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Biennial Ownership Reports Are Due by June 1, 2010 for Noncommercial Educational Radio Stations in Michigan and Ohio, and for Noncommercial Educational Television Stations in AZ, DC, ID, MD, NV, NM, UT, VA, WV and WY

May 2010 The staggered deadlines for filing Biennial Ownership Reports by noncommercial educational radio and television stations remain in effect and are tied to their respective anniversary renewal filing deadlines. Noncommercial educational radio stations licensed to communities in Michigan and Ohio, and noncommercial educational television stations licensed to communities in…

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FCC Seeks Comment on Possible Revisions to Its Rules Regarding the Construction, Marking, and Lighting of Towers

5/24/2010 The FCC recently released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) proposing to revise and streamline its Part 17 rules regarding construction, marking, and lighting of antenna structures. Pursuant to the Federal Register publication that occurred today, Comments are due on July 20, 2010, with Reply Comments due on August…

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CARD Act Will Exempt Prepaid Phone Cards (Not Mobile Broadband/Internet Access)

5/18/2010 Prepaid “cards, codes and other devices” redeemable solely for telephone services are exempt from a new federal law that goes into effect August 22, 2010. However, if they can also be redeemed for related technology services, these products will (at least in most instances) be subject to provisions restricting…

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Congress Passes Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act of 2010

5/17/2010 The long strange trip of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (“STELA” for short) seems finally to be ending. After satellite carriers’ ability to import distant broadcast signals into stations’ local markets expired on December 31, 2009, Congress passed a number of short-term extensions of the predecessor law,…

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Must-Carry: The Supreme Court Takes a Pass

The U.S. Supreme Court today announced that it is declining to hear Cablevision’s challenge to the must-carry rules, letting stand a Second Circuit ruling upholding the validity of the 1992 rules. Approximately 40% of broadcast stations rely on must-carry to ensure carriage on their local cable systems, with the remainder…

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Some LPTV Stations Have Must-Carry Rights Too

Given that low power television (LPTV) stations have been trying unsuccessfully for many years to obtain must-carry rights comparable to those enjoyed by full-power stations, it is often overlooked that some LPTVs do, in fact, have carriage rights. However, these must-carry rights are available only to a select few LPTV…

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FCC Supports Watching Movies at Home (to the Dismay of Theater Owners)

While the FCC has traditionally steered clear of copyright issues, that has grown more difficult as the preferred method of content protection shifts from court actions to copyright protection built into the hardware. The FCC therefore found itself in the middle when Hollywood insisted that cable and satellite set-top boxes…

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Chairman Genachowski’s “Third Way” to Net Neutrality

The press is buzzing with news, leaked late yesterday and announced today in a document entitled The Third Way: A Narrowly Tailored Broadband Framework, that FCC Chairman Genachowski is proposing to reclassify the transmission component of broadband Internet access as a “telecommunications service” subject to FCC regulation. As almost everyone…