The U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear a Connecticut low-power TV broadcaster’s legal challenge of the FCC’s implementation of the 2023 Low Power Protection Act (see 2509290043). SCOTUS on Monday denied the petition for a writ of certiorari from Radio Communications Corp. (RCC), which asked the high court in September to overturn a unanimous ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejecting the company's arguments. RCC had argued that Congress intended the Low Power Protection Act to broadly allow many LPTV stations nationwide to upgrade to Class A status, though the text of the statute explicitly limited the upgrade to stations in markets of up to 95,000 households. The FCC order used nearly identical language to the statute, but RCC argued that the agency twisted Congress’ intent to protect full-power stations. “RCC’s convoluted reading of these statutory provisions is plainly incorrect,” said the D.C. Circuit in its June opinion.

Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld and Clemson University professor Thomas Hazlett disagreed on whether the FCC’s public interest standard should continue to exist during a Technology Policy Institute podcast released Thursday.

The FCC should abolish its news distortion rules, said Competitive Enterprise Institute fellow Brian Rankin in an online essay Wednesday. “Like the fairness doctrine before it, this regulation chokes crucial news and information. In this time of political polarization, it is being used as a weapon to inhibit speech that is critical of those in power or expresses contrary views.” The Communications Act expressly states that it doesn’t give the FCC the power to censor or interfere with free speech, he noted. “Regulating the content of a few voices because they have licenses tilts the regulatory playing field and fails to recognize today’s wide array of sources for news and information.”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez pushed back Tuesday on comments from Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, her aide Jonathan Uriarte and others suggesting that the agency could open a news distortion proceeding against CBS over its edits to a recent interview with President Donald Trump (see 2511030048). In online posts, both Uriarte and Schumer said that because the FCC targeted CBS for editing its interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, its policies require it to treat the Trump interview similarly.

Congress should eliminate the FCC’s broadcast-ownership rules, said American Action Forum President Douglas Holtz-Eakin in a blog post Tuesday. “The problem is that in the internet era there is no ‘local,’ so local ownership rules simply don’t make sense,” he wrote. “Consumers have myriad options to listen or watch in digital, internet-based media. Any need for competition or viewpoint diversity can be dealt with by their choices.” Broadcast-ownership rules “may be blocking the route to merger-based efficiencies and cost-saving that would permit the local media to more successfully compete with streaming services,” he added. “The solution is not to cling to the rules required by legacy legislation from your grandfathers’ media landscape. It is for Congress to provide the FCC with authorities that match the modern setting.”

The Library of American Broadcasting Foundation is launching a grant program to support the preservation, digitization and accessibility of historically significant radio and TV material, the group said in a news release Monday. The Preservation Grant Initiative will award up to four grants of $2,500 each to assist with preserving and sharing recordings, documents, oral histories and ephemera “that chronicle broadcasting’s vital role in shaping culture, news, entertainment, and democracy.” The Broadcast Education Initiative is supporting the effort, which requires that the preserved materials be publicly accessible, the release said. The application process has been streamlined to allow submissions from broadcasting-related companies, libraries, museums, archives, educational institutions and nonprofit organizations. Applications are due in the online portal by Jan. 15.

FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty told attendees at a free speech event Wednesday that the agency has “an obligation” to regulate broadcasters based on their content and compared broadcaster expression to a person standing on a frozen lake that could crack at any time. “You can’t always see how thick the ice is beneath your feet or whether it will hold if you take that next step,” Trusty said in remarks at the Media Institute’s Free Speech America Gala. “Yes, the First Amendment still applies -- both by its own terms, and as confirmed by Section 326 of the Communications Act,” she said. “But in broadcasting, content-based regulation that would be unthinkable in other contexts is indeed permitted under longstanding doctrine.”

Consumer Technology Association CEO Gary Shapiro praised the FCC for not proposing a tuner mandate or mandatory transition in the ATSC 3.0 NPRM on Tuesday (see 2510280024).

There's no longer a need for broadcast-ownership restrictions, said American Action Forum’s Jeffrey Westling and Aryan Mirchandani in a post Wednesday. Ownership limits intended to promote viewpoint diversity and competition are outdated because of the prevalence of modern media options, they wrote. “There are costs to keeping these rules in place, and if the FCC’s goal is to promote a robust and diverse broadcast market, eliminating these rules can help,” the post said. “By eliminating the restrictions, the FCC could create efficiencies for firms, lowering costs and better allowing broadcasters to compete with digital alternatives.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Tuesday that he hasn’t made up his mind about how the FCC should handle the national ownership cap or the 2022 quadrennial review, and no application has yet been submitted for the Nexstar/Tegna deal. Carr has said in the past that the FCC has authority to alter the national cap and that broadcasters should no longer be constrained by ownership limits. During Tuesday's news conference, he also said he doubts the FCC will rule on Nexstar/Tegna in 2025, and the shutdown would likely affect the agency’s timeline for addressing the national cap and the QR.