At its Open Meeting this morning, the Federal Communications Commission released its latest proposal to require commercial and noncommercial television broadcasters to maintain their public inspection files online. The FCC had taken incremental steps in this direction over the years by first permitting and encouraging stations to maintain their public…
By: Paul A. Cicelski As I mentioned last week, the FCC has been creating an online reporting system for EAS Participants to use to report their results in connection with the first ever nationwide EAS test, which is set to take place on November 9, 2011. In addition, the FCC…
In a decision that may cause a fair amount of chaos for program producers, television stations, and cable systems, the FCC yesterday released an Order overturning 298 previously granted closed captioning waivers. According to the Order, the FCC granted only three temporary waivers in the period between 1996, when the…
As reported previously, FEMA, along with the FCC and NOAA, will conduct the first nationwide Emergency Alert System (EAS) Test on November 9, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern. The EAS has never been tested on a national level. Needless to say, it is important for EAS Participants to educate the public…
Both TV and radio stations are learning that medical marijuana can give you a bad headache. However, everyone, including the Department of Justice, currently seems uncertain as to the long-term prognosis for stations that aired medical marijuana ads. As I wrote here last week, leading to a number of articles…
Spoiler alert: Tomorrow I’ll be participating in a webinar (with Tom Larsen of Mediacom and Sarah Barry and Robin Flynn of SNL Kagan) to discuss and debate whether the FCC will adopt new retransmission consent rules and whether rules are needed at all. If you want to be surprised at…
In what became one of our more heavily circulated posts, I wrote a piece back in early May entitled “Will Marijuana Ads Make License Renewals Go Up in Smoke?” It noted that the Department of Justice was showing signs of abandoning its “live and let live” policy toward medical marijuana…
This October has more than its share of filing deadlines for broadcasters to worry about. Of course, it is the end of the quarter, so broadcasters should be prepared for their routine quarterly filings. Additionally, certain states will have EEO and noncommercial ownership filing obligations. This year is also a…
October 1, 2011 marks the triennial deadline for full power television stations (and a few lucky qualifying LPTV stations) to send their written must-carry or retransmission consent elections to each of the cable and satellite providers serving their market. The elections made by this October 1st will govern a station’s…
Paul A. Cicelski As I reported last month, my colleague Dick Zaragoza and I filed a Petition with the FCC asking for a further extension of the deadline for EAS Participants to implement the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard for the Emergency Alert System (EAS). We filed the Petition on…