By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-16-21 Google has asked an Ohio court to dismiss a suit filed by the state’s attorney general that attempts to designate the company a common carrier. Instead, said Google, it is a publisher whose responses to user queries are “editorial decisions” protected by the First Amendment and that the [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-10-21 Broadcasters are working hard to try to get the FCC to reverse course on its plans to increase their user fees, in part to pay for the better broadband maps Congress has demanded of the commission. The FCC pays for its operations through user fees -- as well [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-9-21 Local broadcasters are urging the Senate to provide tax credits to stations that staff up their newsrooms, citing, in part, Big Tech’s “devouring” of their local ad market. In a letter to Senate leadership, all 50 state broadcaster associations called for passage of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act. [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-9-21 A trio of powerful Democratic senators are pressing Facebook on its decision not to let researchers at New York University’s Ad Observatory Project to its platform, which Facebook said was out of privacy concerns. The university is studying political advertising on Facebook, including finding what the senators called [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-9-21 An infrastructure bill with tens of billions for broadband appears both poised for a Senate vote and without the Biden Administration’s explicit focus on affordability or competition as part of the definition of broadband availability. But the bill’s language would appear to allow for determinations of “reliable” broadband [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-29-21 Among a laundry list of Republican House bills targeted at edge providers introduced this week was a House version of one that would require the FCC to study the feasibility of making streaming services and others pay into the Universal Service Fund (USF) subsidy program. The FCC-overseen USF [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-28-21 A new package of House Republican-backed Big Tech-targeted reform bills would carve up Section 230 by carving out a bunch of actors and actions from the section’s protection of social media sites from civil liability for the content they host. The Sec. 230-targeted legislation was just part of [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-26-21 Cable operators are telling the FCC to dismiss or deny auto companies’ challenge to the FCC’s decision to allow the 5.9 GHz band to be divided up between incumbent intelligent auto communications systems and the Wi-Fi that remains cable broadband operators primary mobile broadband play. The Alliance for [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-23-21 A group of senators has introduced the Local Journalism Sustainability Act of 2021, which would provide tax credits for hiring more journalists, for people subscribing to media outlets, and for small businesses that will support local media with advertising dollars. The goal is to “revive and sustain trusted [...]

By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-23-21 Broadcasters this month pressed the FCC to change course and not force TV and radio stations to pay for a portion of the FCC broadband data collection, from which they said they derive no benefit. The National Association of Broadcasters, in meetings with the FCC’s Office of Managing [...]