Participated in a letter (with the Project on Government Oversight and other amici) to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., urging him to make live audio access permanent at the Supreme Court. As the letter notes, providing live audio access to cases during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has convincingly demonstrated the [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-8-21 The FCC has released its fifth report on broadcast ownership, according to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, and there is some slight improvement in the number of women and minority-owned stations, but the emphasis is on “slight.” The number of women who owned full-power TV stations in 2019, the [...]
By George Winslow, TVTech, and TMI Staff, 9-7-21 Nine former chairs of the FCC – including Richard E. Wiley, Chairman of the Board of The Media Institute – have come out in favor of legislation that would reinstate a tax certificate program to encourage investment in TV and radio broadcast station ownership for women [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 9-1-21 Locast, the local TV station streaming services, said late Wednesday (Sept. 1) it was suspending interruptions to its programming, which it does to ask those who have not contributed to the service to do so. Locast has argued since its inception that it is eligible for a nonprofit [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-30-21 Cable operators want the FCC to reconsider whether broadcasters should be able to use carriage of their primary ATSC 1.0 TV station signal to leverage carriage of new ATSC 3.0 signals, as is the case under current FCC rules. That came in a meeting between NCTA representatives and [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-27-21Apple said Aug. 27 that it will “clarify” that app developers don’t have to use its App store to accept payments, and will also give qualifying news outlets a cut of subscription revenue from Apple News.The tech giant said that and other changes – including boosting “rigorous journalism and a [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-26-21 The Federal Communications Commission said it has approved a first tranche of 62 telehealth applications for $41.98 million in its second round of funding for COVID-19 telehealth services. In round one, the FCC allocated $200 million of CARES Act funding for 539 applications from 47 states, as well as [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 8-17-21 A diverse group of journalism organizations has called on Congress to pass the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (S. 2434). The bill would help local stations and newspapers staff up their newsrooms, citing, in part, Big Tech’s “devouring” of their local ad market. “For local and underserved communities, local [...]
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 [...]
Participated in an amicus brief (with the Reporters Committee and other amici) filed with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the Court to grant certiorari in Frasier v. Evans. In March 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that the right to record police officers in public in the performance of [...]