Washington Beat

The senior Republican Commissioner on the FCC, an individual whose legislative focus has been on issues of keen interest to the cable and wireline service provider, has been selected to deliver a keynote address at the 30th anniversary summit to be held on March 1 by ACA Connects.

The FCC's Communications Equity and Diversity Council is hosting a Media Ownership Diversity Symposium. The event is scheduled for February 7. What can attendees expect?

He is a former FCC Chairman and Commissioner as well as the agency's ex-General Counsel who has become one of the most prominent media and telecom lawyers in the U.S. On March 6, he'll be honored as the recipient of the Broadcasters Foundation of America's 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award.

In early 2018, Chuck Poppen-controlled Central Plains Media, the licensee for KCPM-27 in Grand Forks, was in the news for agreeing to sell the station to Gray Television. The licensee is tied to G.I.G. Inc., and that entity is now attracting attention. Why? It's been handed a Notice of Apparent Liability and Forfeiture for a pair of FCC violations.

After a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Public Media Summit is on the schedule for a live and in person event, with events planned between February 27-March 1 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in the Nation's Capital.

As previously noted, comment and reply comment dates would not be affirmed until a summary of the 2022 Quadrennial Public Notice, including notice of the deadlines for filing comments and reply comments, was published in the Federal Register. That transpired on Tuesday.

Advocacy group TechFreedom has filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule—"in line with every federal appellate court to consider the question"—that Section 230 protects algorithmic recommendations of third-party content. It's a topic of big sensitivity in D.C., and cost Mike O'Rielly his seat on the FCC.

Two new members of the FCC's Media Bureau leadership staff are being welcomed by the Commission. One is presently in the Office of Legislative Affairs. The other is a legal advisor to the Chief of the Media Bureau and has held the role since 2019.

The latest quarterly broadcast station totals have been released from the FCC. And, when one compares the numbers for the fourth quarter of 2022 to the end of the first quarter of last year, there’s one clear conclusion: commercially licensed AM and FMs are again fewer in number.

America’s Public Television Stations (APTS), NPR and PBS on Monday (1/9) filed joint comments at the FCC in response to a second Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on sponsorship identification requirements for foreign government-provided programming.

The Media Bureau is extending the deadline by which all broadcast, cable and satellite entities must upload required documents into their Online Public Inspection File. Why? It is the result of "current technical issues adversely affecting the responsiveness of" the OPIF system.

In November 2020, Gray Television submitted a request to change the table of allotments for Memphis, a move that would allow the market's NBC affiliate to upgrade from a VHF to a UHF facility — beneficial in the digital era, in contrast to the now-gone days of analog broadcasts. The FCC has now approved the change.

President Biden has signed the "Low Power Protection Act" into law, a move that the group founded by entrepreneur "SuperFrank" Copsidas pleaded the House of Representatives to prevent.

With the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening voting on an unprecedented seventh ballot amid a Speaker of the House standoff splitting the Republican Party now in control of the lower body of Congress, the former House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman — now Ranking Member — has moved forward with selecting the Committee staff that will lead six subcommittees in the 118th Congress.

The FCC has outlined a series of low-power television stations that on October 3, 2022, failed to file license renewal applications. As such, their licenses will expire as of February 1, 2023, provided no renewal application is received by midnight on the date of expiration.