InsideRadio.com, 2-25-19 On a voice vote without any debate, a bill that would raise fines on unlicensed radio station operations to as much as $2 million has cleared its first hurdle in Congress. The House on Monday unanimously approved the Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement or PIRATE Act (H.R. 583). The House passed a [...]
InsideRadio.com, 2-20-19 The Marlboro Man may no longer ride on radio and television airwaves but his modern day equivalent, e-cigarette manufacturers, largely have free rein to place their commercials on broadcast stations. Now one member of the Federal Communications Commission thinks the time has come for the agency and its federal counterparts to update the [...]
By Robert Barnes, washingtonpost.com, 2-19-19 Justice Clarence Thomas called Tuesday for reconsidering the Supreme Court’s landmark decision making it more difficult for public officials to claim defamation as the court turned down a request from an accuser of Bill Cosby. The court declined to take the case of Kathrine McKee, who accused Cosby of raping [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 2-7-19 Republicans signaled Thursday (Feb. 7) that they are offering up at least three versions of legislation that would reimpose network neutrality rules, but without doing so under Title II common carrier regs they argue are a relic of the monopoly (dial-less, black) phone based Title II common [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 2-7-19 Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are demanding answers from Facebook on its research project that incentivized teens and others to give up info (Project Atlas) and calling on Apple and Google to "do more to protect their customers from intrusive monitoring [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 2-7-19 The new Democratic-led House Communications Subcommittee weighed back into the still legally muddy net neutrality waters Thursday (Feb. 7), led by chairman Mike Doyle, who led the unsuccessful House effort to follow the Senate and nullify the net neutrality reg rollback under current Republican chairman Ajit Pai. [...]
By Tom Butts, TVTechnology.com, 2-6-19 GRAPEVINE, Texas – FCC Chairman Pai gave a progress report about the channel repack, touting “great progress” since work began in April 2017. He added that the transition – which involves channel and/or location changes for approximately 1,000 full–power and Class A television broadcasters and about 2,000 low–power and translator [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-22-19 In a victory for online re-publishers of others' content – in this case specifically online review platform Yelp – the Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of a California Supreme Court decision (Hassell vs. Bird) that Yelp was protected from liability under the Communications Decency [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-18-19 The National Association of Broadcasters has joined with other groups in the News Media for Open Government(NMOG) coalition to press the new Congress to better protect journalists, including the long-sought federal shield law that has been introduced in numerous Congresses over the past couple of decades. In [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-17-19 The FCC has apparently pumped new life into the 28 GHz spectrum auction. The first round after it moved to stage three Jan. 15, with bidders required to bid on eligible licenses unless they had a waiver—produced $0 in new bidding money. But since then it has [...]