Washington Beat

A markup of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is scheduled for Thursday. However, that make not take place until after Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee come back from their summer vacation.

The FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) have an updated Memorandum of Understanding between the agencies on spectrum coordination in place.  This marks the first time the MOU has been updated in nearly 20 years. 

Northeast Broadcasting, whose assets include WXRV "The River" in Boston and WNCS, home of "The Point Radio Network" in Vermont, didn't make the requisite moves it needed to take to indicate a change in ownership for the group of stations following the death of company founder Steven Silberberg in January 2021. The solution? The signing of a consent decree with the Commission that sees Northeast pay a substantial civil penalty to the U.S. Treasury.

With the opening of Media Bureau Docket No. 22-239, the FCC is moving forward with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on updating its rules to reference the most up-to-date market information for determining a television station’s local market for cable and satellite carriage purposes. You may now offer your thoughts and suggests to the Commission on what road it should take — one Nate Simington says may not be exclusive to Nielsen.

In April 2017, Threshold Communications emerged as the lone bidders in a FCC auction for a brand-new FM. It then asked the Media Bureau to relocate its city of license from Columbia County, Ore., to a city in Washington due north of Longview. The Media Bureau agreed, but an interloper didn't. It was so against the move that it filed a Second Petition for Reconsideration in the hopes that the FCC would change its mind. It did not.

There's a new Chief Information Officer at the FCC. He's inbound from the U.S. General Services Administration's Federal Acquisition Service as the Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Category Management, in the Office of Information Technology Category.

On Friday, RBR+TVBR shared with its readers details on why a Texas Congressman and 19 of his colleagues are urging the FCC to follow through with a petition for rulemaking calling for new data collection and reporting on the diversity of content vendors used by FCC-licensed media and telecommunications companies. TechFreedom couldn't disagree more, and says any FCC "Content Vendor Diversity Report" is "ill-conceived and burdensome."

A group of minority-owned media, civil rights and public interest groups on May 5 filed a petition for rulemaking at the Federal Communications Commission calling for new data collection and reporting on the diversity of content vendors used by FCC-licensed media and telecommunications companies. Now, a Texas Congressman and 19 of his colleagues have chimed in by urging the FCC to follow through with the rulemaking requested by FUSE and others.

Does the FCC have the power to adopt “new regulatory fee categories” on non-licensees that nonetheless “benefit” from the FCC’s regulatory efforts? Non-partisan Washington think tank TechFreedom says no, and it voiced its opinion in Reply Comments filed earlier this week with the Commission in opposition to its FY2022 regulatory fee proposal, which the NAB is vociferously against for their substantial rate hike.

It’s become a much-anticipated annual event hosted by the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council. This year, it was a virtual affair — one that saw Geoffrey Starks offer his thoughts on broadband access and internet connectivity issue as the MMTC 2022 Former FCC Chairs’ Symposium kicked off from Washington, D.C.

The Acting Chief of Staff and Legal Advisor for media and consumer protection issues for Democratic FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks is leaving for a role at the White House.

Michael Nemcik is no longer serving as Acting Legal Advisor for Republican-aligned FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. He's held the role for the last several weeks, filling in for Danielle Thumann, but won't be leaving the FCC.

A new Chief Copyright Royalty Judge and head of the Copyright Royalty Board has been named. He is replacing Suzanne Barnett, who returned from retirement on November 8, 2021, to serve as an interim Chief Copyright Royalty Judge.

Waste. Fraud. Abuse. These are just some of the reasons why the top two Republicans on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee want President Biden to nominate an Inspector General for the FCC. If that were to happen, however, would his pick be as lambasted as that for the fifth Commissioner's seat?

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce "is sitting idly" on H.R. 7783—a bill that would extend the FCC's authority to conduct radio spectrum auctions, says AEI nonresident senior fellow Mark Jamison. This authority is scheduled to expire on September 30. In this column, Jamison urges Congress to act quickly, as radio spectrum auctions "have improved efficiency and brought money into the U.S. Treasury without raising consumer prices."