By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-31-20 State broadcast associations this week added their weight to the National Association of Broadcasters petition for changes to the FCC's guidance on political ad disclosures. NAB joined with Hearst Television, Graham Media Group, Nexstar, Fox, Tegna, and Scripps to ask the FCC to narrow its definition of [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-30-20 Microsoft president Brad Smith is calling for more regulation of tech companies. He said those businesses need to step up and provide more self regulation, but "we do think we need more regulation of technology." Smith, who has co-written a new book, Tools and Weapons, was appearing [...]
By Tony Romm, washingtonpost.com, 1-17-20 Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google took a public lashing at a congressional hearing in Boulder, Colo., on Friday, where some of their smaller rivals, including Sonos and Tile, pleaded with federal lawmakers to take swift action against Big Tech. Democrats and Republicans at times appeared stunned as they heard tales [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-8-20 Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) used an informational hearing on deep fakes and other online manipulation to hammer Big Tech in general and Facebook in particular, while Republicans found more to like on the edge. The hearing, "Americans at Risk: Manipulation and Deception in the Digital Age," in [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-8-20 Given the almost daily news about a new security breach, it is impossible to conclude that the tech industry is doing enough to protect privacy. That was the message from Democratic Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter at a Chief Privacy Officer roundtable at CES 2020 in [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-8-20 TEGNA, which owns 62 TV stations in 51 markets across the country, is teaming up with global nonprofit First Draft to train all its journalists in identifying disinformation online and helping viewers do the same. TEGNA is also expanding its Verify fact-checking initiative, adding regional fact-checkers to [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-3-20 Microsoft is telling the FCC that wireless Internet providers have been able to boost their throughput tenfold using the TV white spaces Microsoft wants more of, and said the FCC should act on its proposal seeking tweaks to the current white spaces regime. That came in a [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-2-20 Cable operators are on the same page as broadcasters when it comes to the FCC's approach to political ad disclosures. The National Association of Broadcasters joined with Hearst Television, Graham Media Group, Nexstar, Fox, Tegna and Scripps, to ask the FCC to narrow its definition of non-candidate [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 12-20-19 The Justice Department and FCC have told a New York federal district court that their respective approvals of the T-Mobile-Sprint deal, with attendant conditions to drive rural 5G deployment and competition, should add legal weight on the Judicial scale in favor of that merger. That came in [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 12-19-19 New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is proposing net neutrality legislation that will essentially restore, on a statewide level, the net neutrality rules eliminated in the 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom order. California passed a similar law in the wake of the FCC's ISP deregulation. The Cuomo bill, which [...]