Washington Beat

Through attorneys Michael DelNero and John Cobb at Covington & Burling, The Walt Disney Company last week asked the FCC to dismiss DirecTV's "Good Faith" complaint without delay, slamming the company poised to merge with Dish for its "baseless" filing with the Commission.

Based in Memphis, Howard Robertson, CEO and Founder of Spotset Radio Network, is laser-focused on bringing political advertising to Black radio. He wonders if the Harris-Walz campaign is ignoring the power of Black-owned media. To learn more, RBR+TVBR welcomes Robertson to this InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.fm.

T-Mobile has agreed to "important forward-looking commitments to address foundational security flaws, work to improve cyber hygiene, and adopt robust modern architectures, like zero trust and phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication." Oh, it will also pay a multimillion-dollar civil penalty to the U.S. Treasury.

"Newsmax is pleased to announce it has resolved the litigation brought by Smartmatic through a confidential settlement." That's all the Boca Raton, Fla.-headquartered conservative-leaning cable news network had to share on Thursday afternoon.

The FCC at its September Open Meeting this morning approved in a 4-1 vote a $6 million forfeiture order for political consultant Steve Kramer in response to unlawful robocalls made using "deepfake," AI-generated voice cloning technology and caller ID spoofing.

The Democratic nominee for U.S. President has launched a series of digital and radio ads targeting rural and Republican voters in Pennsylvania. The radio ads complement a geotargeted digital video ad featuring the same message.

Are issue ads entitled to the Lowest Unit Rate? Is the broadcaster exempt from liability for false statements? Must the broadcaster allow opposing views on its air? Many think the answers to these questions are "Yes." Think again, veteran Washington, D.C. attorney Gregg Skall says in this classic column.

Davina Sashkin, David Oxenford and the team at Wilkinson Barker Knauer are welcoming a new Partner. He formerly served as  Deputy Bureau Chief of the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau.

It is licensed to serve Morris and Union Counties in northern New Jersey as a daytime-only AM radio station with an FM translator. Soon, it could be silenced for good, however.  Why? The station's owner is extremely tardy with its annual FCC regulatory fees.

Jessica Rosenworcel will be spending a part of September 27 with a virtual trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she will address the Berkeley Law AI Institute. She plans share how the Commission is considering new transparency standards that would require disclosure when AI technology is used in political advertising on radio and TV.

The PBS Member serving the Plattsburgh, N.Y.; Burlington, Vt.; and, indirectly, the Montréal metropolitan area is one of two additional grant recipients of Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds designed to give the operations cash for enhanced emergency alerting upgrades.

The Commission's "CORES" database has been updated with revised AM and FM radio station fee codes and amounts for fiscal year 2024. This ends the short hold on submissions due to miscalculation errors that were arise from some.

They were once rivals. Now, they are siblings under the PBS SoCal banner. That partnership has led the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to select the noncommercial broadcast TV operation serving the Los Angeles market as the lead stations for a national public media civic content and engagement initiative.

"The FCC is continuing to do its due diligence to reevaluate the population count information for AM and FM broadcasters for FY 2024 regulatory fees." That's how the Commission is responding to a matter that saw some radio stations being asked to submit regulatory fees that are actually higher than the ones adopted for the current fiscal year. 

The deadline for United States-based foreign media outlets to submit their next John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act report to the FCC has been set by the Media Bureau.