Brown said the LVCC has hosted several major shows successfully in 2022, and flights into Las Vegas are becoming increasingly available.