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…
As I have noted on several occasions in the past, the FCC requires that certain video programming delivered online by television stations be captioned if that programming previously aired on television with captions (for a quick refresher you can view my posts “FCC Seeks Greater Clarity on IP Video Captioning…
December 2013 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 Cancels $20,000 Children’s Television Fine Fine and Reporting Requirements Imposed for EEO Violations Individual Fined $15,000 for…
As our own Lauren Lynch Flick reported last month, the deadline for commercial broadcast stations to file their biennial ownership reports with the FCC, which the FCC in August moved from November 1st to December 2nd, and then in November moved from December 2nd to December 20th, has now been…
If there had been any doubt that the Video Division of the FCC’s Media Bureau would check a television station’s online public inspection file to confirm the truthfulness of certifications made by the licensee in a pending license renewal application, that doubt has been eliminated. In a Notice of Apparent…
November 2013 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: Multiple Indecency Complaints Result in $110,000 Payment $42,000 in Fines for Excessive Power, Wrong Directional Patterns and Incomplete…