After Monday’s FCC meeting left television broadcasters facing higher expenses and lower revenues by restricting the use of Joint Sales Agreements and joint retransmission negotiations, broadcasters were due for some good news. Where the FCC is the bearer of bad news, it has often fallen to the courts to be…
March 2014 Pillsbury’s communications lawyers have published FCC Enforcement Monitor monthly since 1999 to inform our clients of notable FCC enforcement actions against FCC license holders and others. This month’s issue includes: FCC Proposes $40,000 Fine for Public Inspection File/License Renewal Violations Short-Term License Renewal and Hefty Fine for Missing…
March 2014 TV, Class A TV, and locally originating LPTV stations licensed to communities in Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming must begin airing pre-filing license renewal announcements on April 1, 2014. License renewal applications for all TV stations in these states are due by June 2, 2014.…
There was quite a stir today when the FCC, despite being closed for a snow day, issued a Notice of Apparent Liability proposing very large fines against Viacom ($1,120,000), NBCUniversal ($530,000), and ESPN ($280,000) for transmitting false EAS alert tones. According to the FCC, all three aired an ad for…
February 2014 Pillsbury’s communications lawyers have published FCC Enforcement Monitor monthly since 1999 to inform our clients of notable FCC enforcement actions against FCC license holders and others. This month’s issue includes: FCC Limits License Renewal to Two Years and Assesses $4,000 Fine $24,000 Consent Decree for Incomplete Public Inspection…
I wrote a few weeks ago about Aereo’s Rocky Path Ahead, discussing the legal obstacles Aereo will need to overcome even if the Supreme Court should rule in its favor in the currently pending proceeding. Yesterday, that path became even rockier, when a federal judge in Utah dropped a boulder…
It’s been three years since I first wrote about marijuana advertising here at CommLawCenter. Despite a head-spinning number of developments since then, including the legalization of recreational marijuana in Washington and Colorado, the answer to the question of whether broadcast stations can accept marijuana advertising is no clearer today than…
Where the law aims to draw a bright line between what is permissible and what is not, advances in technology often blur that line, creating factual scenarios that couldn’t have existed when the law was drafted. In the case of Aereo’s technology, the mistake many are making is to assume…
January 2014 Pillsbury’s communications lawyers have published FCC Enforcement Monitor monthly since 1999 to inform our clients of notable FCC enforcement actions against FCC license holders and others. This month’s issue includes: FCC Admonishes Television Stations for “Host-Selling” to Children $7,500 Fine Imposed for Documents Missing From Public Inspection File…
Around this time every year, you typically see an abundance of articles in the trades making predictions about what the FCC will do in the coming year. It has become such a rite of the new year that I’ve even joked about it in past posts. This year, however, I…