Washington Beat

As expected, the Media Bureau on Thursday opened "MB Docket No. 18-214." That's the formal name for what is commonly known as "Ray Baum's Act," which expands the scope of reimbursement from the FCC's spectrum auction repack process to radio stations while giving extra cash to TV station owners.

The FCC's July Open Meeting is set for Thursday, but Chairman Pai already has his sights on what's to be debated and discussed at the Commission's August Open Meeting. Among the things on the agenda: Ray Baum's Act (and repack reimbursement dollars), and the FCC's broadcast "incubator" program.

Featured Media Information Bureau columnist Ken Benner is infatuated with government "complexification." We're sure it's not in our dictionary, but it is a fitting word Benner uses to describe something so confusing, you will end up sending a check to the U.S. Treasury out of sheer frustration and lack of comprehension. In this column, Benner tackles the FCC's efforts to improve EEO compliance.

Do you know what FCC telecom and broadcast deadlines are approaching? The team at Fletcher Heald & Hildreth does, and provided a great quick-look at what should be on your calendar right now, and marked in red. Here's all of the info for your convenience.

The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on proposed revisions to the children’s television programming rules to provide broadcasters greater flexibility in meeting their children’s programming obligations. Also on the agenda: Improving emergency alerting, including facilitating more effective EAS tests and preventing false alerts.

The FCC on Tuesday (7/3) released its Broadcast Station Totals for the first half of 2018. The biggest headline from the new totals: FM translators and boosters, along with UHF translators, soared in number since New Year's Eve 2017. At the same time, there are slightly less full-powered radio and TV stations in operation.

It wasn't exactly a pre-holiday data dump, but the FCC certainly had a lot of documents to distribute in the hours before the Independence Day wind down. One of them was a Public Notice that offered detailed on the comment deadlines for a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on an amendment of the Commission's rules regarding the posting of station licenses. 

The latest installment from featured Media Information Bureau featured columnist Ken Benner is all about the money. Specifically, Benner has combed through all of the Alternative FCC Compliance Certification Inspections he and his wife conducted over a 15-year period. The amount of dollars that broadcasters didn't have to pay to the Federal Communications Commission, as a result of a forfeiture, is staggering.

On July 3, 1968, the FCC first concluded that equal opportunity in employment was essential to the public interest. The regulatory agency over radio and TV broadcasters committed to ensuring that the national policy against discrimination in hiring applied to broadcast licensees. Fifty years later, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai believes equal employment opportunity (EEO) rules should get the same type of enforcement as that given to squelching pirate radio operators.

Cavell Martz's Gary Cavell and Garvey Schubert Barer attorney Erwin Krasnow both believe potential owners can learn a lot by being observant when walking around a station. Here are some great pieces of advice, in an encore Media Information Bureau column you don't want to miss.

Bidding concluded Wednesday in an auction of FM translator construction permits conducted by the FCC. The auction, which was designated Auction 83, raised in net bids more than a half million dollars. Twenty bidders won a total of 30 construction permits. Here are the details.

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee has agreed to provide level funding of $445 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for Fiscal Year 2021 and $20 million in FY 2019 for an annual interconnection and infrastructure account — considered the backbone of the public broadcasting system. America's Public Television Stations (APTS) President/CEO Patrick Butler says his group is "grateful" for the nearly unanimous vote.

FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly spent much of Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio at the Midwest Next-Gen TV Summit. Much of his conversation, naturally, touched on ATSC 3.0 and next steps he suggests be taken. He then discussed the television repack process, before offering his views on the FCC's review of its "KidVid" rules.

Legislation that has both the support of the National Association of Broadcasters and the Recording Industry Association of America has moved one step closer to a floor vote by the U.S. Senate — and the likely passage of S. 2823, otherwise known as the "Music Modernization Act."

In a move that was widely expected to occur without objection, the full Commission on Tuesday moved forward with its full approval of Entercom's Reverse Morris Trust-fueled merger with CBS Radio. The deal had been challenged by a longtime Entercom adversary.