A low-power TV broadcaster could face a $6,500 forfeiture for failing to file a timely license to cover and engaging in an unauthorized operation, said a notice of apparent liability and order listed in Tuesday’s FCC Daily Digest. Partially due to a filing mistake by licensee Ngensolutions, KRRI-LP Reno for five years broadcast without authorization from what the FCC had listed as a digital companion channel, the Media Bureau said. “NGL explained its confusion about having mistakenly filed for a digital companion channel in 2011 thinking it was filing for a flash cut construction permit,” the NAL said. “It is well settled precedent that ignorance of a rule or law does not excuse a violation.”
DOJ and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S should block the Standard/Tegna deal over foreign ownership concerns, said the Communications Workers of America's NewsGuild sector in a letter to President Joe Biden Monday. It is the second letter NewsGuild has written to Biden about the deal (see 2206020073). “The FCC should reject this overreach and the Treasury and State Departments should reject any deal that contains a single penny of investment from foreign adversaries,” said NewsGuild President Jon Schleuss in the letter, which faults Apollo Global Management for seeking a foreign ownership declaratory ruling related to the transaction (see 2203110066). Such requests aren’t uncommon; the FCC granted one for Univision in January (see 2201210062) and one for iHeart Media (see 2112220052) in December. "Standard General, a hedge fund, claims that it is increasing broadcast ownership diversity by historic levels because its sole voting shareholder is Asian-American," said the letter. "However, ownership by large hedge funds with majority financing from anonymous foreign and U.S. institutional investors is not the same as ownership by a historically underrepresented person of color acquiring a broadcast license." The letter also said Standard hasn’t been transparent about the deal’s financing and called the deal “the culmination of a multi-year hostile takeover effort of a local broadcast news company.” “Will your administration stand with journalists and American families or stand with anonymous foreign investors and Wall Street funds?” the letter asks. Standard declined to comment.
Data from NPR Labs shows GeoBroadcast Solutions’ ZoneCasting geotargeted radio tech “will cause so much disruption to radio reception that approximately 90% of listeners would almost immediately change the channel or turn off the radio,” said NAB in an ex parte filing posted in docket 20-401 Wednesday. GBS omitted that data in its submissions to the FCC, NAB said. “GBS’s omission in a proceeding designed in part to assess ZoneCasting’s efficacy is glaring," NAB said. "Fortunately for the FCC and the American public, NPR retained the data itself, and produced it for Commission review.” GBS’ testing of the technology has been inadequate, NAB said: “Given the importance of objective, reliable testing across a range of FCC proceedings, the FCC would be setting an alarming new precedent if it deems such insubstantial testing acceptable.” GBS sent a letter to NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt earlier this week to demonstrate industry support for the technology (see 2207200056). "We have been completely transparent with the FCC staff and Commissioners by addressing each and every concern that has been raised, through respected, highly credible and reputable industry experts in the fields of engineering and broadcasting, including the current chair of the FCC’s Technical Advisory Council," said a GBS spokesperson.
Marion Educational Exchange has seven days to demonstrate to FCC Administrative Law Judge Jane Halprin that it has an attorney, said Halprin in an order in MEE’s license hearing proceeding Wednesday (see 2206240060). If MEE doesn’t, the proceeding will be dismissed for "failure to prosecute" and MEE will lose its low-power FM license, the order said. The ALJ rejected a provisional appearance filing from Holland Knight attorney Charles Naftalin that included a request for a two-month delay in the case while MEE evaluates its position. Since Naftalin’s motion also includes a provision where he could withdraw from the case, it doesn’t satisfy the ALJ’s requirement that MEE secure an attorney, the order said. “The proposed suspension of this proceeding may serve MEE, but it does not serve the public interest,” the order said. “MEE’s repeated failures to adhere to deadlines in this matter are sufficient justification for dismissal of this proceeding,” she said.
NAB’s opposition to geotargeted radio is “a retreat” from the trade group’s “ironclad commitment to broadcast deregulation,” said more than 50 broadcasters supporting the GeoBroadcast Solutions-backed proposal, in a letter this week to NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt. “This will leave legislators and regulators confused and uncertain as to broadcasters’ commitment to deregulation. Worse, it gives broadcasters’ competitors and critics an opportunity to exploit the inconsistency to the detriment of our shared agenda of deregulation.” The letter's signatories, which include Roberts Radio, Evans Broadcasting and Wennes Communications, also took issue with NAB statements that geotargeted radio doesn’t have industry support. NAB “has mentioned on several occasions that the radio industry is unified in its opposition to geotargeting,” the letter said. “That’s not true, and this letter is intended to correct that misperception.” “NAB, state broadcaster associations from across the country and an overwhelming number of large and small radio broadcasters in a diverse range of markets have serious concerns with ZoneCasting technology,” an NAB spokesperson emailed. Geotargeted radio "would have devastating consequences for the long-term viability of local radio," the spokesperson said.
The FCC Media Bureau rejected Centro Familiar de Restauracion y Vida’s application for a noncommercial educational constriction permit in Chaparral, New Mexico, and request for a waiver, said an order in Monday’s Daily Digest. Centro sought a waiver of the agency’s policy of granting only one application per group of mutually exclusive applications in CP auctions. “Centro fails to explain how the public interest would be served by granting the Waiver Request,” said the order.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau issued several notices of illegal pirate radio broadcasting to addresses in New York last week, according to letters in Monday’s Daily Digest. Letters were sent to Jean Yvon Francois and Elcie Francois-Lapomarede in Brooklyn, Michelle Hepburn in Mount Vernon, the Rachel Bridge Corp. in New York City, Paul Wilfrid in Cambria Heights, and 2062 Holding Corp. in the Bronx, warning of possible forfeitures of over $2 million for “entities found to willfully and knowingly suffer (i.e., permit) a third party” to make unauthorized broadcasts on their property. The subjects of the letters have 10 days to respond to the agency, the letters said.
FCC Administrative Law Judge Jane Halprin denied a request from broadcaster Arm & Rage to enlarge the issues in its license proceeding (see 2206170063) to include questions on whether the revocation for character reasons of the license for WJBE (AM) Powell, Tennessee, would violate the First Amendment, said an order in Friday’s Daily Digest. The character requirement, “has been upheld by the District of Columbia Circuit as a rational means to evaluate whether someone possesses the requisite character to hold an FCC license,” said the order. Arm & Rage hasn’t been treated in a discriminatory manner, and “it is the Commission’s usual practice to initiate a hearing proceeding when a licensee has been convicted of a felony,” the order said. Arm & Rage's Joseph Armstrong was convicted of making a false statement on a 2008 tax form.
Former NAB President Gordon Smith, the ex-Republican senator from Oregon, was among eight self-described “political conservatives” signing their names to a report Thursday on the results of their investigation that they say debunks “every claim of fraud and miscount put forward” by former President Donald Trump and his advocates about the 2020 election. “Our conclusion is unequivocal: Joe Biden was the choice of a majority of the Electors, who themselves were the choice of the majority of voters in their states,” said the 72-page report, titled "Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election." Trump and his supporters have failed to present evidence of fraud “on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole,” it said. “In fact, there was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct. It is wrong, and bad for our country, for people to propagate baseless claims that President Biden’s election was not legitimate.” The eight, including three retired appeals court judges, urged “our fellow conservatives to cease obsessing over the results of the 2020 election.” Trump’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The FCC Media Bureau extended to Aug. 1 the deadline for reply filings in the Standard/Tegna merger proceeding over the companies’ objections (see 2207120054), said an order in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. Replies were due July 18. The extension was requested by the NewsGuild and National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians sectors of the Communications Workers of America and other transaction opponents due to the short time frame for replies, the complex proceeding, and a medical issue involving the unions’ attorney. The broadcasters said none of those reasons merited an extension, and the opposition parties had already been granted an extension in the proceeding (see 2205130072). “Applicants’ interest in expediting this proceeding does not outweigh the public interest considerations supporting a two-week extension,” said the Media Bureau. “The public interest is served by having as complete a record as possible before final consideration of the applications.” The extension applies to all entities that have petitions and comments on file, and parties are allowed to raise new issues in the reply cycle, the order said.