TVNewsCheck

With so many new regulations and challenges facing television broadcasters, it’s hard to keep track of all the changes. So how can stations, while tending to their own businesses, keep up with it all? With FCC Watch, an exclusive briefing on some of the major issues at the Federal Communications Commission prepared by David Oxenford and David O'Connor, attorneys in the Washington law offices of Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP.

In alphabetical order, from Aereo to White Spaces/Unlicensed Devices. Some highlights in between include new closed captioning standards for TV and IP content, emergency information, incentive auction/repacking, joint sales agreements, political broadcasting, retransmission consent/must-carry, and regulations on sports blackouts.

In two meetings with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, broadcasting representatives underscored their concern that the FCC's incentive auction and collateral repacking of the TV band would force "many hundreds of broadcasters" to move to new channels and diminish their over-the-air coverage, according to an account of the meeting issued by the representatives.

The meetings may have been the last formal opportunity for the reps to meet with Chairman Wheeler before the FCC adopts its incentive auction order on May 15. The broadcasters' concern about losing coverage stems from the FCC's plan to use a modified version of the OET-69 coverage model in calculating the coverage of stations in the repacking of the band.

Because OET-69 is "hotly contested," the reps said, the FCC should open a separate rulemaking to consider making modifications to it. "Following that rulemaking, if it is determined that some change is both lawful and occurs, then that change (or those changes) must be flagged and no further changes should be made outside of an OET-69 notice and comment rulemaking review."

Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newt Minow and former National Telecommunications and Information Administration chief Henry Geller have urged the agency to plug what critics allege is a loophole in existing political advertising law that allows nonprofit groups to protect the identities of donors for some political broadcast attack ads.

“This pervasive use of secret money undermines the democratic process,” they said in a petition filed at the FCC. “Full sponsorship disclosure is the law.”

They are urging the agency to act, because FCC rules only require disclosure of the actual sponsor of the issue ads -- not also the individuals or groups who donated funds to the sponsor of the ads. In their petition, Minow and Geller insist that the FCC already has the power to require the additional donor disclosure.

“It is the responsibility of the FCC to enforce the long-established rule,” the two said in their petition. “The voting public needs and is entitled to know who is trying to persuade it.”

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has invited incentive auction stakeholders to meet with him personally to take their best shots at his proposed rules for the auctions -- before the agency adopts the regulations as widely expected on May 15 -- but at least some broadcasters are complaining that their meeting with the chairman appears to be little more than window dressing.

“On some levels, it’s an insult,” says one broadcast group representative, of the planned April 22 meeting between Chairman Wheeler and representatives of the National Association of Broadcasters, the TV networks, public broadcasters, network affiliate and station group representatives. “It’s hard to believe this will be a meaningful feedback session,” the station group rep added, of the half-hour session. “It will take half that time for everybody to go around and introduce themselves. What’s the point of dragging us in there?”

NAB coalition members, who have been decidedly unenthusiastic about the auctions from the get-go, are complaining in part because their half-hour “feedback” session with the chairman is allegedly too short to provide for substantive discussion -- and appears to be taking place after the chairman has already forwarded his rule recommendations to his fellow commissioners.

Broadcasters are expressing concern that the timetable proposed by the Federal Communications Commission to repack TV spectrum following the auction to wireless carriers is unworkable and that the consequences for failure to meet the deadlines under consideration are too severe.

The proposals include a 39-month window to complete channel relocation following the completion of the auction. Failure by a broadcaster to finish the channel change in that time will result in that station going dark until the work is completed.

Another proposal states that if a station is unable to complete the channel change within a year of going dark, it will be required to forfeit its broadcast license.

The order, expected to go to the commissioners for approval at their May or June open meeting, will address what the reorganized 600 MHz band will look like, provide details about the auction process, lay out the impact of the auction on broadcasters, including the repack, the reimbursement process and time line, and what happens after the repack.

In its March 31 ruling giving broadcasters two years to unwind joint sales agreements used to get around the long-standing ban against owning two stations in small and medium markets, the Federal Communications Commission said it would consider requests for waivers.

But the text of the ruling erects a high bar for broadcasters seeking such waivers. Broadcasters must show that the JSA and any "related agreements or interests" do not provide them "with the opportunity, ability and incentive to exert significant influence over the programming or operations of the brokered station," the FCC says.

The FCC says that it "will take into account the totality of the circumstances in order to assess whether strict compliance with the rule is inconsistent with the public interest." The FCC also says that it will consider waiver requests on "an expedited basis," recognizing that some requests will come in the context of larger station deals that are time sensitive.

In his National Association of Broadcasters’ Show keynote, NAB President Gordon Smith wondered why the Federal Communications Commission hadn’t developed a National Broadcast Plan to keep broadcasting strong.

"Why is there no focus to foster innovation and investment in broadcasting to ensure our business continues to be a world leader alongside our broadband industries?"

Why indeed? Smith wasn't really calling for a National Broadcast Plan. He was just pointing out that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and his predecessor Julius Genachowski seem to have taken sides, promoting broadband and ignoring -- or worse, hobbling -- broadcasting.

In addition to the millions spent on the National Broadband Plan, he said, the FCC has also opened separate inquiries on how to foster investment in broadband. "All the while, the FCC has continued to regulate broadcasters as if the world is stuck in the 1970s."

With social media testing journalism, newspeople have to maintain the industry’s core virtues -- fairness, accuracy and the like -- to maintain ethics in reporting, a group of industry leaders said.

“We don’t like to be told that Twitter kicked the mainstream media’s butt. I think that gets to journalists,” said Internet Broadcasting’s Scott Libin, chair of the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) ethics committee. “But we need to be aware of that and develop our own standards, which includes being right even if it doesn’t mean being first.”

Libin, along with Michigan Radio’s Vince Duffy, a past RTDNA chairman, and WDEL-AM Wilmington (DL)’s Chris Carl, the current chairman, said it is becoming increasingly difficult for journalists to maintain ethical reporting practices, largely because of the pressures imposed by social media.

Social media, particularly Twitter, is testing journalistic standards by pushing out large amounts, though often unconfirmed, information that reporters are expected to compete with, they said. Libin said the problems that arise from social media -- from the abundance of unconfirmed reports, to the demand on reporters to have the correct information first -- are not wholly new, but journalists need to protect themselves from getting swept up in them.

The annual gathering rebounds from recession blues, but are the TV industry and the show equipped to handle new challenges?

Perhaps the most important thing to come out of the National Association of Broadcasters’ gathering in Las Vegas is that both the television industry and the NAB seem to have a profound understanding of these questions and are responding in ways aimed at positioning television broadcasters for future success.

Pearl, the consortium of eight TV groups formed in 2010 to investigate and test new digital technologies, will launch a trial of interactive television in Atlanta, Cleveland and Orlando (FL), during live newscasts.

The interactive TV trial, which gives viewers watching on LG Smart TVs in the three markets access to enhanced news content and advertising, will continue.

To access the interactive television content, viewers must first complete a “double opt-in,” by agreeing via the television’s LifePlus smart TV interface and then clicking on screen during newscasts to launch interactive services. The back-channel from the LG Smart TV to station servers providing interactive content will be via the Internet.