The FCC has slowly brought more media industry-related items up for a full Commission vote in recent months, even as the chances of a 3-2 Democratic majority are as good as the California drought ending with Wednesday’s rain showers across the Southland.
For its July Open Meeting, two of the six items on the agenda shared by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on Wednesday pertain to television industry issues.
While the first three items pertain to telephone industry matters, the Commission is, in Rosenworcel’s view, “matching media rules with new market realities.”
The Commission’s rules specifically state, Rosenworcel said in a short blog post, that the Nielsen Station Index Directory has until now been used to determine a television station’s local market for carriage purposes.
Nielsen recently phased out this report. As such, the Commission will vote to begin the process of updating its rules to refer to a new publication for determining market areas.
The FCC will then turn its attention to phasing out “obsolete analog-era rules.” Specifically, the Commission will consider an item “to clean up” its “Part 74 rules” for low-power television and television translators, “getting rid of rules for analog TV operations that have no practical effect in our fully digital world,” Rosenworcel comments.
It’s a precursor to “a similar action for our full-power TV rules to be considered later this year,” she also hints.
Closing out the July Open Meeting agenda is an Enforcement Bureau item.
