By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 3-24-17 FCC chairman Ajit Pai Friday praised Charter for its announced $25 billion infrastructure investment pledge over the next four years, which came at an Oval Office photo op Friday with President Donald Trump and even took some credit for the new regulatory climate Charter's Tom Rutledge said [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 3-21-17 In a victory for broadcasters, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has reversed a lower court decision that FilmOn X was eligible for the same compulsory license to TV programming as cable operators have. In the decision, released Tuesday, the [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 3-20-17 In a response to Senate Democrats that was short on elaboration, Republican FCC chairman Ajit Pai said he did not believe the media was the enemy of the people and promised to exercise his media regulatory authority impartially. “As Chairman of the FCC, I take my oath [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 3-17-17 To be or not to be defined as an MVPD, that is the question. A federal appeals court Friday heard argument in the long-running court battle between TV station content providers and FilmOn X, and, according to an attorney at the lively and lengthy oral argument, bothsides [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 3-9-17 Michael Powell, president of NCTA: The Internet & Television Association, says that while churn is inevitable, doom and gloom scenarios are not. "As long as Internet is the foundation of all of the opportunities and choices, that still provides a pretty powerful place for cable in the [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 3-9-17 Republicans are going after the FCC's broadband privacy rules with both barrels. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), chair of the House Communications Subcommittee, has introduced her version of a Congressional Review Act resolution invalidating the FCC's Oct. 27 order. That follows a similar CRA resolution introduced this week by [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 3-6-17 President Donald Trump met with FCC chairman Ajit Pai Monday afternoon in the Oval Office, according to the White House. The meeting was confirmed afterwards by an FCC spokesperson. “Chairman Pai had a warm meeting with President Trump this afternoon, in which they reconnected for the first [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 3-6-17 The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) along with the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the ACLU and more than 70 others accused President Donald Trump and his administration of trying to "undermine democracy" by marginalizing the media as an [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 2-28-17 Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) took aim at President Donald Trump's attacks on the mainstream media Tuesday, signaling they were part of an assault on the media from without and within that threatened "the survival of journalism as a critical pillar of Democracy." He branded the President's attacks [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 2-28-17 FCC chairman Ajit Pai told a Mobile World Congress audience in Barcelona Tuesday that Title II reclassification was a mistake made under the previous generation that he expects to be corrected in this one. He signaled to the international audience that the FCC would not be a [...]