WASHINGTON—In the runup to the Federal Communications Commission’s planned Aug. 6 vote to relax station-ownership rules, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has published an opinion piece arguing only Congress can change those rules.

In an article published on website The Daily Wire, the former Texas congressman described how Congress ended up putting the 39% ownership cap into the Fiscal Year 2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act and his important role in attaching that provision to the legislation.

That history is important because that provision has already been the focus of arguments over the FCC’s recent proposal to change station ownership rules. While FCC Chair Brendan Carr and the National Association of Broadcasters have asserted the agency’s authority to change the rules, opponents like FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez and others have cited that provision as proof only Congress can change the rules.

In the article, DeLay comes down firmly on the side of congressional authority, arguing that regulatory agencies can’t modify laws created by Congress.

“I am a Republican,” he concluded. “I support deregulation and the Trump administration. But my ultimate loyalty rests with the Constitution, which gives certain prerogatives to Congress. Regulatory agencies cannot defy or modify laws enacted by Congress. If Chairman Carr wants to raise the statutory cap, he should ask Congress to pass a law giving him authority to do that.”

DeLay represented Texas’s 22nd Congressional District from 1985 until 2006 and served as House majority leader from 2003 to 2005.

WASHINGTON—In a new filing, the ABC-owned stations continued their blistering critique of the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to order eight stations to undergo an early license renewal process.

In a July 29 filing, the station group blasted the agency for attempting to censor news coverage critical of the Trump administration and for being part of a larger effort by the administration to create “a media industry too fearful of official reprisal to report the news freely”

In the filing, ABC calls on the FCC to “deny the Petitions to Deny, or alternatively, dismiss these early renewal proceedings as untimely and unwarranted.”

The filing also noted widespread public support for the stations, with around 95% of 153,318 comments filed backing the stations. Those included approximately 375 community organizations supporting the license renewals, and 236 elected officials in 81 letters of support.

The lawyers signing the July 29 filing also indicated that Disney continues to bulk up its legal team as it prepares to take the issue to the courts if the FCC takes action against the stations.

Beth Wilkinson as a signatory in this filing alongside Paul Clement and Jennifer Tatel. The legal team is led by Horacio Gutierrez, senior executive vice president, chief legal and global affairs officer of The Walt Disney Company.

“For the first time in history, the Federal Communications Commission has ordered an entire group of local television stations commonly owned with a broadcast network to undergo simultaneous license renewal proceedings well before their current licenses expire,” the filing complained. “That makes these proceedings extraordinary and unprecedented. There is no question why the Commission is singling out these eight stations: Each is owned by ABC, and the Administration has openly and repeatedly called for the revocation of ABC’s licenses, because it dislikes the content and viewpoints expressed on ABC network programs.”

The filing also stressed that the “outpouring of support for the Stations has been unprecedented for a license renewal proceeding [with]...over 95% support [for] the Stations” and noted that more than 275 community organizations and advocacy groups have filed in support of ABC’s broadcast license renewals or urging the FCC to preserve the routine process, compared to around five or six groups opposing the renewals.

The filing also devoted considerable space showing that “these Stations have established deep connections with their local communities—New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham [N.C.] and Fresno [Calif.]—and serve millions of viewers with award-winning original journalism, life-saving coverage during emergencies, local news stories, and locally tailored programming…Seven of the eight Stations rank first in viewership in their local markets for local news, and WABC has consistently been the most-watched local television station in the country.”

It also complained that the early license renewal is part of an effort by the FCC to crack down on content critical of the Trump Administration.

“[T]he FCC has spent the last 18 months searching for some pretext for revoking the Stations’ licenses,” it said. “The Commission has found none, because the Stations easily meet the standard for license renewal—which under the law means that the Commission cannot revoke their licenses or order a hearing on their renewal applications.”

“The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price,” the filing said. “Across the government, regulatory and contracting carrots and sticks have been trained on other disfavored speakers. The tools vary; the objective does not: a media industry too fearful of official reprisal to report the news freely.”

It also stressed that denying the licenses for violations of FCC rules is an “extreme sanction.”

“Even if any violation were ever substantiated, the Commission has a graduated set of well-established remedies far short of the corporate death penalty of license non-renewal,” the stations complained. “That the agency reached first for the most extreme sanction in its arsenal, before making any finding at all, reveals its true objective: to chill not only ABC, but every broadcaster watching.”

In separate comments, Demciratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez also noted the widespread public support for the stations. As previously reported, more than 150,000 comments were received in the docket, with more than 100,000 in the last 30 days.

“When given the chance to weigh in on whether to allow the FCC to continue its campaign of censorship and control, the American public showed up in a big way, and the vast majority who spoke up delivered the same message," Gomez said. "They believe in the value of their local news, they trust those who cover their communities, and they understand that the FCC has no business deciding who is a journalist and what counts as real news. A small number of partisan voices tried to hijack this process into a referendum on a network they dislike, but the public refuses to let local stations become collateral damage in the FCC's political games. The FCC has no authority to police the ideological balance of the airwaves, and no matter what this Commission does next, the record now makes clear that this was never a genuine search for the public interest.”

WASHINGTON—The National Association of Broadcasters has filed comments rebutting arguments made by a variety of groups who have urged the FCC not to renew the broadcast licenses of eight ABC-owned stations.

The filing stressed that denying the ABC-owned stations their licenses would violate First Amendment rights, potentially censor news coverage and threaten the financial future of the broadcast industry.

NAB's filing was made in response to "petitions to deny" filed by outside organizations seeking to block the license renewals of ABC's eight owned-and-operated television stations

FCC Chair Brendan Carr has repeatedly said that the FCC would like to strengthen the financial stability of local broadcasters so they can expand their local news coverage. He has also regularly cited that goal in announcing FCC initiatives relating to broadcast sports rights, the power of broadcast networks over affiliates and the need to end ownership caps on station groups.

“Contrary to many renewal opponents’ claims, [the station renewal process]...is not designed to be an open-ended vehicle for reviewing every aspect of a licensee’s or its corporate affiliates’ businesses, resolving claims committed to other agencies and courts, or second-guessing constitutionally protected editorial decisions,” the NAB complained. “The filings opposing renewal of the ABC stations’ licenses stray well beyond these statutory boundaries. They invite the Commission to evaluate whether and how the stations covered news and public affairs, which is precisely the type of editorial judgment protected by the First Amendment and Section 326’s prohibition against censorship. Yet none of the filers makes the prima facie showing required to establish that any programming aired by the stations violated the Communications Act, the FCC’s rules, or the stations’ public interest obligations.”

“The Commission expressly limits its consideration of non-FCC misconduct to four specific areas of adjudicated conduct, none of which are implicated by the renewal opponents,” the NAB added. “Additionally, Section 309(k)(1) directs the Commission to evaluate the performance of each station during its license term – not unrelated activities involving a station owner’s theme parks, film and television studios, streaming platforms, or other non-station operations. Allowing such allegations to influence the renewal determination would disregard the statutory text and established Commission precedent and would transform a focused review of station performance into a wide-ranging investigation of an entire corporate enterprise, outside the FCC’s jurisdiction. This is exactly what the Commission wanted to avoid when denying challenges to FOX 29 Philadelphia, WTXF-TV’s renewal application just two years ago.”

“Importantly, the uncertainty engendered by use of early license renewals will inevitably discourage investment in the broadcast industry,” the filing also stressed.

“Broadcasters already struggle to obtain needed investment capital for a variety of reasons, including their lack of tangible, physical collateral, given that their primary assets are government licenses that must be periodically renewed. Even a limited number of early license call-ins will appear to investors and lenders as undermining the stability of those broadcast industry assets necessary for all stations to remain functioning businesses…No license had been called for early renewal since 1972, demonstrating that this procedure is unnecessary to ensure effective enforcement of and broadcaster compliance with FCC rules. For these reasons, the FCC should reconsider its use of the rule in this instance and consider eliminating the rule altogether.”

“In short, NAB urges the Commission to apply existing FCC precedent and the governing constitutional and statutory limits and to focus the proceeding on the question Congress made dispositive: whether each station served the viewing public in its community over the term of its license,” the NAB concluded.

The full filing is available here.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commissions’ controversial decision to order an early review of broadcast stations licenses owned by Disney’s ABC broadcast network has now attracted more than 150,000 comments, with more than 100,000 being received in the last 30 days.

At 1 p.m. ET, July 29, 151,523 comments had been received, with 100,801 received in the 30 days before July 29.

That made proceeding number 26-131 by far the most active docket in the FCC’s electronic filing system during the last 30 days.

The second most active proceeding in the last 30 days was the FCC's probe into whether ABC’s “The View” talk show counted as a Bona Fide News Interview Program and thus is exempt from equal time rules. This proceeding, 26-124, has attracted 78,720 comments with 19,053 received in the last 30 days.

By way of contrast, the third most active docket in the last 30 days had only 385 comments.

A large number of comments in the license renewal proceeding were in favor of renewing the licenses, as were the comments relating to “The View.”

The unusually high volume of comments, something not seen since the 21.7 million comments filed with the FCC during the controversy over net neutrality, was largely triggered by ABC's decision to air ads on "The View" urging viewers to defend the program and the stations.

Filings by the NAB, the NRB and other broadcasters have generally been in favor of the ABC station renewals and opposed to the early renewal process. A number of former high-level FCC officials have also attacked the FCC's order triggering an early renewal investigation.

While a host of progressive groups have weighed in on the issue by attacking the FCC for attempting to censor content critical of the Trump administration, some conservative groups have also been critical.

Recently, Fox News reported that “Center for Individual Freedom, Citizens Against Government Waste and Americans for Tax Reform, penned a letter to [FCC Chair] Carr…urging the chairman to avoid setting a precedent that could hurt non-liberal organizations in the future.”

"Our concern is that establishing precedents of non-routine renewal creates a powerful lever that future FCCs — including ones hostile to conservative, religious, or otherwise disfavored broadcasters — would be all too willing to pull," the letter said according to Fox News.

WASHINGTON—In the runup to a August 7 vote on a Federal Communications Commission’s proposal to change ownership rules for broadcast station groups, the pay TV-backed American Television Alliance (ATVA) met with commissioners and staff to oppose the changes.

In a July 27 meeting with Marcus Maher of Commissioner Olivia Trusty’s office and a July 24 meeting with Deena Shetler of Commissioner Anna Gomez’s office, ATVA raised “significant concerns” about the proposal, saying it would increase “retransmission consent fees” and cause “higher consumer bills”.

In a letter describing the meetings, Michael Nilsson, counsel to the ATVA “pointed out inconsistencies between the Draft Order, which directs parties to raise retransmission consent issues in individual transactions, and the Media Bureau’s decisions in individual transactions, which direct parties to instead raise such issues in rulemakings of general applicability.”

The group also objected “to the Draft Order on policy grounds, and believe it is inconsistent with Administration efforts to lower consumer prices. We also have fully briefed our view that Congress did not give the Commission authority to modify or eliminate the national cap.”

“ATVA’s position is that national (and local) consolidation among stations affiliated with the Big Four networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC) generally results in higher retransmission consent fees,” the letter concluded. “We believe that we have submitted sufficient evidence regarding national consolidation in this rulemaking to demonstrate this point, which should (at a minimum) give the Commission pause before permitting more national consolidation.”

The full letter can be found here.

NAB officials recently met with FCC officials to support the changes.

WASHINGTON—NAB officials continued their push to end strict ownership caps on station groups during a recent meeting with Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Olivia Trusty and her Senior Legal Advisor Marcus Maher.

During the July 23 meeting, which was disclosed in a July 27 filing with the agency, NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt, NAB chief legal officer Rick Kaplan, and others others urged Commissioner Trusty to support replacement of the rigid 39 percent national TV cap with an approach that would give the Commission flexibility to approve TV station transactions that serve the public interest, while preserving its authority to review all transactions to guard against the possibility that a TV station merger could raise public interest concerns.

In addition, the NAB stressed the importance of expeditious FCC action on the pending 2022 quadrennial ownership review, given the vital need for elimination (or at least substantial reform) of the 30-year-old local radio ownership caps.

The filing noted that the NAB’s representatives began by reemphasizing the urgent need to repeal the analog-era national TV ownership limit.

“The current national TV rule dates from a time before the emergence and rapid growth of video streaming services, social media giants, massive digital advertising platforms, and smart devices ranging from phones to televisions,” the filing describing the meeting noted. “That rule is now not only unnecessary but affirmatively harmful. It prevents TV broadcasters – and only broadcasters – from gaining the scale needed to reach more viewers to better attract advertisers, and thereby earn the revenues required to invest in program acquisition and production, including local news, which is vital in today’s highly competitive video and advertising markets.”

“In short, scale allows broadcasters to offer quality services locally, especially in mid-sized and small markets with limited advertising bases, while the 39 percent cap only serves to limit the resources available to pay for localism,” the filing continued.

In terms of the pending quadrennial review, the filing stressed that “[l]ocal radio broadcasters cannot survive in today’s digital audio and advertising markets while hamstrung by three decades-old restrictions on their scale. NAB has documented at length how online and multichannel platforms dominate today’s audio marketplace and how digital advertising providers dominate local ad markets, to the detriment of local radio stations and the services they are able to offer in local communities…As NAB previously explained and the Commission previously recognized, localism is an expensive value, and the radio `industry’s ability to function in the ‘public interest, convenience, and necessity’ is fundamentally premised on its economic viability.’ Today, that viability is in serious question, and the radio industry requires regulatory relief now.”

The full letter describing the meeting is available here.

WASHINGTON—In response to the Federal Communications Commission’s ongoing investigation of whether the ABC-owned broadcast stations should lose their licenses, a number of former high-ranking FCC officials filed comments with the regulator attacking the probe as an unconstitutional attempt to quash news coverage critical of the Trump administration.

The filing by 13 former officials accuses FCC Chair Brendan Carr of using the early renewal proceeding as a pretense to punish ABC and Disney for broadcasting speech the Trump administration doesn’t like, calling it “a grave violation of both the Communications Act and the Constitution.”

“This early renewal proceeding follows a sustained campaign by Chairman Carr and the Trump administration of threatening legal sanctions against licensees whose speech President Trump dislikes,” the filing continued. “… [It] is in fact an assault on free speech disguised as regulatory process.”

The filing was signed by Kathryn C. Brown, Rachelle B. Chong, Mark S. Fowler, Jerald N. Fritz, Rosemary Harold, William T. Lake, Ruth Milkman, Dennis R. Patrick, Peter Pitsch, Alfred C. Sikes, Gloria Tristani, Thomas E. Wheeler, and Christopher J. Wright. They include former FCC chairs, commissioners, and senior staff who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Some of the petitioners were part of a group that issued similar criticisms of the agency in November of 2025 in a filing asking the agency to rescind it’s so-called “news distortion” policy.

That petition was dismissed in June on procedural grounds.

The filing stems from a controversial push by the FCC to regulate content based on the public interest standards of broadcast station licenses.

That has led to investigations into ABC programs like “The View,” and statements by President Trump and Carr threatening the licenses of stations airing “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”. In April, the FCC issued an order requiring ABC to apply for early renewal of its owned stations.

The virtually unprecedented order calls for the review of licenses that are not up for renewal until 2028 at the earliest. Last week, Carr suggested ABC’s editorial decision to stream, rather than broadcast, Trump’s election lie speech could also be penalized.

“Chairman Carr seems to be laboring under the ill-conceived notion that broadcasters have only partial rights to free speech under the First Amendment,” said Mark Fowler, a Republican who served as Chairman of the FCC from 1981 to 1987. “Just because the FCC issues licenses doesn’t make it the speech police. With this senseless early renewal proceeding, Carr is demonstrating that he has completely lost touch not just with the role of the FCC, but also with his own job description.”

“This proceeding is an effort to punish ABC and Disney for poorly disguised political reasons," said Rachelle Chong, a Republican who served as Commissioner of the FCC from 1994 to 1997. “The early review and the allegations are unusual in a typical FCC license review which suggests it is more about a desire to silence speech.”

In November, a number of former officials from this coalition filed a petition with the FCC to consider rescinding the news distortion policy, a tool Chairman Carr has abused to chill free speech in the press. The petitioners are represented by counsel at Protect Democracy and TechFreedom, as well as Andrew Jay Schwartzman and Gigi Sohn.

The full filing is available here.

LYNDONVILLE, N.Y.—Digital Alert Systems is reporting that its DASDEC Emergency Alert System (EAS) platform supports the new password requirements recently adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), enabling users to comply with the new rules through capabilities that are built into the system.

The announcement follows the Federal Communications Commission’s adoption of FCC 26-38, which establishes new cybersecurity requirements for Emergency Alert System (EAS) participants, including a requirement that passwords be at least 15 characters long. All current versions of DASDEC software already support passwords up to 16 characters, enabling users to meet the new requirement immediately without installing software updates or waiting for new password-management features.

FCC 26-38, the Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking establishing the new cybersecurity password requirements, requires EAS participants to comply within 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. While the publication date has not yet been announced, DASDEC customers are already equipped to meet the new password requirement using capabilities built into current versions of the platform.

“Cybersecurity has been a core design principle for DASDEC for many years, not merely a response to changing regulations,” said a spokesperson for Digital Alert Systems. “The FCC’s new password requirement aligns with established security best practices that our customers have already been able to implement. Our goal has always been to provide broadcasters, cable operators and other EAS participants with practical security tools that help protect these critical public safety systems.”

Beyond password length, DASDEC incorporates multiple layers of security designed to strengthen access control. The platform requires users to replace the factory-default password upon first sign-in, blocks common and prohibited passwords, prevents password reuse and warns administrators when passwords are more than 180 days old. DASDEC also locks accounts after multiple unsuccessful login attempts, helping slow automated brute-force attacks.

For organizations managing multiple facilities or EAS devices, DASDEC supports enterprise Single Sign-On (SSO) integrations. SSO enables administrators to manage user authentication centrally, assign role-based permissions, monitor access and quickly revoke credentials across connected systems when personnel changes occur. By reducing the need to maintain separate passwords for individual devices, SSO also encourages the use of stronger, more complex credentials throughout the organization.

More information is available on the company’s website.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission has adopted rules to auction 160 megahertz of spectrum in the upper C-band (3.98-4.14 GHz) by July 2027.

During the July Open Meeting when the Report & Order was adopted FCC Chair Brendan Carr said that the agency is now “on track to complete an auction in less than twelve months from now.”

Speaking at the July meeting, FCC Chair Brendan Carr said "our decision today sets the stage for the FCC to run an auction of prime, mid-band spectrum next year—exceeding the 100 megahertz minimum established in the law. The lower C-band, which the FCC freed up during the previous Trump Administration, brought 5G, fixed wireless, and other innovations to countless Americans. Now, in auctioning the Upper C-Band that sits next door, we will unify the two bands to create an enormous landmass of 440 megahertz of mid-band spectrum."

"Freeing up this spectrum drives down prices, raises speeds, and enhances competition," he said. "Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, America will once again lead the world in wireless. The One Big Beautiful Bill made certain that we will put this prime, mid-band spectrum to its best use through another major FCC auction."

The idea of auctioning more C-band spectrum had been opposed by the NAB and broadcasters and is likely to usher in a period of rapid technological shift from satellites using C-band spectrum to deliver content to solutions relying on IP distribution.

In June, North American Broadcast Association director-general Rebecca Hanson told TV Tech complained “[t[here are no viable alternatives that match what C-band delivers.”

As previously reported by TV Tech’s Fred Dawson, Hanson also stressed that “[w]e have members already suffering after the first auction,” citing evidence submitted in an FCC filing by the North American Spectrum Alliance, an independent project launched last year under NABA management. “I hesitate to say broadcasters will be just fine if we can keep 80 GHz. Current constraints are already having an impact.”

During the July 22, 2026 vote on the Report and Order, Order of Proposed Modification, and Order on Reconsideration (FCC 26-46) setting up plans and rules for the auction, FCC Chair Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty approved the measures; Commissioner Anna Gomez approved in part and dissented in part.

The FCC Order plans to bridge the Lower C-band and Upper C-band to create a single, harmonized “super band” spanning 440 megahertz (3.70-4.14 GHz)—a gigantic swath of licensed, 5G-grade mid-band spectrum that no other industrialized country can boast.

The FCC also reported that it will auction 60% more spectrum than the 100 megahertz minimum required under law, a decision that will raise tens of billions of dollars more for the U.S. Treasury to support deficit reduction and national priorities.

The FCC also stressed that the auction is on track to close by the statutory deadline of July 2027, and the FCC’s new rules ensure that the Upper C-Band can be lit up for most Americans before the end of 2030—faster than originally expected.

Wireless companies praised the FCC for the Order and the agencies plans to hold more spectrum auctions in 2028.

T-Mobile CEO Srini Gopalan said “the best wireless service in the world and the jobs that come with it require government and industry to keep our foot on the gas as we accelerate 6G. That’s exactly what Chairman Carr did this morning by adopting pro-6G rules for the C-Band 2.0 auction and committing to a 2.7 GHz auction in 2028. The auction of two “super bands” of mid-band spectrum in the next two years will extend America’s wireless leadership and will deliver real results for Americans during this Administration.”

The FCC described additional benefits, details and features of the Order, Order of Proposed Modification, and Order on Reconsideration adopted on July 22 as follows:

• The Impact: This plan puts America on a path towards massive gains that could result in at least $422 billion in GDP, 2.4 million new jobs, and $621 billion in consumer surplus by freeing up additional spectrum.
• The ‘Super Band’: The 2027 upper C-band transition will ultimately result in a 440 megahertz contiguous block of spectrum for the provision of wireless services by combining the Lower C-band (3.7-3.98 GHz) and now the Upper C-band (3.98-4.14 GHz).
• The Auction: The 2027 upper C-band auction will make available 160 megahertz of valuable mid-band spectrum through the auction of 3,248 new flexible-use spectrum licenses throughout the contiguous United States. The rules allow winning bidders to commence wireless services in the upper C-band starting in December 2030 for the top-75 markets in the contiguous United States, and in any remaining markets starting July 2031.
• The Incumbents: The rules set forth a framework that will fairly and expeditiously transition incumbent satellite operations out of the reconfigured portion of the upper C-band. Total incentives to satellite operators will be less in aggregate than those paid after the lower C-band auction, but roughly commensurate given the lower amount of spectrum being cleared.
• The Neighborhood: The new rules take steps to ensure a continued successful coexistence between wireless operations throughout the C-band and radio altimeters in the nearby 4.2–4.4 GHz band, and establishes rebates to support the domestic aviation sector in its efforts to retrofit and upgrade the performance of these critical safety tools.
• The Coordination: The item reflects extensive input and coordination from the FCC’s federal partners, including through OMB’s OIRA and NTIA’s IRAC review processes. In particular, this effort has been closely coordinated with the FAA, which is undertaking a parallel rulemaking to greatly enhance the robustness and signal rejection capabilities of radio altimeters.
• The Incentive Payments: The item proposes that winning bidders will be responsible for transition costs and incentive payments for in-band licensees, as well as rebates for the purchase and installation of upgraded radio altimeters. This total budget is well below the low-end of expected proceeds from auctioning the 160 megahertz.
• The Process: Following the Commission’s successful lower C-band auction in 2020, the FCC began work last year – under its renewed auction authority and upper C-band auction remit pursuant to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – to establish the framework necessary to successfully put this spectrum to more intensive use. The Commission built on an original Notice of Inquiry to adopt a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking last November, and today adopted final rules. In the next few days, Commission staff will seek comment on auction procedures before establishing the final procedures in preparation for the auction.

The initial Report and Order, Order of Proposed Modification, and Order on Reconsideration is available here. The final document was not yet available on July 22.

TV Tech will add reactions as they come in.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau, has approved the sale of WTVQ-DT, in Lexington, Kentucky from WTVQTV, LLC, an wholly-owned subsidiary of Morris Network, Inc. to Scripps.

The approval of the license transfer follows a March announcement by Scripps that it would pay $15.8 million for the ABC affiliate. The acquisition of WTVQ creates a duopoly with Scripps’ NBC affiliate, WLEX in Lexington, Kentucky.

The July 20 Order, denied a petition by DirecTV. It opposed the license transfer by arguing the combination would create “direct economic harm” by forcing it to pay higher prices for programming.

“[W]e find that the proposed transaction fully complies with the Commission’s rules, including the post-Zimmer Radio Local Television Ownership Rule, and that there are no issues or potential public interest harms identified in the record that would require further consideration,” the FCC concluded. “Notably, while the Commission will consider transaction-specific objections to otherwise rule-compliant transactions, we find that DIRECTV has failed to advance any such objections. Accordingly, we conclude that grant of the Application will result in public interest benefits and serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity.”

The full Order is available here.

WASHINGTON—Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced a tentative agenda for the August Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, August 6, 2026.

While the vote on replacing TV station ownership rules will certainly have the biggest impact on broadcasters, the agency will also be considering opening up more than 200 megahertz of unlicensed spectrum and other items.

The FCC described the items as follows:

• Opening Up More Than 200 Megahertz of Unlicensed Spectrum for D2D Offerings. The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would explore new avenues to allow innovative unlicensed wireless devices to communicate directly with satellites. The item would propose and seek comment on use of certain frequencies available under part 15 of the Commission's rules for communications between Earth and space, including direct-to-device (D2D) services. The NPRM would also propose to clarify that use of part 15 unlicensed devices is permitted within FCC-authorized spacecraft, and seek comment on other scenarios where part 15 unlicensed devices may safely operate in space. (ET Docket No. 26-169)
• Maximizing Efficiencies in Universal Service Administration. The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would propose to strengthen the Commission’s management and administration of the Universal Service Fund (USF) by reforming and improving USF administration processes, the structure of USF administration, operating costs associated with USF administration, and the impact of USAC’s Board of Directors on USF administration. (WC Docket No. 26-173)
• Replacing the National Television Multiple Ownership Rule. The Commission will consider a Report and Order that would remove artificial barriers to broadcast television’s ability to attract capital and generate revenue, thus enabling broadcast television owners to better fulfill their public interest obligations, including through increased investment in local programming. The Report and Order also enables broadcast television station owners to expand their audience reach, gaining important leverage against national television networks. (MB Docket No. 17-318)
• Promoting Telehealth in Rural America. The Commission will consider a Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would seek comment on several improvements to the Rural Health Care Program intended to reduce administrative burdens on program participants and better administer limited program funding given increased program participation and service costs. The accompanying Order would permit the use of previously approved rural rates for funding year 2027 that would otherwise require approval of a cost-based justification. (WC Docket No. 17-310)

The Open Meeting is scheduled to commence at 10:30 a.m. ET in the Commission Meeting Room of the Federal Communications Commission, 45 L Street, N.E., Washington, D.C.

Open Meetings are streamed live at www.fcc.gov/live.

Documents relating to each item on the agenda are available here.

The FCC publicly releases the draft text of each item expected to be considered at the next Open Commission Meeting. One-page cover sheets are included in the public drafts to help summarize each item. All these materials will be available on the FCC’s Open Meeting page: www.fcc.gov/openmeeting.

WASHINGTON—Representatives of the AWARN Alliance recently met with Federal Communications Commission officials to stress the fact that NextGen TV devices are designed to receive Emergency Alerts and to rebut findings of a study by Weigel Broadcasting that claimed to have found problems with the ability of ATSC 3.0 devices to receive crucial emergency alerts.

The July 13 meeting, which was summarized in a July 15 letter to the FCC, involved Dave Arland and Kathryn Barnhart of the AWARN Alliance, Media Media Bureau staff (Hillary DeNigro, Lyle Elder, Mark Colombo, Maria Mullarkey, and Evan Baranoff), Allison Howell and Patrick Harty (legal advisor and staff for Commissioner Brendan Carr) and Marcus Maher (legal advisor for Commissioner Olivia Trusty.)

During the meeting the AWARN representatives stressed that their “mission is to save lives and protect communities by leveraging advanced emergency alerting, news, and information powered by the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard” and that they were meeting with the FCC “to clear up a misrepresentation made about the ability of ATSC 3.0 receivers to properly receive and display Emergency Alert System (EAS) messaging.”

AWARN also stressed that “the voluntary Advanced Emergency Information (AEI) capability of the ATSC 3.0 standard is a useful and effective supplement to the EAS already in place, which reaches millions of viewers with broadcast signals. As the AWARN Alliance has previously stated, we reiterated that local stations are the best option for keeping local audiences informed during specific emergencies, including providing geolocation targeted information, maps, multilingual and sign language services, and other capabilities that are anticipated in the ATSC 3.0 standard.”

In addition, AWARN argued that “more than 18.5 million NextGen TV sets and converter boxes can receive EAS Alerts…[C]ontrary to the impression delivered by Weigel Broadcasting during their recent meeting and subsequent ex parte filing , virtually every ATSC 3.0 receiver can easily tune to ATSC 3.0 broadcasts with an antenna and without an internet connection.”

They also rebutted Weigel’s contention that “an internet connection is a requirement for ATSC 3.0 reception…this is not a factual statement. We noted that EAS signaling is present in the actual linear broadcast, and that supplemental data can be delivered through optional AEI capabilities of the standard, which could rely on both broadcast and internet-delivered information. But if a viewer is simply watching a linear program, we stated that viewer will get EAS alerts.”

AWARN also complained that “receivers `tested’ by Weigel were “cherry-picked” to emphasize their point” and that they focused on just two products.

Although AWARN did not mention this, one of those products, HDHomeRun has since upgraded its boxes so they can receive alerts without an internet connection.

“Unmentioned in the selected Weigel reception results is the fact that internet service is not required for ATSC 3.0 reception with the least expensive NextGen TV receivers now available to consumers, including set-top receivers manufactured by ADTH and Zinwell…Further, we pointed out that the submitted analysis only considered advanced “gateway” set-top devices with retail prices that exceed $200, designed for consumers who have broadband connections and who also desire advanced program guides and multi-room viewing capability.”

AWARN also noted that the Zapperbox device that Weigel “tested” is the only device on the market that requires an internet connection to decrypt content, and a Zapperbox software update to change this behavior is already in the works.”

The full discussion is available here.

WASHINGTON—Forty-seven House Republicans have sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission's Chair Brendan Carr urging the agency “review of the TV Parental Guidelines to ensure that children are not being indoctrinated with radical gender ideology behind their parents' backs.”

The July 13 letter was sent in response to an ongoing FCC probe into how existing content ratings for children might be updated. In announcing the effort with a Public Notice seeking comments on the issue in April, the FCC asked whether the ratings should be revised to include warnings about “transgender” content.

That has prompted a number of filings by conservatives and conservative groups asking the FCC to flag LGBTQ+ content and transgender content.

The NAB and the MPA have filed comments defending the current system, while progressive and liberal groups blasted the FCC probe as an attempt to censor LGBTQ voices.

In its filing Free Press wrote that the FCC proceeding is a “meritless and invalid attempt” to “chill LGBTQ+ content with which its current Chairman may disagree.”

In the July 13 letter from Republican House members blasted Democrats for defending transgender rights and contended that “American children and families are under attack. Parents deserve full transparency from television and streaming services regarding unwanted sexual content in programming rated for children, and it is our intention to provide them with the tools and information they need to make informed choices for their families.”

“Democratic opposition to protecting our children is divorced from reality,” the letter said. “Sex-rejecting content should never be targeted at children. Democrats go so far as to state explicitly in their letter [to the FCC] that transgender content in media will `improve self-acceptance’ among children experiencing gender dysphoria and confusion. American families do not need to expose their children to indoctrination, which can cause mental health disorders. We should be fighting to uphold families' rights to protect their children from harmful ideology, not grooming children behind their parents' backs in the name of `self-acceptance.’”

The letter also noted that two of the Republicans had introduced legislation on the issue that “would codify the FCC's efforts by requiring neutral disclaimers indicating that a program contains certain gender ideological themes.”

The full letter is available here.

WASHINGTON—In a move that could fundamentally reshape the broadcast industry and usher in a wave of consolidation, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on August 6 on an Order that repeals the FCC’s 39% national television multiple ownership rule.

Chairman Brendan Carr announced the move in a op-ed in Breitbart and the decision was immediately applauded by broadcasters and the NAB who have lobbied for decades to eliminate the rule.

The Commission, however, won’t be voting on an outright appeal of the 39% national television multiple ownership rule. Rather, the FCC will vote to replace the national cap with a granular, case-by-case review.

The agency said that this will allow the FCC to approve deals that promote the public interest while allowing the agency to reject any deals that do not meet that standard. This action will foster a competitive media market, enhance localism, and promote investment in trusted sources of news and information.

In the op-ed, Carr blasted national media and broadcast networks by arguing that the American public had lost trust in their “partisan” news coverage and described the decision to eliminate the ownership rules as a way to reduce their market power.

“New York and Hollywood interests have steamrolled those local TV stations and the broader media market in recent years in ways that run directly counter to the regulatory framework that Congress and the FCC put in place,” Carr said.

Carr also placed the decision in the context of his ongoing attacks on what he sees as "biased" programming because larger local station groups would have more power to preempt network programming.

"Local TV stations today lack the power to preempt or refuse to air national programming that does not fit their communities’ values," he wrote. "National programmers are now charging local TV more and more for the privilege of airing their shows. Local TV stations are struggling to find the resources to produce live, trusted, and local news programming. Many local broadcast TV stations are getting hollowed out as a result and turning into little more than mouthpieces for programming produced in New York and Hollywood. That is not what Congress or the FCC intended."

The FCC's lone Democrat Anna Gomez signaled her intention of voting against the proposed Order in a statement saying it was bad policy and unlawful because the FCC does not have the authority to lift the cap.

“This unlawful effort to hand control of the public airwaves to billionaire buddies of this administration will destroy local newsrooms, silence community reporting, and drive-up costs for the American families who depend on local stations for news and emergency alerts," she said. "A free and diverse media landscape depends on real limits on how much of the public airwaves any one company can control, and this FCC is now poised to allow local broadcasters to sell those airwaves off to the highest bidder. Congress set the 39 percent national ownership cap in federal law, and only Congress has the authority to raise or eliminate it. The Commission cannot waive away that limit simply because these corporate behemoths want to get out from under it.”

Broadcasters, however applauded the proposal.

In response to the announcement, NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt said “NAB applauds Chairman Carr and the FCC for moving forward with consideration of an order to eliminate the national television ownership cap. This reflects the understanding that decades-old ownership restrictions that apply only to broadcasters – and none of our competitors – are out of step with today’s media marketplace.  Eliminating  the  broadcast ownership cap will empower local stations, ensuring they can better compete, invest and serve their communities with the most trusted and freely available news and information, premier sports and entertainment.” 

A spokesperson for Nexstar also praised the upcoming vote by saying, “The FCC's decision to review the national television ownership cap is a welcome and long-overdue step toward bringing broadcast regulation into the modern media marketplace. These rules were last updated before Netflix streamed a single movie, before the first iPhone, and before Instagram existed, and they continue to single out local broadcasters based on a competitive landscape that disappeared with the VCR. No one would suggest limiting the reach of YouTube, Amazon, or CNN, yet local broadcasters are still forced to compete under rules written for a different century. Modernizing these outdated regulations will help ensure broadcasters can continue investing in local journalism and providing the free, trusted news and information that communities across America rely on every day.”

In a statement, Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley said that: “It should not be controversial to suggest that changed facts should lead to changed rules. We commend Chairman Carr for considering action to modernize the FCC’s rules setting the national ownership cap – and for his continued leadership in looking at ways to preserve local news by taking proactive steps to empower local broadcasters. Given the undeniable change and disruption to the media ecosystem, updating these rules to reflect the current landscape is common sense.”

The draft Order was no available when this article was posted on July 15. The FCC said the draft order will be made available on July 16 at https://www.fcc.gov/August2026.

As broadcasters await a decision from the FCC to shut down the current ATSC 1.0 broadcast format, the industry’s leading lobbyist is reiterating its support for ATSC 3.0, (aka “NextGen TV”).

Since last October, when the FCC voted on a proposal to determine a date when to sunset ATSC 1.0, debate has swirled around the timing of the shutdown and what consumer protections will be in place to ensure viewers don’t lose access to free over the air broadcasting. The commission is expected to announce a final decision by the end of 2026.

The NAB, which has promoted NextGen TV as a way for broadcasters to better compete in the increasingly complex TV landscape, told the FCC six months ago that continuing uncertainty over the lack of a date is hampering progress.

“The record developed here confirms that the Commission’s central task is no longer to debate whether NextGen TV is worth pursuing—stakeholders across the ecosystem recognize that it is—but to decide whether the transition will be allowed to succeed through an orderly, coordinated framework, or instead be stranded indefinitely in a regime of regulatory uncertainty and half-measures, all to the detriment of the viewing public,” the NAB said in comments filed with the commission in February.

Currently approximately 76% of U.S. households can receive a NextGen TV signal, according to the ATSC. In April, Pearl TV Group, a consortium of broadcasters and tech suppliers, announced the launch of an initiative to develop consumer converter boxes that could retail for under $60.

The association has also launched a campaign to help preserve live sports on free over the air TV, again noting the increased competition from streaming giants.

The ability to access live sports over free TV, competition from Silicon Valley and the very survival of broadcasting were tied together in NAB’s latest blog. The association also took aim at viewers who criticize the content protection aspects of ATSC 3.0, with many claiming that certain devices on the market don’t carry the necessary software to decode DRM-protected signals.

“ATSC 3.0 includes security and service-protection mechanisms as part of its technical framework, just as modern communications and entertainment platforms routinely protect their content and distribution systems, the NAB said. “There is an important reason for these protections. Broadcasters invest substantial resources to secure sports, entertainment and other high-value programming. They also invest every day in local journalists, meteorologists, production professionals and the technology needed to keep communities informed and safe.”

“Without reasonable safeguards, unauthorized businesses can capture local stations’ signals and resell them at scale without permission or compensation,” the association added.

NAB also criticized the possibility that the broadcast industry could be saddled with outdated technology, impacting its competitiveness.

“Requiring broadcasters to operate a decades-old standard forever would effectively make free, over-the-air television the only major communications platform that is never permitted to modernize,” it said. “That would not protect viewers. Over time, it would leave viewers with an increasingly outdated service while streaming platforms, wireless providers and global technology companies continue to innovate.”

NAB’s latest blog can be accessed here.

A U.S. District Court yesterday denied a stay of the FCC Media Bureau’s approval of the merger of Nexstar and Tegna TV station groups, while a California judge set a trial date for lawsuits filed by DirecTV and state AGs, which are challenging the transaction.

Since announced in August 2025, the merger has faced opposition from other media companies, public interest groups and state attorneys general who filed a lawsuit in March, attempting to block the merger.

The merger, valued at $6.2 billion (when it was announced), would create a behemoth in the local broadcasting industry with 265 full-power television stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia and 132 of the country’s 210 television DMAs.

The acquisition closed in March after approval from the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice.

In its decision announced yesterday, the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. denied a request for stay of the FCC’s approval, noting that harms that could come to the Broadband Communications Association of Pennsylvania and other appellants were “either not irreparable or not certain.” The court noted that a separate preliminary injunction in the Eastern District of California already obligated Nexstar to hold Tegna assets separate, operate stations independently, and maintain existing MVPD relationships.

Meanwhile, a California judge set a trial date of July 9, 2027 in a case that combines appeals to nix the merger from DirecTV and by attorneys general from 12 states. The court also set for discovery to close April 15, 2027 and the final pre-trial conference and hearing for June 23, 2027.

In a tweet on X yesterday, Nexstar said it “looks forward” to having its day in court to defend the deal.

Sage Alerting has issued a technical note regarding Emergency Alert System passwords.

In response to the Federal Communications Commission’s recent rule change, it sent an email to users of the Sage Digital ENDEC model 3644. It applies only to users in the United States.

“Important: If you are changing your ENDEC’s password to meet the new FCC requirements, do not use the ampersand (&) or plus (+) character in your new password,” it states.

The FCC will now require that stations and other EAS participants use a strong password with at least 15 characters. It said to avoid common words or using the same password for other purposes.

Security updates must be installed promptly, and stations must use firewalls or other network segmentation.

“While these rules take effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, these are commonly accepted cybersecurity rules,” Sage wrote. “There is no reason to wait.”

The company said it plans a free software update this year that fixes bugs and will permit the use of & and + in the password.

“You do not need to wait for that update to implement the new password requirements if you avoid those characters.”

The complete report and order is here. And Sage has posted specific guidance for its users here.

This article was intially published by our sister publication Radio World.

WASHINGTON—The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has released newly updated Broadcast Station Self-Inspection Guides for AM, FM and television stations that provide broadcasters with practical guidance for conducting self-inspections of their stations and complying with Federal Communications Commission rules and policies.

NAB and the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) worked together to create the up-to-date, standardized guides for FCC compliance

In addition to helping broadcasters, the guides are also intended to be used by contract inspectors who are part of the Alternative Broadcast Inspection Program, which are administered by most state broadcaster associations.

The guides fill a gap that was created when the FCC stopped publishing self-inspection checklists in 2003 even though the agency has since made significant changes to its rules and policies.

The two organizations said that the guides are a free member benefit to NAB and SBE members. They are available for download from the NAB member portal and from SBE.

The Federal Communications Commission’s probe into whether the daytime talk show “The View” deserves an “bona fide news” exemption from equal time rules governing the appearance of political candidates on broadcast TV has produced an unprecedented 77,611 comments filed with the FCC as of 1 p.m. ET on July 7.

The deadline for comments was Monday July 6. As previously reported the number of comments in the controversial probe exploded after ABC began airing ads on June 22 urging viewers to file comments with the FCC.

The number of comments jumped to nearly 28,000 on June 23 and continued its exponential growth, topping 77,000 when the comment period ended two weeks later.

The ad can be viewed here.

The case stems from a wider policy by the agency to enforce public interest rules on broadcasters deemed to be airing biased news coverage. That enforcement push has produced ongoing investigations by the FCC into coverage of President Trump by stations owned by ABC, CBS and NBC.

Separately, the Media Bureau issued an advisory in January casting doubt on the 20-year-old exemption classifying late-night programming and talk shows as news programs, which means that they are not subject to equal time rules. The advisory said that stations airing `partisan' talk shows and late night programs must comply with equal time rules.

In May, the FCC’s media bureau issued a public notice asking for comments on whether ABC’s “The View” is a “bona fide news interview program” exempt from its equal time rules.

The FCC is also investigating Disney’s ABC for its DEI practices and has also ordered the ABC- owned stations to file for early renewal of their licenses. ABC blasted the early renewal demand as “unconstitutional retaliation” for news coverage that has been critical of the Trump administration.

A number of conservative groups have filed comments arguing that “The View” is biased and should lose the exemption while progressive public interest groups have generally been critical of the FCC’s probe.

Black Women’s Roundtable and National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, for example, said in its comments that "The View" continues to satisfy the same standards as it did in the FCC’s 2002 ruling and that reopening the issue could chill constitutionally protected journalism and disproportionately harm Black audiences.

“While previous Administrations abided by the Communications Act’s prohibition of government censorship of broadcasters, it is abundantly clear that the current Administration has chosen to ignore this provision in its mission to silence the broadcast voices of those with whom it does not agree– and is using the Commission to facilitate this censorship by imposing undue regulatory burdens such as legal requests and investigations of broadcasters,” the group said.

In its comments, Freedom of the Press Foundation argued that because the FCC previously determined that The View is a “bona fide” news program and since nothing has changed about the show, it still is a news program. “Beyond this matter, revoking the bona fide news exemption from `The View’ in these circumstances will open the door for future retaliation, dangling of exemptions, and threats of costly administrative proceedings by the FCC, to encourage capitulation to an administration’s demands for more favorable news coverage or otherwise attempt to shape constitutionally protected speech and editorial decisions.”

More comments from the ACLA, Free Press and others are covered in our earlier story on the issue here.

With the fall football season only two months away, a major regulatory battle with far-reaching implications for the future of high-profile sports and the National Football League on TV is already well underway.

In what could be considered either a regulatory Hail Mary or a politically savvy power play to strengthen their negotiating position in upcoming NFL talks, broadcasters are pushing for legislative and regulatory changes that aim to reverse the ongoing shift of NFL rights from broadcast to streaming platforms.

“Games from the four major professional leagues are now spread across Amazon Prime [Video], Netflix, YouTube TV and Apple TV,” National Association of Broadcasters President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt told a House subcommittee in June. “Fans increasingly need multiple paid subscriptions to watch their favorite teams, and survey after survey shows fans are confused and frustrated. Some estimates suggest that accessing every NFL game over the course of a season would cost a consumer well over $1,000.”

Last Rallying Cry
How Congress or regulators might change current rules to address those complaints or how well any of the proposed changes might weather court challenges remains open to question. But there is little doubt that a powerful coalition of politicians, regulators and people who rarely agree on anything—President Donald Trump, Congressional Democrats and Republicans, the Federal Communications Commission, the Justice Department and long-suffering fans—are upset with the current system.

With the president and members of Congress openly criticizing the NFL, the FCC’s Media Bureau launched a public inquiry in March seeking public comments on how the changing broadcast and sports-rights landscape is impacting consumers. The DOJ followed in April with an antitrust probe of the league.

In a March interview on Fox News Channel, FCC Chair Brendan Carr said the experience of watching sports “has become frustrating over the last several years…It’s more complex; it’s more costly.”

“We’re all for sports leagues getting fair-market value for their product, but right now, they’re benefiting from a very unique antitrust exemption to pool their bargaining together,” he added. “[W]e’re at a tipping point where these leagues can push it so far [in] putting games behind paywalls that they undermine their ability to claim that anti­trust exemption.”

The NFL has so far been keeping a low profile on the controversy. Commissioner Roger Goodell declined to appear in June beside LeGeyt and other witnesses testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform and Antitrust, which is probing the issue.

In a private meeting with FCC staffers in April, NFL executives argued that “100% of NFL games have aired on broadcast television in the home markets of the competing teams” and that their contracts with ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC account for “more than 87% of all NFL games, a number that has varied little in the past two decades,” according to a letter describing the meeting.

In that letter, the NFL also insisted that ending antitrust exemption would mean “higher costs and confusion,” calling its current media distribution policy “good for our fans” and “for local broadcasters.”

Monopoly Money
While much of the consumer debate revolves around the larger issue of sports rights shifting to streaming TV platforms, many of the policy issues and recommendations stem from the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act. One of its key provisions gave the NFL,
Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League an antitrust exemption when negotiating broadcast rights. That exemption allows the leagues to negotiate deals on behalf of individual teams.

Such exemptions were not unprecedented. Nearly 40 years earlier, a 1922 Supreme Court decision gave MLB an antitrust exemption, and there is little doubt that the NFL’s ability to negotiate deals simplified the process of acquiring broadcast rights, which helped the sport and the networks. In 2025, 89 of the top 100 TV programs in the U.S. were NFL games, according to Nielsen.

Critics, however, argue that much has changed since the SBA was passed. In 1960, TV ad revenue (all of which went to broadcasters) totaled only $1.6 billion; this year, linear TV advertising for broadcast and cable is expected to hit $48 billion, a 2,900% increase, and connected TV ad revenues—which primarily go to streaming platforms—will total another $36.9 billion, according to ad agency Media Architects.

Data on the sports business of the late 1950s and early 1960s isn’t very reliable and estimates can vary widely, but the average NFL salary in 1960 was probably $12,000 to $15,000, and total NFL revenues were believed to be around $1 million, mostly from ticket sales. The league’s first post-SBA network deal with CBS in 1962 produced a massive increase in revenue but brought in only about $4.65 million a year, according to the Associated Press. That is a tiny fraction of the $111 billion in revenue produced by the NFL’s current TV contracts, which run through 2033.

Legislative Action Required
With the NFL pushing to extract many more billions from media outlets by renegotiating its current long-term deals, the league’s wealth has attracted increased political scrutiny. In the June House hearings examining potential changes to the SBA, Republicans and Democrats were united in their concerns about the NFL’s distribution strategy that has shifted more games to streaming.

During the hearing, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez expressed serious concerns about how the NFL has sold its media rights and handled its distribution strategy. “The economics of how fans actually watch have shifted in ways that deserve serious attention,” she said, praising the FCC’s decision to probe broadcast sports rights. “For a family trying to follow their team through a full season, the cost of piecing together access across multiple platforms adds up quickly.”

But Gomez, a Democrat, also cautioned the FCC has limited authority to change the current system. “The commission can gather information, raise concerns and call out fouls where it sees them, but any meaningful update to the Sports Broadcasting Act will ultimately require legislative action,” she said.

For its part, the NAB doesn’t want to abolish the antitrust exemptions in the SBA, given the confusion and difficulties that would result in having to negotiate separate deals with all the teams.

“NAB is not asking to eliminate the Sports Broadcasting Act,” LeGeyt told Congress in June. “But this Committee should reaffirm that the SBA applies only to league-wide negotiations with media companies that will distribute games through broadcast television, not lock games behind streaming paywalls.”

How that could work in terms of the media business or the legal system isn’t clear. The major media companies that own the Big Four broadcast networks and ESPN—The Walt Disney Co., Comcast, Fox Corp. and Paramount Global—don’t just have the biggest NFL deals; they also have large streaming subscription services that have bought exclusive rights to stream NFL games in recent years. If approved, Fox’s proposed $22 billion acquisition of Roku in June would allow it to move even more games to streaming.

Nor is it clear how the courts will react to legislation that favors one medium (broadcast) or another (streaming). And if the antitrust exemption is changed, the alternative of having teams negotiating deals rather than leagues could easily fragment rights and cause more confusion than the current system.

Either way, as the NFL pushes to renegotiate its current contracts, expect this regulatory battle to last well into 2027 and beyond.

WASHINGTON—Digital Alert Systems, a major supplier of Emergency Alert System and common alerting protocol equipment and solutions, has filed a letter with the Federal Communications Commission rebutting some of the assertions Weigel Broadcasting has made regarding NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0 and the standard's limitations in delivering emergency alerts.

In a recent filing with the FCC. Weigel released a study contending that the transition to 3.0 broadcasts would cause problems with the public’s ability to receive vital emergency alerts.

Weigel has been a consistent opponent of proposals by the NAB and broadcasters to speed up the transition to ATSC 3.0 and set a firm cutoff date for ATSC 1.0 broadcasts.

In a June 3 meeting with FCC officials, Weigel reiterated its opposition to a mandatory cutoff for ATSC 1.0 broadcasts by arguing that: “(1) ATSC 3.0 makes a free service expensive and simple service complicated; (2) broadcasters may elect to degrade (or not improve) broadcasting in favor of non-broadcast services, such as gambling, pay television services, and private data delivery services; and (3) consumers, primarily those in rural areas underserved in terms of content and connectivity, may be the most harmed by a transition to ATSC 3.0.”

During that meeting, Weigel also “discussed Internet connectivity requirements to receive ATSC 3.0 DRM-encrypted channels” and shared its testing of “low-cost’ converter devices across four television markets. Weigel observed that when these devices weren’t connected to the Internet, EAS messages were not delivered. “In ATSC 1.0, there are no Internet connectivity requirements for EAS,” the broadcaster noted.

That study was strongly criticized by the ATSC 3.0 Security Authority (A3SA) in a June 26 letter that stressed “A3SA-suppported devices are designed to be fully compatible with the Commission’s Emergency Alert System (EAS) and to ensure that emergency alerts are reliably delivered to viewers. That is how the A3SA content protection framework was designed, and that is how it operates across the ATSC 3.0 ecosystem.”

In its FCC filing, Digital Alert Systems took no position DRM issues and praised Weigel for raising “an important and legitimate concern in that viewers must be able to receive essential emergency information over the air, including when broadband service is unavailable, unreliable, unaffordable, or disrupted by the very emergency for which public warning is needed.”

But the July 2 letter stressed that “the issues identified [by Weigel]...appear to relate more to the particular device configurations and options in those two particular products, rather than issues with ATSC 3.0, DRM, or broadcast technologies.”

The letter also attempted to “clarify the technical record insofar that a specific observed converter-device behavior is not read more broadly than the available evidence supports. The referenced ex parte presentation appears to document a particular result involving two converter devices, certain DRM-protected services, and certain offline test conditions. That result does not, by itself, establish that ATSC 3.0 inherently requires Internet connectivity for emergency alerting, that content protection necessarily interferes with EAS, or that a mandatory 19.3 Mbps `Broadcast PLP’ is the technical answer to the behavior described.”

Additional details can be found in the original filing, which is available here.

WASHINGTON—FCC commissioner Anna Gomez has issued a sharply worded statement criticizing the agency’s Media Bureau for dismissing a petition for special relief seeking a repeal of its “news distortion” policies.

The November 2025 petition, filed by a bipartisan group of former FCC officials, asked the agency to rescind the news distortion policy, which has “significantly chilled and otherwise altered the content of broadcasters’ speech, undermining First Amendment values.”

On June 22, Acting Media Bureau Chief Alexander Sanjenis dismissed the petition on procedural grounds without attempting to defend the FCC’s authority to investigate broadcasters for violations of “news distortion” policies or the First Amendment issues raised by its recent interest in enforcing those policies.

“Petitioners have failed to present their request in a manner that is cognizable under our rules,” Sanjenis wrote in a two-page June 22 letter. “ACCORDINGLY, it is ordered that the Petition for Special Relief IS DISMISSED WITHOUT PREJUDICE.”

In a July 1 statement, Gomez criticized the Media Bureau for abusing its authority to decide such matters without a full commission vote.

“The Commission regularly uses delegated authority to get the work of the Commission done, issuing licenses, seeking comment, granting rule waivers, etc.,” she noted. “Delegated authority allows the Commission to operate efficiently.

“Delegated authority, however, can be abused to shield significant actions from judicial review as only final Commission actions can be appealed,” she said. “That is what appears to be happening in this instance and the consequences for our democracy are serious. The Commission has repeatedly used the Media Bureau to take actions that are inconsistent with longstanding Commission precedent that violate both the Communications Act and the First Amendment.”

Gomez, the FCC’s sole Democrat, also insisted that these abuses were part of a larger pattern to crack down on news coverage that is critical of the government.

“The Commission has increasingly used its regulatory authority as a cudgel against broadcasters whose coverage it dislikes rather than as a neutral enforcement tool, and license renewals and merger approvals have been treated as leverage over editorial judgment rather than as the objective processes the Communications Act requires them to be,” she said.

“This is not an isolated tactic, and the Commission has repeatedly reached for rarely used or long dormant authority to discipline broadcasters it views as critical, including reviving a license renewal mechanism that had not been invoked in over half a century apparently to target a single company's news coverage,” she added.

“This includes repeated reliance on the previously rarely invoked news distortion policy at issue here," Gomez continued. "That pressure has had a real effect, and station groups and local broadcasters across the country have asked my office what topics are now considered too risky to cover, a question that should never need to be asked in a country with a First Amendment.

“When a federal agency with the power to grant or revoke broadcast licenses starts weighing in on editorial content, the chilling effect reaches far beyond any single station or story, and it is compounded here by the Commission's choice to resolve this particular petition through an unpublished staff letter rather than a public vote of the full Commission,” she concluded.

WASHINGTON—Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has announced the regulator will hold a July 22 vote on plans to hold an auction of 160 megahertz of spectrum in the Upper C-band (3.98-4.14 GHz) next year.

As part of the Working Families Tax Cut Act passed in 2025, Congress required the FCC to auction at least 100 MHz of C-band spectrum by July of 2027.

The National Association of Broadcasters had pushed the agency to limit the auction to 100 MHz of spectrum, arguing that the Upper C-band is already “operating at its practical limit” and that less spectrum would create a “Tetris-like problem” that could endanger the production of major live events.

In response, the FCC indicated it would accommodate video programming delivery by enabling upgrades in satellite technology and content distribution.

[Editor's note: More detailed comments regarding the impact of the proposals from TV Tech columnist Doug Lung are available below.]

In a June 18 letter to the FCC, satellite operator SES estimated that its “total cost to clear 160 MHz of Upper C-band spectrum will be approximately $3.6 billion, with $150 million allowed for contingencies.”

The FCC does not plan to release its estimated costs of the transition until after the July 22 vote.

The NAB declined to comment at this time.

The proposed rules would effectively harmonize terrestrial wireless operations across the entire C-Band to create a single “super-band” spanning 440 megahertz (3.70-4.14 GHz).

The plan also aims to maximize the amount of spectrum repurposed while establishing a speedy transition for incumbent satellite services and the creation of a successful coexistence environment for critical aviation safety systems in the adjacent band, the FCC said.

“While more complex than your average spectrum auction, the FCC moved from NPRM [Notice of Proposed Rulemaking] to Order in record time,” Carr said in a statement. “We have also coordinated with aviation and satellite stakeholders so that wireless providers can light up the Upper C-Band and provide service to most Americans by the end of 2030—ahead of many expectations.”

“The draft Order, which the Commission will vote on during our July 22 meeting, sets the stage for the FCC to auction 160 megahertz of prime, mid-band spectrum next year—exceeding the 100 megahertz minimum established in the law,” he added. “The Upper C-Band auction will also unify a big and contiguous swath of 440 megahertz of spectrum when combined with the Lower C-Band, which the FCC freed up during the previous Trump Administration.”

The FCC said that the auction is expected to raise “many billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury.” as well.

As part of the announcement of the upcoming vote and auction, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a statement saying that it “is confident that the use of radio signals from the FCC's 5G auction can safely coexist with aviation after years of FAA-led testing and technical analysis. The FCC worked closely with the FAA while developing its auction rule, which contains key safeguards that protect the band of frequencies that aircraft radio altimeters use. These safeguards include limiting the power of the auctioned 5G signals to levels the FAA has determined are safe for aviation; protecting the altimeter band with a buffer band between it and the band of frequencies that will be auctioned; and limiting the height of 5G transmission towers. Additionally, the FCC rule would ensure the functionality of key altimeter-based alerting systems including Terrain Avoidance Warning Systems.”

Later this summer, the FAA said it will issue its own rule to require aircraft altimeter upgrades to ensure altimeters can safely operate with signals from the 5G wireless signals that will be auctioned.

The FCC stressed that the draft Order, Order of Proposed Modification, and Order on Reconsideration, responds to the surging demand for additional valuable mid-band spectrum for wireless services and puts America on a path towards massive gains that could result in at least $264 billion in GDP, 1.5 million new jobs, and $388 billion in consumer surplus by freeing up additional spectrum.

The 2027 Upper C-Band auction will ultimately result in a 440 megahertz contiguous block of spectrum for the provision of wireless services by combining the Lower C-Band (3.7-3.98 GHz) and now the Upper C-Band (3.98-4.14 GHz).

The draft item, which will be made available to the public on July 1, would make available 160 megahertz of valuable Upper C-Band spectrum through the auction of 3,248 new flexible-use spectrum licenses throughout the contiguous United States.

It also proposes that winning bidders will be responsible for transition costs and incentive payments for in-band licensees, as well as rebates for the purchase and installation of upgraded radio altimeters. In addition, the draft item would allow winning bidders to commence wireless services in the Upper C-Band starting in December 2030 for top-75 markets, and in remaining markets starting July 2031.

The FCC also noted that specific dollar amounts on costs, incentives, and rebates have been redacted from the order prior to the July 22 vote given the sensitive nature of this type of financial information. The agency will release the figures publicly with the Commission’s vote.

The draft Order, Order of Proposed Modification and Order on Reconsideration will be made available to the public on July 1 via FCC.gov.

WASHINGTON—ATSC 3.0 Security Authority, LLC is once again defending the digital rights management features and the Emergency Alert System capabilities of NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0 with a sharp rebuttal of arguments made by Weigel Broadcasting to the Federal Communications Commission.

In a June 26 letter to the FCC, the A3SA stressed that “A3SA-suppported devices are designed to be fully compatible with the Commission’s Emergency Alert System (EAS) and to ensure that emergency alerts are reliably delivered to viewers. That is how the A3SA content protection framework was designed, and that is how it operates across the ATSC 3.0 ecosystem.”

While recent filings by Weigel Broadcasting Co. suggested that issues identified with the delivery of EAS alerts are somehow indicative of fundamental incompatibilities between ATSC 3.0 and EAS, the A3SA stressed that “this is simply not true. All broadcasters, and A3SA, share Weigel’s commitment to ensuring that EAS messages are reliably delivered to all viewers.2 Weigel’s filing, however, fundamentally mischaracterizes the source of the identified EAS issues, since those failures stem directly from implementation choices made by specific manufacturers – and have nothing to do with ATSC 3.0 or its key aspects including digital rights management (`DRM’) and other content protection features.”

The letter stressed that DRM systems in nearly all ATSC 3.0 capable devices are working as designed. “Every ATSC 3.0 television being manufactured today supports DRM and the millions of televisions and other devices operating today demonstrate that DRM does not impede, limit, or affect the reception of EAS messages,” the letter noted.

The problems, the group added, stem simply from two tested devices. “Weigel’s test results reflect the implementation decisions of the two particular manufacturers who produced the devices that were tested,” the group said. “They do not establish that DRM, content protection, or any other ATSC 3.0 features interfere with EAS delivery.”

In the case of the other box, “the BitRouter ZapperBox issue identified by Weigel is a device-configuration matter, not indicative of a DRM or ATSC 3.0 problem,” the group said. “ZapperBox is an outlier among A3SA-enabled set-top devices because, in its current implementation, it requires an initial Internet connection to obtain an over-the-top (`OTT') license needed to process encrypted content on a channel. That choice reflects ZapperBox’s connected-device use case: it is a higher-end set-top product, with DVR capabilities, intended for consumers who typically use it in an Internet-connected environment, where it operates as intended. However, the Internet connection is not a permanent requirement. Once the OTT license is obtained, the license persists and continues to function without an Internet connection. The box can then be disconnected from the Internet and will continue to operate, including decrypting video and audio and displaying EAS messages embedded in the broadcast stream. Weigel’s presentation again takes a connected-use device at a specific pre-license stage, removes the connectivity needed for that initial license acquisition, and then treats the result as evidence of a DRM problem. That characterization is false.”

The letter also complained that “Weigel’s presentation creates the false impression that Internet connectivity is a systemic requirement for ATSC 3.0 content protection. The opposite is true. A3SA specifically designed and engineered its content protection solution for OTA broadcast transmissions without ever needing an Internet connection. All devices that support the A3SA framework are provisioned with factory installed licenses which facilitates the “never-connected” to the Internet mode of operation. There are millions of devices sold into the ATSC 3.0 ecosystem – including all set-top boxes from manufacturers that support the A3SA content protection framework such as ZapperBox, Zinwell, ADTH, Shift2Stream, and GT Media, as well as every ATSC 3.0 television being manufactured today – operate with the same capability with factory installed licenses and the vast majority of those devices operate today without ever requiring an Internet connection.”

“As A3SA stated in its February 18, 2026 Reply Comments in this proceeding – and as Weigel’s own presentation acknowledges – more than 18 million devices can access all NextGen TV content, including EAS, whether encrypted or not, without needing an Internet connection or subscription,” the letter concluded. “Blaming ATSC 3.0 content protection for a device-specific implementation failure is akin to blaming a television broadcast station because its HDTV signal cannot be received on an SD-only television. The broadcaster’s signal is working; the standard is working; the missing capability is in the receiver. So too here: the issue is not ATSC 3.0 or the content protection framework, but the design choices made by particular device manufacturers.”

The full letter can be read here.

Weigel’s filing can be found here and the NAB’s comments on this issue are available here.

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that President Donald Trump has the power to fire commissioners at independent agencies without cause.

The landmark 6-3 ruling overturns a precedent dating back more than 90 years and significantly strengthens executive branch authority over such agencies as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, which were established by Congress to be somewhat insulated from political influence.

In the 6-3 majority opinion, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. ruled that Trump had the right to fire Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic FTC member, without cause and that the “FTC’s for-cause removal provision is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.”

The case has important implications for other independent agencies such as the FTC, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the FCC because it would allow the president to fire anyone without cause.

It could also give the president much greater control over the federal bureaucracy by providing him with the authority to fire or retain people based on political loyalty and partisan politics.

In a strongly worded dissent, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority opinion “reshapes our Government. Dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President’s hands…For more than 90 years, Congress believed, with this Court’s express approval, that it was allowed to create a workable Government, including by granting certain agencies tasked with certain responsibilities some independence from Presidential control. In rejecting that project, after decades of promising the political branches that structures like the FTC’s were permissible, the Court creates an Executive Branch that Congress never dreamed of establishing and that it now has little hope of ever reining in.”

In a separate case, however, SCOTUS ruled 5-4 in Trump v. Cook that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook,could remain in her job while she challenges Trump’s efforts to fire her.

The Trump v. Slaughter decision was immediately blasted by Democrats and the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez.

U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, complained that “today, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned a 91-year-old precedent and once again delivers for President Trump. Congress created independent agencies to shield critical decisions from short-term partisan whims and to ensure bipartisan and well-reasoned decision-making. By gutting these protections, the Supreme Court is throwing the door open for politics—not the public interest—to be the guiding star for future decisions. Congress must take action to preserve the ability for agencies to deliver expert, fact-based results for the American people.”

Said Gomez: “This decision puts at risk how Congress intended independent agencies to function in American democracy. When Congress established the Federal Communications Commission, it made a deliberate choice to create a multimember, multiparty, independent body insulated from political pressure precisely because the decisions this agency makes about who can speak over the public airwaves, how spectrum is allocated, and how communications markets are regulated, are too consequential to be made on the basis of political loyalty. We are already seeing what political control of this agency looks like in practice, through investigations targeting broadcasters and government critics for coverage this administration finds unfavorable.”

Gomez also noted the apparent contradiction between the two decisions. “In a companion decision, the Court protected the Federal Reserve from political interference while leaving media regulators exposed," she noted. "Democracy depends on a free press and the preservation of free expression through all communication technologies as much as it depends on a stable economy."

“For nearly a century, the FCC’s credibility as an expert-driven regulatory body has been a cornerstone of American leadership in global communications,” Gomez continued. “When we negotiate spectrum agreements with foreign governments and international bodies, our counterparts trust that our positions reflect technical expertise and legal authority, not the political preferences of whoever occupies the White House at a given moment. That credibility is difficult to build and easy to destroy, and the uncertainty created by this decision puts it at risk in ways that will reverberate far beyond our borders.

“When commissioners can be removed for their policy views rather than for cause, the inevitable result is an agency that pulls its punches and defers to political winds rather than the record before it,“ Gomez added. “Consumers pay the price for that kind of regulatory timidity in higher costs, fewer choices and slower progress toward the connected future this country deserves.”

While Trump has removed commissioners in other agencies for critical comments, Gomez has some protection in that the FCC needs a quorum of three commissioners to take action and her removal would prevent votes on upcoming matters.

WASHINGTON—In a 3-0 vote by Commissioners, the Federal Communications Commission has adopted new rules for the Emergency Alerting System (EAS) that aim to preserve the public’s trust in EAS by targeted cybersecurity upgrades to prevent cybercriminals and foreign governments from hijacking the system.

“Requiring stronger password practices, timely software updates and improved security controls will help reduce opportunities for bad actors to exploit weaknesses in alerting equipment,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said.

In addition, the Commission will move forward with a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that seeks comment on additional ways to modernize EAS and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) ranging from bolstering reliability to improving geographic accuracy, the agency reported during its June Open Meeting on June 25.

A notable feature of those proposals in the June 25 Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is a proposal to allow the implementation of EAS capabilities via software instead of hardware and retiring the 90-character maximum versions of WEA messages.

During the meeting the Commission adopted three specific measures to help protect against hijacking by cybercriminals and our nation’s adversaries. Those require EAS Participants to use strong passwords, promptly test and install security patches issued by equipment manufacturers, and use a network firewall or comparable practice to better limit access to their equipment.

In addition, the regulator issued a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing multiple targeted improvements that can make EAS and WEA more accurate, resilient, flexible, and useful. These proposals would improve EAS’s integrity by requiring the authentication of all alerts before they are transmitted and promote the reliability of emergency alerts by establishing a universal alert identification number to help block duplicate alerts.

The Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking also explores improving geographic accuracy by eliminating outdated WEA geotargeting exceptions that often cause alerts to be received in the wrong locations and increasing alert effectiveness by requiring EAS and WEA to display symbols that match the type of emergency.

Finally, the FCC is proposing to remove outdated requirements by allowing the implementation of EAS capabilities via software instead of hardware and retiring the 90-character maximum versions of WEA messages.

In a statement, NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt praised "Chairman Carr’s leadership in strengthening and modernizing the Emergency Alert System. We are pleased with the Commission’s newly adopted Report and Order, which establishes reasonable safeguards to enhance the cybersecurity of EAS. Local radio and television stations play a vital role in delivering trusted emergency information to communities when it matters most. Ensuring that EAS remains secure, reliable and effective is essential to that mission."

LeGeyt also said that the NAB supports "the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and appreciate the Commission’s approval of NAB’s petition to consider software-based EAS alert processing as an alternative to dedicated physical hardware. By allowing broadcasters to deploy security updates more quickly, reduce equipment downtime and strengthen system redundancy, this proposal can help ensure stations are better positioned to deliver critical emergency information when communities need it most."

More information is available here.

A more detailed description of the changes can be found at our sister publication Radio World.

WASHINGTON—The National Association of Broadcasters has updated the Federal Communications Commission on some of the notable advances that have been made by the NextGen TV News Technology Lab program, an initiative to develop and test innovative applications of ATSC 3.0 technology for journalism, public safety, accessibility and community service that just celebrated its first birthday.

As recently reported by TV Tech’s Phil Kurz, the projects featured through the News Technology Lab provide a practical demonstration of how broadcasters are using NextGen TV capabilities to strengthen local service and enhance the viewer experience.

One of the notable projects from the Lab has been WJLA-TV's Advanced Emergency Information initiative, which explores how broadcasters can use NextGen TV technology to deliver more relevant, more accessible and more actionable emergency information to viewers.

"The project demonstrates how ATSC 3.0 can build upon broadcasting's longstanding role as a trusted source of emergency information by enabling capabilities that are simply not possible with ATSC 1.0,” the NAB told the FCC in a June 23 letter.

For example, ATSC 3.0 can support geographically targeted emergency communications and offer capabilities for providing “richer emergency information, including maps, images, evacuation routes, shelter information, and other contextual information that can help viewers understand developing emergency situations and make informed decisions,” the NAB said. “These capabilities are particularly valuable during severe weather events, AMBER Alerts, wildfires, flooding, and other emergencies where timely and actionable information can help protect lives and property.”

In addition, ATSC 3.0 enables important advances in accessibility. NextGen TV can support multilingual emergency communications, helping to ensure that critical information reaches more viewers during an emergency. It also supports enhanced accessibility features that can improve access to emergency information for viewers with disabilities.

“These capabilities represent meaningful public-interest benefits that will become increasingly important as broadcasters continue to deploy and refine NextGen TV services,” the NAB reported. “ATSC 3.0 also provides a foundation for additional public-interest services that extend beyond traditional television viewing. For example, broadcasters are actively exploring the Broadcast Positioning System (BPS), which leverages ATSC 3.0 transmission infrastructure to provide a resilient terrestrial source of positioning, navigation, and timing information.”

The letter also address some of concerns in recent filings regarding alerting and certain receiver implementations.

In response, the NAB said that it “agrees that emergency information must remain reliable, accessible, and available to viewers. At the same time, it is important to distinguish between implementation-specific issues associated with particular devices and the capabilities of the ATSC 3.0 standard itself. The recent testing described in the record was limited to two receiver products and does not establish any inherent limitation of ATSC 3.0 emergency communications capabilities.”

“The existence of implementation issues in a limited number of first-generation devices should not obscure the broader public-interest benefits that ATSC 3.0 makes possible, particularly in the area of emergency communications,” the NAB argued. “The Commission should evaluate ATSC 3.0 not only by what it replaces, but by what it enables.”

“As the record continues to demonstrate, ATSC 3.0 is not merely a successor transmission standard,” the NAB concluded. “It is a platform for advanced emergency information, geographically targeted public warnings, multilingual communications, enhanced accessibility, resilient positioning and timing applications, and other innovative services that can strengthen broadcasting's service to local communities. Projects such as WJLA's Advanced Emergency Information initiative provide a concrete example of what becomes possible when broadcasters can fully utilize NextGen TV's capabilities.”

The full letter is available here.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission has announced the conclusion of its AWS-3 auction for mid-band spectrum, with results the agency said showed the demand for spectrum is high.

Auction bidding beat expectations with significant per-unit prices and gross winning bids exceeding $3.5 billion.

Bidding in the AWS-3 auction, formally designated as Auction 113, began on June 2, 2026. Seventeen qualified bidders participated in the auction, which ran for 72 rounds.

Up to $3.3 billion of the auction’s proceeds will be used to cover amounts borrowed to support the FCC’s “rip and replace” program and other Commerce Department programs.

The auction made available 200 spectrum licenses in the 1695-1710 MHz, 1755-1780 MHz, and 2155-2180 MHz bands which were subject to bid defaults or bid withdrawals in the 2014 auction and thus have remained unused in the FCC’s inventory since then.

Many of the licenses were ones that Dish won in Auction 97 more than a decade ago; the higher than expected proceeds mean that Dish won’t have to cover a shortfall.

In the run-up to forthcoming Upper C-Band auction, the FCC said that the better than expected results shows that the FCC’s Auctions program is running strong, despite the previous lapse in authority and a four-year gap in conducting an auction.

The FCC also said it is on schedule to meet Congress’s deadline to complete a system of competitive bidding for at least 100 megahertz in the Upper C-band no later than July 2027. Those auctions are expected to have a major impact on the way broadcasters and programmers distribute programming and content.

“Today’s successful auction generated billions of dollars in competitive bids to put spectrum to effective commercial use, and it bolsters competition in the wireless marketplace,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement. “We will carry this momentum forward as we prepare for the Upper C-Band auction in the year ahead.”

Auction 113 also featured the debut of the FCC’s brand new application system, which represents a step towards the FCC’s goals of increasing efficiency in agency operations.

WASHINGTON—In the wake of ABC's efforts to combat an Federal Communications Commission probe into whether “The View” deserves a “news exemption” from equal political time rules, fan have been flooding the regulator with comments. The agency's website had 27,885 of them, mostly in support of the show, as of 6 p.m. ET June 23.

ABC reported that most of those came in following ABC’s public push to mobilize fans to defend the show. During the Monday June 22 episode of "The View" ABC began airing an ad calling for viewers to file comments with the FCC. The ad encourages viewers to scan a QR code which directs them to the FCC site where they can file comments.

The case stems from a wider policy by the agency to enforce public interest rules on broadcasters deemed to be airing biased news coverage. That has led to ongoing investigations by the FCC into coverage of President Trump by stations owned by ABC, CBS and NBC.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr has repeatedly defended the agency’s authority to sanction stations and possibly even yank their licences for violating public interest standards even though a number of former FCC commissioners and staffers have called the policy “unconstitutional.”

Separately, the Media Bureau issued an advisory in January casting doubt on the 20-year-old exemption classifying late-night programming and talk shows as news programs, which means that they are not subject to equal time rules. The advisory said that stations airing `partisan' talk shows and late night programs must comply with equal time rules.

In May, the FCC’s media bureau issued a public notice asking for comments on whether ABC’s “The View” is a “bona fide news interview program” exempt from its equal time rules.

The FCC is also investigating Disney’s ABC for its DEI practices and has also ordered the ABC- owned stations to file for early renewal of their licenses. ABC blasted the early renewal demand as “unconstitutional retaliation” for news coverage that has been critical of the Trump administration.

So far the public comments to the FCC’s inquiry into `The View’ indicated significant opposition to Chairman Carr’s policies across the ideological spectrum, including free speech advocates, civil rights groups, conservative groups, journalism organizations, and consumer advocates. Many warned that revisiting the FCC's longstanding precedent amounted to an attack on free speech, with implications far beyond a single TV show.

ACLU, Center for Democracy & Technology, Future of Free Speech, National Coalition Against Censorship argued that the Commission is abandoning 40 years of precedent and that “this proceeding violates the constitutional rights of all our nation’s broadcasters, as well as the public who relies upon them for their access to news and information.”

Likewise, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) noted that “no living former FCC Commissioner has endorsed Chairman Carr’s current view of his regulatory authority, while a bipartisan group of former Chairmen and Commissioners, along with other high-level staff, have condemned it.”

Free Press complained that the “Commission’s actions have poisoned the well, depriving KTRK of a fair enforcement process, and depriving ABC of fair administration of Section 315(a) as it pertains to The View. Carr’s agency’s actions have been capricious, selective, and corrupt. The Commission is targeting KTRK and ABC with punitive action for its lawful speech, in order to chill ABC’s and other broadcaster’s First Amendment-protected speech.”

The group also stressed that while “Carr claims that he’s simply looking out for the public’s interest, and not carrying out a politically motivated vendetta against ABC and the President’s enemies…this claim quickly falls apart when considering Carr’s explicit efforts here to exclude right-wing talk radio broadcast programs from his review of the equal opportunities rule.”

WASHINGTON—In response to an ongoing inquiry by the Federal Communications Commission to reexamine TV ratings for children’s programming, 68 Democrats in the House of representatives have sent a strongly worded letter to the agency’s Chair Brendan Carr strongly opposing any attempt by the regulator to add labels identifying content as containing transgender or LGBTQ+ themes.

“We write in response to your questions regarding TV ratings and programs that include gender identity themes or topics and to strongly oppose efforts to censor the inclusion of transgender characters or topics, including by rating programming differently just because it includes transgender people,” the June 22 letter stated.

In April, FCC's Media Bureau issued a new Public Notice seeking comments “on any changes that can or should be made to the TV Parental Guidelines age ratings system to ensure that it is responsive to the issues that parents confront today” in determining what programming is appropriate for their kids.

In that Notice, the FCC also asked if it should consider how the systems handles content related to LGBTQ+ and transgender people. That prompted comments from a number of conservative groups and Republican politicians arguing that the system should add labels identifying content with LGBTQ+ or transgender themes.

U.S. Sen Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Center for American Rights President Daniel Suhr and the Concerned Women for America, are among those calling for updates that would flag content with LGBTQ and transgender themes. Separately, 13 Republican state attorneys general filed comments urging the FCC to create a separate system where viewers could rate programs.

In response, the House Democrats wrote that "we are deeply concerned that the questions you pose, such as whether programs should be rated differently because they discuss gender identity, indicate that you believe there is a role for the FCC to play in determining these ratings—despite Congress’ preference that these ratings be determined by the industry and Congress explicitly stripping FCC of any authority to do so if the industry establishes such ratings (as they have). This request for comment appears to be an unlawful attempt by FCC to pressure broadcast licensees to censor content, including representation of transgender people, in their programming and just the latest political attempt of FCC to censor content the Administration does not agree with.”

“Any attempt by FCC to censor content because it includes transgender characters or topics would raise both legal and constitutional concerns,” the letter concluded. “As we previously highlighted, FCC lacks authority to prescribe guidelines and recommendations for TV ratings. The FCC is also barred from engaging in censorship or promulgating regulations or conditions that interfere with the right of free speech. Any attempt to issue rating warnings for depictions and themes related to transgender people would also raise concerns of content-based and viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment…[W]e urge the FCC to abandon any efforts to seek to impose higher ratings on programs or content warnings because the program includes transgender characters or topics. As FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez stated, `This is a solution in search of a problem, and another example of this Commission prioritizing culture war politics over the real issues that affect consumers every day.’”

In addition to the letter from the House Democrats, the public interest group Free Press has also urged the Federal Communications Commission to abandon its efforts to "silence the voices of the LGBTQ+ community." 

The FCC issued a notice on April 22 to consider whether industry’s voluntary television-ratings system should apply warning labels to programs that feature transgender and nonbinary characters or discuss gender-identity themes. The group argued that the FCC has no authority to dictate these ratings, and that Carr "is merely trying to help Donald Trump further his anti-trans agenda."

In a filing responding to the agency’s inquiry, Free Press wrote that Carr’s proposal to attach warning labels to LGBTQ+ content makes a mockery of Congress’ mandate. The law stipulates that the FCC must allow the broadcast industry to develop its own ratings system, without federal intervention. “The agency should abandon this contrived and morally repugnant exercise, as it has no authority to suggest any changes to the TV ratings system,” reads Free Press’ filing.

WASHINGTON—The NCTA has filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission opposing E.W. Scripps acquisition of TV stations from INYO that argue the agency lacks the authority to waive ownership caps on broadcast station groups.

DirecTV has also filed comments opposing the deal.

Earlier this year, Scripps has announced that it is exercising its option to re-acquire 23 ION-affiliated stations for about $54 million. The stations were divested to INYO Broadcast Holdings in 2021 as part of its acquisition of ION so that the deal would comply with Federal Communications Commission ownership caps.

The plan to reacquire them comes at a time when the FCC has been more open to altering or eliminating ownership caps,

The proposed acquisition would, if approved by the agency, create a combined station group covering 40.29% of the country or 1.29 percentage points more than the current ownership cap of 39%. Under FCC Chair Brendan Carr the agency has asserted its authority to waive the ownership caps if they are in the public interest.

Recently, the Media Bureau did waive ownership rules in its approval of the Nexstar/Tegna merger, which would create a combined group covering 54.5% of the U.S. population or 15.5 percentage points over the cap. That decision is now being litigated in Federal courts in California and Washington D.C.

In its filing, the cable-backed NCTA argued that Congress did not give the FCC authority to waive the caps and that even if it did, the agency’s Media Bureau did not have the power to do so on "delegated authority”

“Accordingly, the Commission itself should resolve any `questions regarding the Commission’s authority in this area.’” the group argued. “And, as discussed above, that resolution should make clear that the Commission lacks authority to repeal or modify the National Cap.”

The full filing is available here.

In a new opinion piece published by Fortune, Nexstar founder, chairman and CEO Perry Sook vigorously defended the Nexstar/Tegna deal as “vital to the future of local television and local journalism,” and argued that local broadcast news operations could collapse and disappear, just as newspapers did, if the deal is not allowed to go through.

The OpEd piece comes at a time when Nexstar Tegna deal is bogged down in litigation after being approved by the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice.

In April a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California issued an injunction preventing Nexstar from merger operations with Tegna while the court considers an antitrust suit filed by state Attorneys General and DirecTV.

In the OpEd, Sook stressed that “outdated” broadcast stations ownership rules have crippled local broadcasters and have allowed big tech to dominate the media landscape, creating an “inflection point” similar to what the newspaper industry faced before its collapse.

“In an era of rampant misinformation and growing polarization, local journalists provide a critical counterweight — offering verified facts and a forum for civic engagement,” Sook said, adding that sustaining that mission “in today’s environment requires [the kind of] scale” the Nexstar/Tegna merger would create.

“This transaction is vital to the future of local television and local journalism. Without the ability to grow, local broadcasters will struggle to compete for audiences, attract advertising, and invest in the journalism that is vital to our communities.”

The alternative of refusing to change ownership rules would be “dire,” hurling local communities into a “a future where Americans rely on algorithm-driven feeds, viral content, and AI-generated summaries for information. A future where local voices are diminished or disappear altogether. A future where fewer institutions are dedicated to reporting facts, holding power to account, and fostering informed civic dialogue…This deal offers us all a chance to preserve real news options for future generations of Americans.”

The full piece is available here.

WASHINGTON—The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice has approved the proposed $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) by Paramount Skydance, saying “the impact of the transaction will be to increase competition across the media and entertainment ecosystem, with benefits for American consumers and workers.”

The deal still faces possible opposition from the European Union, which has not yet concluded its investigation, from state Attorneys General. California Attorney General Rob Bonta is still reviewing the deal and could still file a lawsuit to block it, as state AGs did in the case of the Nexstar/Tegna deal, which also passed reviews by the DoJ and the Federal Communications Commission.

After an eight month investigation that involved reviewing more than 2 million documents, the Antitrust Division issued a statement late Friday June 12 noting that “based on the evidence received in its investigation that the transaction is not likely to result in harm to competition or American consumers, including with respect to: (1) streaming video on demand (SVOD); (2) linear television; and (3) studio development, production, or distribution of films for theatrical release.”

In terms of the streaming marketplace, the Division reported that the “evidence reviewed and carefully analyzed by the Division indicates that, post-merger, competition in SVOD is not likely to be harmed. To the contrary, the combined firm is likely to increase competition by offering consumers a more robust competitive alternative to the larger SVOD offerings.”

One of the more controversial aspects of the merger was its potential impact on Hollywood production and employment. “The substantial body of evidence available to the Division indicates that the transaction is not likely to harm competition in studio development, production, or distribution of films for theatrical release,” the DoJ argued in a statement. “Instead, the evidence shows extensive competition within the industry, which has generated greater output and diversity of film offerings, and is likely to continue unabated. In fact, even since the transaction was announced, the evidence shows competition for theatrical production and distribution has increased. Smaller studios have turned to innovative content development and distribution strategies to challenge traditional assumptions regarding the conditions necessary for successful theatrical release. Indeed, this remains true looking even at narrow categories like “tentpole” or `blockbuster’ theatrical production and distribution.”

The full statement is available here.

With 11 host cities across the U.S., the 23rd edition of the FIFA World Cup requires intense coordination.

The global event began Thursday and runs through July 19. The Federal Communications Commission believes communications efforts are well positioned, thanks to what it described as a collaborative effort among multiple agencies.

In a release, Chairman Brendan Carr said that the agency’s experts spanning radio engineering, public safety and enforcement have partnered with federal, state and local officials to support the World Cup across the country.

“The FCC team has been working to support robust, resilient and secure communications networks across the host cities, including supporting the efforts of the private sector communications providers,” Carr said.

Those host cities and areas of New York/New Jersey, Dallas, Los Angeles, Kansas City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Seattle, Miami and Boston/Foxborough have all received support to conduct advance planning, testing and coordination, according to the commission.

Special efforts

In May, the FCC designated Louis Libin as special frequency coordinator and RF spectrum manager for the World Cup. He is the point of contact for coordinating Broadcast Auxiliary Services operations.

Those BAS stations, under Part 74 of the FCC rules, make it possible for radio and TV stations and networks to transmit program material between various locations.

FWC 2026, a subsidiary of Fédération Internationale de Football Association, anticipates that approximately 2,700 pieces of equipment, such as interruptible foldback systems for real-time communication, wireless intercoms and talkbacks for production crews and RF audio links for sound mixing and audio routing, will be used to support around 300 media agencies.

Spectrum sweep

As crowds connect to their devices, international sporting events naturally apply a great deal of stress to communications systems. The commission explained that this creates a congested environment where thousands of people are trying to receive and transmit information on wireless and broadcast networks.

Priority number one, the FCC said, is to ensure that radio spectrum requirements essential to the World Cup — including broadcast operations, public safety, event security and national security preparations — are supported.

For example, Libin told TV Tech that a large number of pairs and single 450 MHz and 455 MHz channels will be in use for the event, for both two-way communications and IFBs.

To identify harmful interference, the FCC has deployed what it described as a “networked constellation of advanced spectrum sensors” across U.S. venues to conduct remote monitoring.

STAs

The commission has also issued 10 special temporary authorizations to date for wireless devices and broadcast operations.

Libin told TV Tech that the STA process has been simplified for the event due to the involvement of the White House Task Force. He also cited cooperation from the North American Broadcasters Association.

[Related: “Wireless Microphone Spectrum Alliance Pushes for Spectrum Access”]

In addition, it granted waivers to allow low-power auxiliary operators to operate within protected contours within the designated event areas. Those LPAS devices operating below 941.5 MHz will not exceed 250 milliwatts, according to FWC 2026, and those in the 941.5–960 MHz band will not exceed one watt of conducted power.

Event security

In public safety, the FCC has been preparing for interference detection and response during matches and related events to help first responders and emergency communications systems operate without disruption.

It has also been working with federal partners and FIFA technology teams to support communications readiness and event security.

In the host state of New Jersey, for example, all State Police radio communications transitioned to full encryption on June 1.

The commission has also partnered with local authorities to support lawful counter-drone operations in accordance with the SAFER SKIES Act.

Area challenges

Both before and during the games, the FCC is working to prevent wireless interference by supporting communications network capacity to meet the localized demand.

“There’s definitely a difference between venues,” Libin said. “They’re all big challenges, but each one is unique.”

In Miami, for instance, where the topography is flat, signals can carry much further than in Seattle, where there is varying terrain. At MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., meanwhile, transmitters from across the Hudson River in New York City are line of sight.

The commission is also working with industry partners to support high-capacity wireless and 5G connectivity in and around host venues.

The effort lays the foundation for the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics and other future “mega-events” by strengthening national communications coordination frameworks, the FCC said.

WASHINGTON—National Association of Broadcasters President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt urged Congress to reform the Sports Broadcasting Act so that it “applies only to league-wide negotiations with media companies that will distribute games through broadcast television, not lock games behind streaming paywalls.”

The SBA, passed in 1961, gives the National Football League a limited antitrust exemption that allows it to negotiate TV rights deals with media companies on behalf of all of its teams.

In recent years, LeGeyt and others at a House subcommittee hearing argued, the NFL has pursued a policy of selling media rights to subscription streaming services that has enriched the league but harmed consumers.

“The Sports Broadcasting Act was built on a simple public-interest bargain,” he said in prepared testimony to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform and Antitrust. “Professional sports leagues received a limited antitrust exemption so they could pool and sell broadcast rights, and fans received broad public access to their games … For decades, that bargain worked. Fans could watch most games on free, local broadcast television. Leagues benefited from the unmatched reach of broadcasting.

“Yet today, it is increasingly apparent that the public access goals of that bargain are no longer being met,” he added. “Games from the four major professional leagues are now spread across Amazon Prime [Video], Netflix, YouTube TV and Apple TV. Fans increasingly need multiple paid subscriptions to watch their favorite teams, and survey after survey shows fans are confused and frustrated. Some estimates suggest that accessing every NFL game over the course of a season would cost a consumer well over $1,000. That’s a long way from the broad, free access Congress intended when it created the SBA.”

To remedy this, LeGeyt said: “NAB is not asking to eliminate the Sports Broadcasting Act. But this Committee should reaffirm that the SBA applies only to league-wide negotiations with media companies that will distribute games through broadcast television, not lock games behind streaming paywalls.”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez also expressed serious concern about the way the NFL has sold media rights and handled its distribution strategy.

“The economics of how fans actually watch have shifted in ways that deserve serious attention,” she said. “What used to arrive through an antenna, available to anyone regardless of income, has increasingly migrated behind a growing stack of subscriptions and league-specific apps. For a family trying to follow their team through a full season, the cost of piecing together access across multiple platforms adds up quickly.”

Gomez also noted that the FCC is currently probing the state of sports rights on broadcasting.

“The FCC has a legitimate interest in helping gather information on how the Sports Broadcasting Act is functioning in a changing media environment, and I support efforts to ensure fans can access the games they love without paying a fortune,” she said. “When sports programming migrates behind paywalls, fans lose access, local broadcasters lose the revenue that keeps their stations alive, and the local journalism those stations produce loses the funding on which they depend.”

But she added that “I also want to be candid about where the FCC's authority ends. The Commission can gather information, raise concerns, and call out fouls where it sees them, but any meaningful update to the Sports Broadcasting Act will ultimately require legislative action.”

Also testifying was Jim Hallers, founder and managing partner of Tailgators Pub & Grill and Citizens Grill, a chain of sports bars in Texas, who blasted the NFL’s 2022 decision to sell the rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket out-of-market game package to YouTube. He said the general shift of sports rights to streaming has imposed significant costs on restaurants and bars.

“Because we promise customers every NFL game, we now have to figure out how to deliver multiple simultaneous streams across dozens of televisions,” he said. “One commercial video switch with enough inputs and outputs can cost in excess of $15,000. A full upgrade including equipment, wiring and the labor will cost $30,000 to $40,000 per restaurant. And then there is the bandwidth problem. It is one thing to stream a game at home. It is another thing to stream ten noon games at once while also running point-of-sale systems, credit card processing, security cameras, online ordering, music, office systems and customer Wi-Fi. When a game freezes during a key play, the customer does not blame the provider. They blame the restaurant.”

“Beginning with the 2026 season, EverPass is the commercial provider for NFL Sunday Ticket,“ he said. “But EverPass does not replace the rest of the programming my customers expect. I still need DirecTV, cable or another provider for the in-market football game, and all the other channels and programming that make a sports bar work. So instead of simplifying the business, the transition is adding another layer of cost and complexity. I cannot simply replace 40 DirecTV boxes in one venue with 40 streaming devices. It does not work like this. The internet capacity, hardware, control systems and reliability are not there yet.”

WASHINGTON—In the runup to June 10 hearings to examine the antitrust exemptions currently enjoyed by the NFL and other major professional sports, the House Judiciary Committee has released an interim staff report titled “The Sports Broadcasting Act: A Special-Interest Antitrust Exemption Gone Awry” blasting the league’s current strategy for selling media rights.

The NFL has stretched an antitrust exemption created in the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 beyond its original purpose to the detriment of U.S. consumers, the report argues, through a series of deals with streaming companies that have enriched the league and harmed TV viewers.

“The results shown in the data suggest that the NFL's current model of placing games behind a paywall, especially through its Sunday Ticket offering, is harming consumers by forcing them to pay for a large package of NFL games when many consumers only want to see their favorite team's games,” the committee found. “The existence of the data also suggests that the NFL has misstated the nature of its Sunday Ticket product.”

The report comes at a time when the NFL is under increasing political and regulatory pressure from legislators and regulators. President Donald Trump, members of Congress and the Federal Communications Commission, which has opened a probe into the current market for sports rights, have all complained that the shift of major sports rights from free broadcast to streaming platforms have made it increasingly costly and difficult for fans to follow their favorite teams.

In August 2025, the House Judiciary Committee and its Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform and Antitrust opened an investigation into the professional sports leagues’ broadcasting practices, which the SBA governs. The SBA provides the leagues with an antitrust exemption so they can negotiate rights deals on behalf of all their teams.

As part of this oversight, the Committee says it is examining whether anticompetitive broadcasting conduct by the NFL has harmed American football consumers and undermined the letter and spirit of the antitrust laws and the SBA.

The NFL counters that 100% of its “local market games” are available over the air for free and 87% of games have “primary distribution’ on broadcast television. In meetings with the FCC, league officials have argued the NFL offers “the most fan- and broadcaster-friendly [model] in the entire sports and entertainment industry.”

“The NFL’s claim of a fan-friendly distribution model defies the reality experienced by millions of NFL fans,” the committee found. “The NFL's own data show that the average NFL game reaches only 39% of U.S. households. In 2016, broadcasters aired 113 of the NFL’s 256 regular-season games in fewer than 20 percent of U.S. households. When the NFL claims that 87% of games receive “primary distribution” on broadcast television, it means only that a broadcast station carries those games somewhere in the country—not that most fans can watch them.”

Additionally, survey data obtained by the committee suggested the NFL's Sunday Ticket out-of-market games package is not as consumer-friendly as the league claims. The report argues that:

• Despite the NFL's claims, Sunday Ticket is not just a product for the avid fan of NFL football in general, but a product bought mainly by fans attempting to watch their favorite team who are stuck with no other option.
• According to data from former Sunday Ticket subscribers, when asked, “Why did you sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket?” over 70% of respondents answered that they subscribed to “watch my favorite team, which is out of market.“
• When asked why they canceled their Sunday Ticket subscription, 70% of respondents said the package is too expensive.

The Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust will convene a hearing about the SBA on Wednesday, June 10, 2026, at 10 a.m.

Read the full report here.

Read the full appendix here.

A policy scholar at a prominent conservative think tank says the government needs to rethink the philosophy behind the public interest obligations of U.S. broadcasters, criticizing the current rules as outdated and incompatible with current media technologies. The author even doubts the validity of using the “scarce spectrum” as a valid argument.

In a blog post titled “The FCC’s Public Interest Notice Is a House of Cards,” the Cato Institute's David Inserra says the commission’s recent revival of invoking “public interest” obligations when criticizing late-night comedians like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel threatens broadcasters’ freedom of speech and ignores the current media landscape.

“The FCC can cite decades-old laws and precedents and pretend that its public-interest standard is necessary because broadcast spectrum is technically scarce,” Inserra writes. “But that argument ignores the radically abundant media options available to modern consumers.”

Inserra says the commission’s insistence of requiring broadcasters to provide equal time to opposing political candidates—as illustrated by its recent battle with Colbert, former host of CBS’s “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” over a planned interview with a Texas Democratic politician—highlighted the current dilemma facing broadcasters when it comes to free speech.

“This has resulted in frankly ridiculous outcomes, such as when Stephen Colbert was unable to air his interview with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico because of concerns over the FCC’s equal-time rule,” Inserra wrote. “This rule generally requires broadcasters that provide airtime to one legally qualified candidate to give opposing candidates for the same office an equal opportunity to seek comparable airtime.

“In response, Colbert told viewers that he had posted the interview to his YouTube channel, where it received over 5.3 million views in less than 48 hours, about double the 2.7 million viewers who tuned in on average to his show on CBS,” Inserra continued. “FCC regulations are now the butt of jokes, with comedians mocking how antiquated and censorious they are.”

Inserra doesn’t buy the argument over spectrum either, citing the famous 1969 Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, in which the Supreme Court affirmed that FCC regulation was justified by spectrum scarcity,

“Just because a resource is finite and geographically limited does not mean that markets cannot operate; real estate is the most obvious counterexample,” he wrote. “Second, the Court was blind to the broader media landscape. Newspapers, theaters, movies, and other forms of communication were not subject to the same technical constraints as broadcast spectrum, but they were substitutes.”

Inserra suggests that steps be taken to restrict or better define broadcasters' public-interest obligations, including ending rules on news distortion and equal time.

“The FCC does not need to micromanage spectrum, and it certainly does not need to use spectrum licenses as a lever for editorial control,” Inserra writes. “With the FCC’s control over licenses removed, broadcast speech would be far freer from government manipulation and jawboning.”

WASHINGTON—Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has released a tentative agenda for the June Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, June 25, 2026 that should include votes on emergency alerting, the E-Rate program, 911 reliability, submarine cables and other issues.

The FCC described the items up for consideration as follows:

• Cutting Red Tape and Accelerate the Buildout of Wireline Infrastructure. The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would propose and seek comment on standards for when state and local statutes, regulations, and legal requirements have a prohibitive effect on the provision of wireline telecommunications services in violation of Section 253 of the Communications Act, particularly through the imposition of excessive delays and fees that impede infrastructure deployments and disincentivize investments in new infrastructure. (WC Docket No. 25-253).
• Reviewing E-Rate Program and Student Screen Time. The Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that seeks comment on measures the Commission can take to better protect children when using E-Rate-funded networks, the Commission’s progress in ensuring affordable access to high-speed broadband to and within schools and libraries, and whether the Commission’s current interpretation of the Children’s Internet Protection Act is the best reading of the statute, and a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that proposes actions to strengthen E-Rate program integrity and streamline program administration. (WC Docket Nos. 26-133; 13-184; 21-93; 21-455).
• Improving Next Generation 911 Reliability and Interoperability. The Commission will consider a Second Report and Order and Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to improve reliability and interoperability in the nation’s Next Generation 911 (NG911) transition. The item would modernize and streamline 911 reliability rules for IP-based networks, promote interstate interoperability of NG911 systems, and eliminate unnecessary regulatory burdens. (PS Docket Nos. 21-479, 13-75).
• Modernizing of the Nation’s Alerting Systems. The Commission will consider a Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that take steps to modernize the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). The Report and Order aims to preserve the public’s trust in EAS by requiring targeted cybersecurity improvements to protect the system from cybercriminals and our nation’s adversaries. The Further Notice would propose additional ways to modernize EAS and WEA to make them more helpful to alerting authorities, less burdensome for participating communications providers, and better able to save lives. (PS Docket Nos. 25-224, 22-329, 15-91, 15-94).
• Accelerating the Buildout of Submarine Cables. The Commission will consider a Second Report and Order and Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would accelerate buildout of secure submarine cable infrastructure, while strengthening national security. (OI 24-523, MD 24-524).

The FCC publicly releases the draft text of each item expected to be considered at the next Open Commission Meeting. One-page cover sheets are included in the public drafts to help summarize each item. All these materials will be available on the FCC’s Open Meeting page: www.fcc.gov/openmeeting.

The Open Meeting is scheduled to commence at 10:30 a.m. ET in the Commission Meeting Room of the Federal Communications Commission, 45 L Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. It will also be streamed live on the agency's YouTube channel.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission has announced that it will vote on a proposed Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that takes steps to improve the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) by requiring targeted cybersecurity improvements to protect the system from cybercriminals and our nation’s adversaries.

The Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which has not been adopted or implemented by the agency, also proposes additional ways to improve EAS and WEA to make them more helpful to alerting authorities, less burdensome for participating communications providers, and better able to save lives.

As part of those improvements, the FCC said it will consider whether it should eliminate what the agency calls “outdated and unnecessary alerting requirements by proposing to allow the implementation of EAS capabilities via software instead of hardware and retire the 90-character-maximum versions of WEA messages.”

In the past, the NAB has pressed the FCC to allow software implementations.

Last year, the NAB is requested the Federal Communications Commission make changes to Emergency Alert System (EAS) rules that would allow but not require EAS participants to use software-based EAS encoder/decoder technology instead of a legacy physical hardware device to process EAS messages.

In that April 2025 filing, the NAB urged the FCC fast-track the request because hardware supplier Sage Alerting Systems, one of two hardware suppliers, has recently stopped production of devices and because the “the current legacy ecosystem is not sustainable.”

In 2025, the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that launched a reexamination of the nation’s alerting systems to explore ways to make them more effective, efficient, and better able to serve the public’s needs.

The proposed Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) is the result of that inquiry. It aims to preserve the public’s trust in EAS by requiring targeted cybersecurity improvements that will help protect against hijacking by cybercriminals and foreign governments.

More specifically, the FCC described the changes as follows:

• Improve EAS’s integrity by proposing to require the authentication of all alerts before they are transmitted.
• Bolster the reliability of emergency alerts by proposing to establish a universal alert identification number to improve the detection and blocking of duplicate alerts and ensure that WEAs are consistently sent to members of the public who newly enter an alert’s delivery area until the emergency ends.
• Improve geographic accuracy by proposing to eliminate outdated WEA geotargeting exceptions that often cause alerts to be received in the wrong locations and expand geotargeting options for EAS.
• Make alerts more effective by seeking comment on requiring EAS and WEA to display symbols that match the type of emergency and improving the ability of earthquake alerts to grab the public’s attention.
• Remove outdated and unnecessary alerting requirements by proposing to allow the implementation of EAS capabilities via software instead of hardware and retire the 90-character-maximum versions of WEA messages.

The proposed Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking released on June 4 2026 is not a final, adopted action. It has been circulated for tentative consideration by the Commission at its Open Meeting on June 25. The issues referenced and the Commission's ultimate resolution of those issues are subject to change, the agency stressed.

The full document is available here.

WASHINGTON—Sam Matheny, CEO of newly launched Merkhet Solutions, today told a House subcommittee that the country is becoming “dangerously overdependent” on GPS satellites for delivery of precise timing and positioning data.

Merkhet Solutions is the company spun off from the National Association of Broadcasters to develop commercial uses for the Broadcast Positioning System, a terrestrial backup to GPS. In testimony before the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee, Matheny warned lawmakers that GPS disruptions from jamming, spoofing, cyberattacks or natural failures could endanger critical infrastructure including energy, telecommunications, data centers and financial services.

These “risks endanger virtually every American critical infrastructure sector, including energy, telecommunications, data centers and financial services, where a disruption to precision time can trigger grid instability, network outages and lost transactions,” Matheny said.

BPS provides a backup to GPS by leveraging the nation’s TV broadcast transmission infrastructure to deliver precise timing information. “BPS is a patented terrestrial timing and position technology that leverages existing high-power broadcast infrastructure and licensed spectrum already covering the United States,” Matheny told the subcommittee. “BPS was first conceived by my team at NAB in 2021, and you can think of it as the terrestrial equivalent of GPS.”

A potential loss of GPS would affect national security and pose an economic risk of $1 billion in losses per day, Matheny testified.

Matheny laid out five BPS advantages, including:

• An infrastructure that is already in place.
• Transmission of BPS signals from high-power, tall towers in diverse locations, making it difficult to jam or spoof at scale.
• BPS uses existing licensed spectrum.
• BPS supports unlimited simultaneous users, meaning no bottlenecks—an essential element for emergency and critical infrastructure applications.
• BPS is independent of GPS and other global navigation satellite systems, functioning even when GPS is compromised.

Congress can help advance the speed and scale at which BPS can begin offering reliable GPS backup service, Matheny said.

“First, Congress should help accelerate BPS installation and operations through funding for traceable time, station hardware, calibration and ongoing network operations and monitoring,” he said.

Congress also “should support and work” with the Trump Administration in designating a lead agency to “expedite the activation of BPS and other complements to GPS,” he said.

“Finally, Congress should encourage the Federal Communications Commission to complete the important work it has already initiated on ATSC 3.0,” Matheny said. “In addition to the significant benefits to television viewers, including upgraded picture and sound and better emergency alerting, the full benefits of BPS cannot be harnessed until the FCC completes its work on the ATSC 3.0 transition.”

More information on Merkhet Solution is available on the Merkhet website.

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a 8-1 decision upholding the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to levy fines as part of its enforcement efforts.

The ruling involves massive penalties totaling nearly $200 million that the FCC imposed on Verizon Communications ($47 million), AT&T ($57 million), T-Mobile ($80 million) and other wireless carriers for failing to protect their customers’ location data.

Both Verizon and AT&T appealed the decision, arguing that the FCC’s fines violated their Seventh Amendment rights to a jury trial.

In a June 4 ruling written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court found that “the FCC’s forfeiture proceedings fit comfortably within the Court’s Seventh Amendment precedents. The Seventh Amendment ‘preserve[s]’ the right to trial by jury in ‘Suits at common law,’ and applies in all proceedings in which ‘legal rights’ are to be ‘settle[d],’”

“It does not, however, ‘prescribe at what stage’ of a legal dispute “a trial by jury must, if demanded, be had," Roberts wrote. ”The Amendment requires only that, before legal rights and obligations are conclusively ‘ascertained and determined’...a party has the chance to insist that a jury make the ‘ultimate determination of issues of fact’...Consistent with these principles, this Court has upheld nonjury adjudications making initial findings of fact that are subject to de novo review in a subsequent jury trial…Given the similar features of the Commission’s enforcement scheme, the Commission may issue forfeiture orders without the involvement of a jury.”

The court’s decision earlier this year to address the Verizon and AT&T appeals had raised concerns about the FCC’s ongoing ability to impose fines.

In the last two decades, the Supreme Court has steadily chipped away at the legal authority of government regulators, most notably in its 2024 ruling rejecting the doctrine of “Chevron deference,” under which courts were to defer to a regulatory agency’s expertise in interpreting federal laws where Congress’ intent was unclear, and in a second 2024 ruling in Securities & Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy. In the SEC case, the Court ruled 6-3 that the securities regulator must bring fraud cases seeking civil penalties to federal court instead of relying on its internal tribunals.

Based on the SEC case, both Verizon and AT&T appealed the fines, arguing the FCC was denying the defendants their right to a jury trial by issuing them.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York denied that argument in the Verizon case and upheld the fine but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned the fines against AT&T.

Following that, Verizon appealed the 2nd Circuit ruling to the Supreme Court and the FCC appealed the AT&T case. The June 4 decision resolved the conflict between the Circuit Court judgments.

In its June 4, ruling the Supreme Court ordered that “the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in No. 25–406 is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opin-ion. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in No. 25–567 is affirmed.”

Justice Clarence Thomas issued a dissenting opinion arguing that the Court was wrong in ruling that the FCC fines were “nonbinding” and therefore did not violate the companies’ right to a jury trial.

“When the Federal Government seeks to deprive a person of property, it must go through an Article III court,” Thomas wrote, citing the SEC v. Jarkesy decision. “That means the regular course of trial proceedings with their usual protections, not the use of ad hoc adjudication procedures before the same agency responsible for prosecuting the law, subject only to hands-off judicial review. Thus, as this Court held in Jarkesy and reaffirms today, agencies can collect penalties only after adjudication in court through a trial de novo.”

In reaction to the opinion, Venable LLP partner and former SEC general counsel Megan Barbero who represented the government in SEC v. Jarkesy said that "the FCC decision reflects an effort by the Court to cabin—at least to some extent—the reach of its decision in SEC v. Jarkesy. The Court interpreted the FCC’s forfeiture orders as non-binding, non-final preliminary determinations of “suspected violations,” stressing that the orders are unenforceable unless the Department of Justice files a suit in district court to recover the penalty. The Court emphasized that, because the telecommunications carriers are entitled to a de novo jury trial on the underlying violation in that enforcement action, the Seventh Amendment was satisfied.

Barbero also explained that "the Supreme Court’s reasoning was based on the FCC statute at issue but likely extends to other agency schemes that similarly result in non-final and non-binding findings that the government must prove to a jury trial before collecting any fine. That may limit the reach of Jarkesy to a point. But the result of the Court’s decision will also limit federal agencies’ practical ability to collect administrative penalties through their administrative processes. Regulated parties under analogous statutory schemes may now feel they have more license to decline to pay administrative penalties assessed by an agency and choose to instead wait for the government to marshal the resources to bring a district court proceeding, which is no small lift for the government."

The full opinion is available here.

WASHINGTON—When the FCC gave the green light for ATSC 3.0 in 2017, the focus was on improving television broadcasting by combining IP with RF to bring a new range of consumer applications, better reception and enhanced picture and audio quality. While there were discussions of datacasting and enterprise solutions at the time, the idea that the standard—also branded as “NextGen TV”—had enormous potential beyond traditional television was still nascent.

Nine years later, any doubt that ATSC 3.0 could impact U.S. communications infrastructure has been erased. That reality took center stage at this week’s annual ATSC NextGen Broadcast Conference here, with three of the six sessions focused entirely on applications outside the traditional broadcast environment.

Nevertheless, the standard remains in a state of policy limbo. Broadcasters are actively petitioning the FCC to set a definitive sunset date for ATSC 1.0 so stations can drop the burden of simulcasting and unleash the full potential of ATSC 3.0.

ATSC President Madeleine Noland aptly characterized this state of transition in her opening speech.

“The current U.S. situation, as one broadcaster in this room put it, feels kind of like 'the worst of both worlds' as we straddle between a 25-year-old technology with ATSC 1.0 and the tremendous opportunities in front of us with ATSC 3.0,” she said.

Maintaining Perspective
Although NextGen TV sets have been on the consumer market since late 2020—with about 18 million units sold, according to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)—widespread consumer adoption and enthusiasm have lagged. Noland looked to history to contextualize the current conundrum.

“We have to put these things in perspective—the issues we face today are similar to the issues of yesterday,” Noland said. “But perhaps more urgent, as technology and consumer habits are evolving at an ever-increasing pace, we don't quite have the luxury of a decade-plus to get things right in this media landscape.”

Despite sluggish hardware adoption, Noland touted the operational progress broadcasters have made with the standard.

“My estimate is that 1.3 million people in the United States today are enjoying High Dynamic Range (HDR) over the air for free for the first time; over half a million are enjoying Dolby Atmos; 1.2 million have access to interactive services, and over a half a million of those can use ‘Start Over TV,’” she said. “This is today, for free, in the United States over the air for the first time ever. So these numbers are growing, and growing fast.”

Noland also hailed the increased international attention on ATSC 3.0 in light of Brazil's adoption of the physical layer of 3.0 last summer.

“For many years, when we talked about ATSC, we naturally led with better television, better picture quality, better audio, better reception, better emergency information, more interactive viewer experiences,” she said. “And those benefits remain absolutely central to the transition now underway in the United States and Brazil and other countries.

“But around the world, governments, regulators, broadcasters and technology companies are increasingly recognizing something even bigger—ATSC 3.0 is not just a television system; it is a flexible IP-based broadcast communications platform capable of delivering many kinds of data services and public interest applications efficiently, securely and at scale,” she added. “In some countries, that broader capability is becoming the starting point of the conversation, whether it’s educational content delivery, resilient emergency communications, automotive applications, software distribution, positioning technology, smart city infrastructure or direct-to-mobile service.”

Shifting the Bipartisan Conversation
In a fireside chat with Noland, National Association of Broadcasters President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt praised the technology's momentum but offered a cautious perspective on the timeline for an FCC regulatory decision. In February, the NAB asked the commission to mandate an ATSC 1.0 sunset in the top 75 markets by the end of 2028, with the remaining markets following by the end of 2030.

“We understand that at any particular moment the FCC has a lot of competing priorities, and we need to ensure that the nationwide deployment of ATSC 3.0 is at the very top of that list,” LeGeyt said. “Shifting the conversation from whether ATSC 3.0 is going to be the standard of the future to how we are going to get there is tactical, given the Washington environment we are in.”

LeGeyt also emphasized the rare bipartisan support the standard has maintained on Capitol Hill.

“In a very polarized Washington environment, ATSC 3.0 doesn’t register Republican or Democrat; it registers local,” he said. “And that’s why you've got such positive remarks—maybe emphasizing different features of the technology—from each of the commissioners, as well as the Chairman…this is a transition that's going to need to transcend politics."

BPS Spinoff
LeGeyt used the event to announce the NAB’s launch of Merkhet Solutions, an independent company focused on the commercial deployment of the Broadcast Positioning System (BPS). BPS utilizes the NextGen TV standard to deliver precise terrestrial timing and location signals over existing broadcast towers, functioning as a vital backup to satellite-based GPS.

“BPS represents a powerful intersection of innovation, public safety, and opportunity for broadcasters,” LeGeyt said in a statement. “Launching Merkhet Solutions is the next step in commercializing this technology and ensuring it reaches the critical infrastructure operators who need it most, while continuing to create meaningful long-term opportunities for local stations.”

Speaking to attendees, LeGeyt added that BPS offers an opportunity to solve a massive public policy vulnerability while generating an entirely new revenue stream to help accelerate the 3.0 transition.

“We made the determination that for BPS to recognize its full potential—that we at NAB certainly believe that it has, and the NAB member companies on our board of directors believe that it has—not only to solve this important public policy issue, but also as a potential revenue stream for broadcasters, and as an accelerant to ATSC 3.0,” he said.

Sam Matheny, who previously led the NAB’s internal BPS initiatives, has been named CEO of the spinoff.

“BPS solves a problem we can no longer afford to ignore: an entire economy and national security posture resting on a single, contested signal from space,” Matheny said. “We built BPS at NAB because broadcast infrastructure is uniquely suited to deliver assured terrestrial timing at scale. We’re launching Merkhet Solutions because the time to operationalize this technology is now.”

Matheny updated the audience on real-world testing of the system in the Washington, D.C., area.

“We are at an actual critical infrastructure site—that was one of the requirements,” Matheny explained. “Our partner is Dominion Energy. We are at one of the largest power substations on the East Coast and we have put our leader-follower, self-synchronizing network in place with them.”

Plans will initially focus on regional rollouts. “Let’s do more relationships like we have with Dominion Energy, where we can hear directly from critical infrastructure partners on how they want to use it…and how we can best provide BPS as a complement to their GPS,” Matheny said.

Dr. Andrew Hansen, a prominent expert in navigation and timing who was instrumental in developing three global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), was profuse in his praise of BPS, calling the initial testing data "stunning."

“I am jealous—I’ve lived in standards my entire professional career, and 3.0 is a good one,” Hansen remarked. “GPS was a gift to the world; the idea that you can synchronize time around the world to ones of nanoseconds shook physical principles. The idea that we can now do this to ones of nanoseconds with BPS layered on ATSC 3.0 is remarkable.”

Improving the Viewer Experience
While enterprise infrastructure dominated the headlines, the “Better TV” session focused on local enhancements, including interactive applications, content curation and localized accessibility features.

Jason Quinn, director of engineering at New Mexico PBS, highlighted how the technology solves deep structural communication issues in rural, tribal areas. Covering the 27,000-square-mile Navajo Nation, the network is working with partners Ateme and Heartland Video Systems to deploy real-time AI translations and multi-language captioning.

“A lot of unique challenges that communities are facing have nothing to do with broadcast television, but have everything to do with the transfer of information,” Quinn said. Recent over-the-air tests successfully broadcast simultaneous Spanish and Vietnamese AI-translated caption tracks alongside standard English.

On the commercial datacasting side, Joe Fabiano, chief technology officer of EdgeBeam Wireless—a joint venture backed by E.W. Scripps, Gray Media, Nexstar Media Group, and Sinclair—updated attendees on the JV’s tech pipeline.

“We’re helping ATSC advance the standards to bring full IP networking, routing, and peering capabilities into the standard,” Fabiano said, noting that EdgeBeam’s ultimate goal is to blend seamlessly into background consumer ecosystems. “We’re not creating hardware and platforms for the purposes of becoming a hardware manufacturer. We're doing it for the purposes of bridging, so that we disappear into consumer electronics.”

The Race Against Wireless Competitors
The transition isn’t without immediate external competitive threats. During a panel focused on Advanced Emergency Information (AEI), So Vang, vice president of emerging technology at Sinclair subsidiary ONE Media 3.0, issued a blunt warning regarding impending features from the commercial wireless sector.

“We’re talking about keeping broadcasters relevant,” Vang cautioned. “If wireless alerting is going to do exactly what AEI is doing, we better step up and do it…The wireless industry is moving ahead. They will very likely roll out features like AEI—not with full interactivity, but at least with the ability to get a photo or a map to the handset. There’s a live FCC proceeding on that.”

Edward Czarnecki, vice president of global and government affairs at Digital Alert Systems, reminded the room that broadcasters possess a distinct structural advantage. Unlike wireless carriers, which hold blanket legal indemnification from emergency alert liabilities, broadcasters operate under strict statutory local obligations and hold far superior delivery capacity.

“AEI is an informational service, not an alert service,” Czarnecki noted. “We can do a lot more with languages, accessibility and multimedia than the wireless industry can because of our bandwidth and the versatility of the app environment.”

Chicken-and-Egg Redux
NAB’s LeGeyt compared the current 3.0 landscape to the classic “chicken-and-egg” hardware vs. content dilemma that defined the original digital transition decades ago—only this time, the stakes are exponentially higher.

“In order for consumers to see the value proposition of the ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV experience, we need to be implementing and deploying new features that are going to make this really attractive,” LeGeyt said. “And that goes beyond just a great picture. It's all the features that, frankly, may have been an innovation story 10 years ago, but really are just table stakes to compete in this media landscape today.”

The ATSC concluded the day by announcing the recipients of its two most coveted awards. Mark Aitken was named recipient of the Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal and Julia Kenyon of the CTA received the 2026 Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission has kicked off the agency’s first spectrum auction in four years, an AWS-3 auction offering 200 5G-grade spectrum licenses that have lain fallow for more than a decade.

Bidding in the AWS-3 auction, formally designated as Auction 113, began the morning of June 2.

The auction involves spectrum licenses in the 1,695-1,710 MHz, 1,755-1,780 MHz, and 2,155-2,180 MHz bands and will offer more than 1.4 billion MHz-POPs (“Megahertz Population”) available for auction—a metric calculated by multiplying the bandwidth by the population covered by the licenses. The auction can be tracked here.

The licenses made available had been auctioned in 2014 for commercial use, but were the subject of defaults or bid withdrawals. As a result, these 200 licenses were not sold in the prior auction and the spectrum has remained unused in the FCC’s inventory ever since.

The license areas included in this auction are home to over 100 million consumers across 48 states, two U.S. territories and the Gulf of Mexico. They include major markets like New York, Chicago, Boston, Tampa, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C.

“Finally! The FCC is back in the game,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr enthused in a statement. “Spectrum auctions are the lifeblood of licensed wireless service, and it has been far too long since the FCC has run an auction. Today, we are kicking off a vitally important auction to pump more spectrum into the marketplace. There is a reason why the first item the Commission voted on at my first meeting as Chairman was to get the process going for this very auction. More spectrum means more building, lower prices, and stronger competition. The FCC’s Build America Agenda is restoring America’s leadership in wireless.”

The auction utilizes rules the FCC proposed and adopted last year. Procceeds will fund its Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (commonly known as “rip and replace”), which seeks to remove untrustworthy technology from U.S. communications networks.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission has set dates for filings in the early renewal of licenses for eight ABC-owned stations.

The FCC has set deadlines for comments filed in its MB Docket No. 26-131, with petitions to deny due on June 29, opposition on July 29 and replies due Aug. 5.

On April 28, the Video Division of the Media Bureau issued an order directing The Walt Disney Co., ABC and its subsidiaries to file license renewals for all of their licensed TV stations.

On May 28, Disney’s ABC filed renewal applications for its eight television licenses along with comments saying the “Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades. And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here.”

“The Order is inconsistent with a legitimate exercise of investigative authority and is plainly incompatible with the First Amendment,” the letter said. “Worse, the Order opens the door to an assault on the Station’s license, while the Commission searches for a legal pretext to achieve its desired goal. This effort to suppress speech under the guise of bureaucratic process must not prevail. WABC files this application without waiving any rights, and calls on the Commission to rescind the Order.”

In the filing setting deadlines for comments, the FCC noted that generally broadcast TV stations are given eight-year licenses and none of Disney’s ABC licenses would ordinarily be due for renewal until 2028 at the earliest.

In its order demanding the early renewals, the agency noted that “the FCC has been investigating Disney’s ABC stations for possible violations of the Communications Act of 1934 and the FCC’s rules, including the agency’s prohibition on unlawful discrimination.”

“Specifically, the FCC has been investigating whether Disney’s ABC engaged in prohibited practices by hiring, promoting, compensating, and/or providing workplace opportunities to people based on race, gender, or other protected characteristics in violation of federal nondiscrimination laws,” the FCC said in the June 1 filing setting deadlines for comments. “In the course of conducting that investigation, the FCC determined that calling in Disney’s ABC licenses for early renewal was necessary to the proper conduct of that ongoing investigation.”

“Calling the licenses in now for early renewal also provides the FCC the opportunity to determine whether the ABC Stations have been operating in the public interest, as required by their FCC licenses,” the regulator added.

The decision to investigate the stations for possible violations of public interest standards, including the airing of“biased news coverage,” has drawn criticism. Democratic FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, broadcasters, the National Association of Broadcasters, former FCC members and staff and public-interest groups have said the investigation is outside the agency's authority and is an unconstitutional attack on free speech.

The licenses up for renewal are:

• KFSN-TV, Fresno, Calif.
• KABC-TV, Los Angeles, Calif.
• KGO-TV, San Francisco, Calif.
• WLS-TV, Chicago, Ill.
• WABC-TV, New York, N.Y.
• WTVD, Durham, N.C.
• WPVI-TV, Philadelphia, Pa.
• KTRK-TV, Houston, Texas

The FCC document setting filing procedures in this case is available here.

WASHINGTON—The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) announced that Cliff Jones has joined the agency as associate chief and chief of the laboratory division.

Jones joins the regulator from Verizon Communications, where he led operations for the telco’s private cloud infrastructure and the applications supporting its 5G wireless network, overseeing core-network modernization and large-scale cloud deployment.

He brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in engineering, operations, customer service, research, equipment build and compliance roles with major telcos and media companies, the FCC said.

“Cliff brings the supervisory strength, technical authority, compliance expertise, and transformational leadership essential for this role,” Oiffce of Engineering and Technology Chief Andrew Hendrickson said. “His telecommunications experience, regulatory grounding, and RF background position him exceptionally well to support the Laboratory Division’s mission. He will be an outstanding addition to OET, bringing operational excellence, a customer‑first mindset, and the leadership needed to support the Commission and advance its agenda. I look forward to welcoming him to the team.”

Jones’ private-sector career as a technology executive spans some 33 years and includes expertise in RF technologies, point-to-point microwave, satellite, hybrid fiber‑coaxial, fiber to the premises, fiber‑optic transport, Internet Protocol streaming, private branch exchange systems and traditional and Voice over Internet Protocol telephony, the FCC said.

As an associate director at Verizon, Jones was instrumental in managing domestic and international core cloud infrastructure and operationalizing the 5G core network. He also led Verizon’s nationwide Fios Video Offices, where he directed large‑scale network operations and oversaw the super headend and video hub office architecture.

At Comcast, Jones contributed to major advances in hybrid fiber-coaxial networks, digital encoding and transmission, Emergency Alert Systems and cable modems, the regulator said. He was pivotal in Comcast’s efforts to modernize traditional facilities into state‑of‑the‑art video data centers, the FCC added.

One of OET’s missions is to manage spectrum resources and provide leadership to create new opportunities for competitive technologies and services for the American public, the FCC said. The office maintains the U.S. Table of Frequency Allocations, manages the Experimental Licensing and Equipment Authorization programs, regulates the operation of unlicensed devices and conducts engineering and technical studies.

With the Federal Communications Commission rules for an auction of at least the congressionally mandated 100 MHz of C-band spectrum expected as soon as July, many broadcasters had a laser-beam focus on how best to proceed with signal contribution and distribution alternatives during the 2026 NAB Show.

A breakfast event organized by The Hive Group, a public relations and creative agency headquartered in McLean, Va., on behalf of LTN, shed a great deal of light on the issues and alternatives from both the broadcaster and vendor points of view. For the purposes of this column, I’ll focus on the former.

Brad Cheney, vice president of field operations and engineering at Fox Sports, moderated a panel discussion about the challenges of living with less C-band spectrum. Panelists included David Johnson, senior vice president of technology at The Walt Disney Co., Alastair Hamilton, senior vice president of distribution, engineering and architecture at Fox, and Ken Fuller, vice president of distribution and technology operations at Paramount/CBS.

While video of the event posted to YouTube is available, panelists made several points worth calling attention to here.

There are multiple ingredients to success, including quality, reliability and availability, that must match what broadcasters have today in C-band. What each broadcaster ultimately chooses to do will include a mix of technologies. “There is not one silver bullet solution that gives us what we have today,” Fuller said. Finding what’s right will require “a testing curve” and a “learning curve.”

Matching C-band reliability is a big job. As things stand today, broadcasters have 99.999% C-band reliability. Disney has a lot of experience using non-satellite fiber IP and the public internet. That provides it with a good basis for comparison with C-band. “The primary challenge there is, it’s not five 9s,” said Johnson. “When you think about five 9s compared to four 9s, that’s four minutes difference in a 30-day period.” That translates into a “significant difference in quality and reliability that we need to solve for.”

Packet recovery via the internet is concerning. Some alternatives to C-band involve multiple transport paths, such as Ku-band with internet backup for dropped packets. After looking at nearly 200 major markets, Fox found ISP internet outages to be “quite alarming,” said Hamilton. “Some major markets were down for hours and hours.”

Distribution to small MVPDs will be a challenge. Taken together, Disney, Fox, Paramount/CBS, Warner Bros. and other major broadcasters deliver more than 10 Gbps of content to MVPD partners. That’s not a problem for the largest players with fiber connectivity. But the 10% of MVPDs that are smaller operators is “the bit that worries me,” said Hamilton. “I think we are going to have to get creative to service those.”

Opex reimbursement will be key. Unlike the last C-band auction, maintaining service won’t simply be a matter of replacing capital equipment. Recurring operational expenses for alternatives to C-band will be a major factor. “The blanket statement…is you [government reimbursement funds] will have to pay for our Opex for 10 years,” Fuller said. “Now, what does that mean? We don’t know yet.”

We will be holding a TV Tech Talk webinar July 29 on the ramifications of the C-band auction and available alternatives. Rebecca Hanson, director-general of the North American Broadcasters Association, will be our featured speaker. I am moderating.

WASHINGTON—In response to the Federal Communications Commission fiscal year 2026 regulatory fee allocations, the NAB said it generally supports the Commission’s proposed allocations and the agency’s use of population-based methodology for assessing broadcast television fees.

The NAB also applauded the agency’s ongoing work to refine the regulatory fee methodology to more accurately account for the work performed by employees in non-core bureaus and offices.

It requested, however, that “that the Commission consider reducing the fees assessed to earth stations to more accurately reflect the benefits provided by the FCC to these stations and raising the de minimis threshold to account for the increased cost of collecting regulatory fees.”

Finally, the NAB once again suggested that the FCC “continue to look for mechanisms that account for the significant benefits certain industries receive yet do not currently pay anything under the current fees framework.”

While the FCC has rejected attempts to expand the businesses and industries that are assessed regulatory fees to fund the agency, the NAB once again argued that the FCC “can improve the regulatory fee process by expanding its base of regulatory fee payors to include all entities that benefit directly from the Commission’s activities. The current regulatory fee process disproportionately burdens a limited group of legacy industries, despite that a larger set of entities benefit from the Commission’s work. It is neither fair nor sustainable for a small group of payors to retain the responsibility for funding the Commission’s broad and growing portfolio of activities.”

The NAB also said that it “disagrees with the Commission’s tentative conclusion in the Notice that there is no basis upon which to propose new fee categories. Over the last few years, NAB and other stakeholders have submitted several comments explaining the basis for adding new fee categories and the Commission’s legal authority to expand the base of fee payors beyond licensees to other entities that benefit from the Commission’s activities” to potentially include “broadband service providers, equipment authorization holders, and major technology companies (“Big Tech”).”

“NAB submits that it is undeniable that such additional entities should share in the costs of funding the Commission’s activities,” the filing noted. “And while we concede that it may be challenging to determine an appropriate methodology for calculating regulatory fees for broadband service providers, equipment authorization holders, and Big Tech companies, that is no reason for the Commission to avoid its obligation to apportion regulatory fees in a fair manner.”

The full filing is available here.

WASHINGTON—The Walt Disney Co.’s ABC-owned stations called a Federal Communications Commission order that they file early license renewals “unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional.”

In a letter attached to one of the license renewals, submitted on May 28, ABC-owned WABC-TV New York noted that the “Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades. And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here.”

“The Order is inconsistent with a legitimate exercise of investigative authority and is plainly incompatible with the First Amendment,” the letter said. “Worse, the Order opens the door to an assault on the Station’s license, while the Commission searches for a legal pretext to achieve its desired goal. This effort to suppress speech under the guise of bureaucratic process must not prevail. WABC files this application without waiving any rights, and calls on the Commission to rescind the Order.”

As previously reported, the FCC issued an order in late April requiring Disney’s ABC-owned stations must file for an early license renewal by May 28. The order referred to FCC’s ongoing investigation of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies at Disney but it follows months of comments by President Donald Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr suggesting that the stations should lose their licenses over comments made by network late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

In its May 28 letter to the FCC, Disney's WABC alleged that the Commission's investigation into DEI was simply a pretext "to punish the Station for speech the government does not like."

The May 28 filings by Disney’s ABC-owned stations came on the same day that the FCC issued a public notice asserting wide-ranging powers to regulate broadcast content under the rubric of “public interest” standards. Those public interest standards include the requirement that "broadcasters are also prohibited from engaging in news distortion," the agency insisted.

In response to the FCC’s claim that legal precedent allows it to regulate news content, the Commission’s lone Democrat, Commissioner Anna Gomez, asserted: “The ‘public interest’ does not mean this administration's interests. Broadcasters should ignore these latest threats and stiffen their spine.“

Gomez also blasted the FCC’s order requiring Disney to file for early renewal of its broadcast licenses. “Disney and its ABC stations are the latest victims of this administration's campaign of censorship and control,” she said. “I am glad to see them expose the FCC's actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”

Disney also faces a separate FCC investigation into possible violations of equal time rules for political candidates by "The View". In response to that investigation, ABC filed a sternly worded petition earlier this month arguing that the “Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to ‘The View’ and more broadly.”

WABC-TV’s May 28 letter filed a number of similar arguments regarding free speech and censorship. More specifically, the station questioned the validity of the FCC's DEI investigation into Disney, which prompted the order demanding early license renewal applications.

Before tne order was issued, the letter noted, the Enforcement Bureau had already served a string of inquiries and Disney had produced more than 11,000 pages of documents on a mutually agreed schedule without hearing any complaints from the FCC on its compliance.

“It is not credible to now declare the early renewal process `essential' to the same investigation, particularly when after releasing the Order, the Enforcement Bureau issued yet another request for information to which the Company is required to respond less than 24 hours after the instant filing,” the letter said. “The early renewal procedure is not an investigative tool and adds nothing to the Commission’s investigative capacity.”

The letter also strongly pushes back against possible discriminatory behavior at the ABC stations.

“The Order purports to investigate `possible violations' of the `prohibition on unlawful discrimination,' but never identifies what violation it had in mind,” the letter said. “The Commission has never articulated—let alone adopted through notice-and-comment rulemaking—any new compliance standard under its broadcast Equal Employment Opportunity (“EEO”) requirements, which focus on non-discrimination and providing access to opportunities for those from underrepresented groups. It has never stated whether or when diversity, equity and inclusion (“DEI”) practices violate a Commission rule or warrant ordinary punishment, much less the extraordinary punishment of a demand for early license renewal A licensee cannot comply with a standard that is announced nowhere, defined nowhere, and exists nowhere.”

“In truth, the Station has acted consistently with the Commission’s EEO requirements,” the station said. “Yet it is now being punished under an interpretation the Commission invented but has never promulgated or even fully articulated—one that turns the longstanding EEO rules on their head. A licensee cannot be held to a standard it was never given notice of—that is not enforcement, it is arbitrary, capricious, and a denial of due process. And even if the Commission were to eventually declare that the Station committed an EEO rule violation—a finding that the Station in no way concedes—jeopardizing the Station’s license would be grossly disproportionate to any such violation, especially one premised on an unarticulated standard.

“The only plausible reason to issue the Order is to punish the Station for speech the government does not like,” the letter concluded. “Commissioner Gomez recognized in her May 11, 2026 letter what the record makes plain: The Commission’s actions against Disney and ABC constitute ‘not a series of coincidental regulatory actions but a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control, carried out through the weaponization of the FCC’s authority as a federal regulator and aimed at pressuring a free and independent press and all media into submission.’ This is not a partisan point. Senator Ted Cruz [R-Texas] called one of Chairman Carr’s threats to broadcasters ‘dangerous as hell’ and warned that “[g]overnment officials threatening adverse consequences for disfavored content is an unconstitutional coercion that chills protected speech.’”

The filings can be found here, with WABC-TV’s letter to the FCC objecting to the early renewal at the bottom of the page.

WASHINGTON—In a wide-ranging Public Notice reminding broadcasters of their public interest obligations, the Federal Communications Commission stressed that “spectrum auctions routinely bring in billions of dollars for the same spectrum broadcasters use for free” and insisted that the agency has the authority to investigate, fine and potentially remove broadcast licenses for violations of broadcast public interest obligations.

Those public interest obligations include the requirement that "broadcasters are also prohibited from engaging in news distortion," the agency noted.

Though not signed and not explicitly issued in response to any given criticism, the document amounts to an unusual public defense from the GOP-led commission for the regulatory approach taken under FCC Chair Brendan Carr. As previously reported, he has been criticized by Democrats in Congress, former FCC officials and FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez for attempting to use the agency's enforcement powers to limit "free speech" and chill broadcast news coverage that is critical of the Trump administration.

“Federal law requires broadcasters to comply with a basic and fundamental obligation—they must operate in the public interest,” the public notice argued. “Congress first enshrined this concept in the law nearly 100 years ago, and it charged the FCC with the responsibility of ensuring that broadcasters only obtain and maintain a license to the extent they are operating in a manner that serves the `public interest, convenience, and necessity.’”

In addition to its statutory authority to enforce “public interest” requirements, the Public Notice argued that “spectrum is a finite public resource bound by the limits of physics” and an extremely valuable asset.

“Spectrum auctions routinely bring in billions of dollars for the same spectrum broadcasters use for free,” the agency reminded broadcasters, adding that “proceeds from the auction for broadcast television spectrum that was reallocated for wireless broadband use yielded $19.8 billion in revenue, including $10.05 billion for winning broadcast bidders and more than $7 billion to be deposited to the U.S. Treasury for deficit reduction.”

“In exchange, broadcasters are required to operate in the public interest of the communities they serve,” the agency noted. “It is this service as a public trustee—and the corresponding obligation to offer programming responsive to the needs and interests of the local communities they are licensed to serve—that makes broadcasters unique and distinguishes them from other programmers. It is an obligation that broadcasters take on voluntarily, in exchange for the privilege of holding a license to operate using the public airwaves.”

The Public Notice also laid a variety of legal arguments affirming the regulator’s controversial conclusion that it has the power to ensure that broadcast programming is in the public interest.

“Programming decisions by broadcasters must be made in service of the public and be responsive to the needs of the local community they are licensed to serve, not the private interests of national networks,” the FCC insisted.

“No broadcaster has a ‘right’ to use the public spectrum,” the notice stated, adding that “indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that certain FCC regulatory efforts in furtherance of its statutory mandate `enhance rather than abridge the freedoms of speech and press protected by the First Amendment.’” and that “the courts have recognized that there are limits on broadcasters’ First Amendment rights.”

The FCC concluded that “the mere denial of a license because ‘the public interest’ requires it ‘is not a denial of free speech.’”

“Where the Commission finds that a broadcaster has failed to serve the public interest, the Commission may take appropriate action, including enforcement action,” require a licensee to file an early license renewal application,” as it has done with ABC’s stations, and apply the “public interest” rules when considering mergers or station sales.

As examples of the FCC’s authority to regulate content, the notice cited its “main studio” rule, intended to ensure service obligations were met by placing a station’s production center within the community it served,and its “program origination” rule, which required stations to originate a minimum percentage of its non-network programming from its main studio or elsewhere within its community of license.

“The purpose of the rule was to encourage locally-oriented programming in furtherance of the Commission’s public interest standard and localism mandate,” the Notice argued.

It also highlighted rules relating to the station’s online public inspection file issues/program lists, and insisted “broadcasters are also prohibited from engaging in news distortion, must provide equal opportunity to political candidates and are prohibited from airing obscene, indecent and profane content.”

“The Commission will continue to engage in a robust review of applications to ensure compliance with our rules and determine whether broadcasters have met their obligation to operate in the public interest,” the notice concluded. “We encourage broadcasters to review their current practices and confirm that they fully align with their statutory public interest obligation.”

In the final sentence, the Notice also stressed that the agency determination to both investigate public-interest violations and enforce those rules in ways that could involve taking away broadcast licenses.

“The Commission will not hesitate to exercise its statutory authority to ensure that broadcasters either fulfill their public interest obligation or provide the privilege of being a broadcast licensee to someone that will fulfill that duty,” the Notice stated.

Carr also reiterated the agency’s authority in a post on X:

In response, Gomez asserted: “The ‘public interest’ does not mean this administration's interests. Broadcasters should ignore these latest threats and stiffen their spine.“

“We’ve been here before” stands out among the profound rhetoric that poured into the FCC as it revived its rulemaking exploration of NextGen TV. Those words, from a filing by cable-TV industry groups, captured the frustrating dilemma as regulators try to figure out what to do about the retransmission of ATSC 3.0 broadcast TV signals via cable systems and other multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs).

More than 1,600 comments (including formal submissions, replies to other parties and ex parte letters) have deluged the Federal Communications Commission since October, when it issued its docket on “Authorizing Permissive Use of the ‘Next Generation’ Broadcast Television Standard,” a spokesperson told TV Tech. The arguments came from “broadcasters, MVPDs, equipment manufacturers and retailer groups, consumer groups/advocates, accessibility groups, policy groups, technology/software providers, content producers, other interested parties and individual consumers,” the spokesperson said.

Few Innovative Ideas
This vast array of opinions refrains the familiar arguments of broadcasters vs. cable operators—with substantial input from equipment and software and content suppliers allied with one side or the other. As is increasingly common in such proceedings, there is also an extensive cadre of public-interest organizations and a dollop of Silicon Valley and wireless communications ventures with an appetite for spectrum.

Relatively few innovative ideas seemed to emerge from the reams of formal filings or in conversations with TV Tech, although analysts offered perspectives on what’s ahead.

The FCC hasn’t set a deadline to resolve the ATSC 3.0 retransmission issue. The agency’s only response to a query about a possible timetable: “This is an active proceeding.”

Independent analysts do not expect a quick resolution. As one inside observer said, “The ball is in FCC Chairman [Brendan] Carr’s court.” Another FCC watcher opined that NextGen TV is not a high priority, despite the agency’s public statements.

To complicate the deliberations, the NextGen TV migration also includes uncertainty about if, when or how to turn off the current ATSC 1.0 signals, which do have must-carry requirements. A slew of other factors, such as the absence of a tuner subsidy (as was available in the digital transition nearly two decades ago), add to the complexity—and are familiar themes in the current examination.

When it opened its latest rulemaking, the FCC said it was seeking “to support and accelerate the nation’s ongoing transition to NextGen TV (also known as ATSC 3.0),” which it claims “represents the future of broadcasting and promises to modernize the nation’s free and local over-the-air television service.”

NAB, ATSC Confront Multiple Challenges
In its filing, the National Association of Broadcasters contends the dissent about must-carry and other familiar issues repeats a “problem [that] is circular.” Stations won’t transmit until carriage is assured and receivers are available, and hardware makers won’t make equipment until rules are in place for distributing the enhanced content, NAB asserted.

Moreover, there is the question about the migration from ATSC 1.0 to 3.0.

“Broadcasters cannot offer the full benefits of Next Gen TV service until they can stop simulcasting in ATSC 1.0,” according to NAB’s filing—but there is widespread concern about the problems that would surface if simulcasting ended without viewers able to receive ATSC 3.0 signals.

NAB urged the FCC to adopt a “date-certain ATSC 1.0 sunset” and to “ensure continued MVPD carriage of stations’ primary ATSC 3.0 signals and associated program-related features.”

In its initial comments to the FCC, NAB insisted “extending must-carry to ATSC 3.0 is essential to an efficient and timely transition.” Broadcasters contend stations should be allowed “to assert mandatory carriage rights for their ATSC 3.0 signals.”

“Broadcasters are not looking to expand must-carry obligations but preserve the same framework that applies today as broadcast technology evolves,” NAB said. “As stations transition to ATSC 3.0, must-carry should continue to attach to a station’s primary programming stream regardless of transmission standard…Technical standards are already in place to support MVPD carriage of ATSC 3.0 signals,” pointing to an ATSC Recommended Practice on Delivery of ATSC 3.0 Services for Redistribution.

Alison Martin, NAB’s vice president of innovation and strategy, said ATSC 3.0 broadcast streams contain content-related data that is essential for viewers and should be subject to must-carry rules. Weather reports, emergency evacuation routes, accessibility information and similar local data must be part of the retransmission package, she said, alluding to the support broadcasters have received from social service agencies.

Martin acknowledged that some of the data ventures that broadcasters envision for ATSC 3.0 fit into what the FCC’s Carr calls “the broadcast internet,” which NAB contends is totally separate from the must-carry issues involved with traditional video programming. She said licensees see services such as BitPath, the wireless platform built on ATSC 3.0 architecture developed by Sinclair and Nexstar Media Group, as an extension of broadcasters’ capacity for data delivery.

“They look at it as a supplement for private wireless networks, so must-carry is not necessary,” she said.

That said, cable retransmission is “the most important thing” to assure broadcasters “are able to innovate” and develop enhancements such as “more immersive audio” and sports enhancements, according to Martin.

The Advanced Television Systems Committee added its endorsement to NAB’s arguments.

Although the group insists that its focus is strictly on technical issues, “any regulatory framework must preserve local broadcasters’ ability to innovate, serve their communities, and fully use ATSC 3.0’s capabilities,” ATSC Vice President of Standards Development Luiz Fausto emphasized.

“The absence of clear rules governing the treatment of ATSC 3.0 services in retransmission scenarios could create uncertainty,” Fausto said. “Conversely, a framework that recognizes the technical realities of ATSC 3.0, including its IP-based architecture and support for new services, can help broadcasters and distribution partners plan investments with greater confidence.”

He stressed: “Cable retransmission is part of a larger transition. ATSC 3.0’s value lies in enabling local broadcasters to use a flexible, scalable, IP-based platform to reach viewers and communities in new ways.”

Opposition From Cable, CE Makers
The “been here before” sneer came from NCTA–The Internet & Television Association on behalf of a cadre of cable TV and broadband providers and their collaborators.

In its filing, the group took aim at NAB’s claim that the cable industry opposes broadcasters’ use of new technologies. “We simply believe that broadcasters’ transition to a new standard should not come at the expense of MVPDs, equipment manufacturers, and consumers, with no guarantee of meaningful benefits,” NCTA said.

“Requiring cable operators to carry ATSC 3.0 signals—despite the substantial costs involved and the uncertain consumer value—would further intensify the serious constitutional concerns associated with the must-carry regime,” NCTA Senior Vice President of Strategic Communications Brian Dietz told TV Tech. “Allowing broadcasters to discontinue ATSC 1.0 transmissions at this stage of the current market-based transition would impose real costs on consumers without any assurance of meaningful benefits.”

The Consumer Technology Association and its equipment-making allies take a similar stance. CTA contends the marketplace is working and a 3.0 tuner mandate is unnecessary. It would be “misguided” to impose a mandate “before broadcasters have adopted and promoted NextGen TV on a nationwide basis, and thus before there is adequate indication of consumer interest or demand,” the group argued.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency’s sole Democrat, said the new rules would trigger “additional thorny questions” over matters such as “encryption technologies [i.e.] digital rights management.”

She voiced concerns about whether audiences “will be able to continue to enjoy free, over-the-air television as they do today.”

“Technology should not be a bottleneck to innovation,” Gomez said, noting that the “significant costs of the transition” will extend to consumers who must pay for new “equipment to…receive the new signal over the air or potentially pay higher prices for new televisions.”

Does Wall Street Care?
Blair Levin, a former FCC chief of staff and longtime telecom policy expert, identified several barriers to the must-carry requirements for NextGen TV.

“The value to consumers is completely different” from the original DTV transition nearly two decades ago, Levin said. “The streaming networks, which didn’t exist then, are a much bigger factor than alternative content at the time of the earlier transition.

“There will be a point when the MVPDs say ‘It’s over,’” Levin predicted, suggesting that the necessity to retransmit broadcast content may become irrelevant.

Levin, now a policy and regulation adviser at New Street Research, headed the team that wrote the U.S. National Broadband Plan (2009-2010) and was deeply involved in the 1996 Telecommunications Act while at the FCC.

Several barriers will impede the must-carry efforts, Levin told TV Tech, especially the lack of a tuner mandate and a specified turn-off date for the current ATSC 1.0 signals. The transition also lacks momentum because there is no pressure from Congress or the White House, he noted.

Would Wall Street care about such a break with historical models?

“Not really,” Levin said, noting that investors now care more about actions “that affect wireless carriers and Silicon Valley,” citing increasing efforts to open up different spectrum bands to auction for nonbroadcast purposes.

From his Washington perspective, Levin noted, “NAB has been unable to elevate this on Carr’s agenda.” He acknowledged that broadcasters have traditionally been big defenders of the First Amendment, but said NextGen TV does not fit into that category.

Focus on Other Opportunities
Rick Ducey, managing director at BIA Advisory Services, expressed optimism about TV stations finding a role in the emerging environment.

“I think broadcasters would still offer enhanced services over-the-air even if MVPDs wouldn’t provide the service enhancements,” Ducey said. “That might both hasten video subscriber drops from MVPDs and drive more OTA viewing.

“Broadcasters are leveraging ATSC 3.0 to create an enhanced consumer OTA experience, and [they] would love to see that experience also offered via MVPD retransmission of must-carry if necessary.”

As for the contentious stances of the major camps in this debate, “Each group has reasons for their positions,” Ducey explained, citing the “new expenses (and new competition) for MVPDs” when NextGen TV services are launched.

Equipment makers are wary of new expenses for an unproven market and don’t like the government telling them what their bill of materials should be, he acknowledged.

Ducey also pointed to concerns raised by the role of “tax-and-waste” groups such as Americans for Tax Reform, Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Citizens Against Government Waste and American Action Forum as new advocates of the FCC’s effort to create industrial policy.

Wall Street is paying attention to the NextGen TV situation, Ducey said.

“They’ve been listening to ATSC 3.0 plans, forecasts, expectations, and market signals for years,” he said, noting that investors are “waiting to see what happens as we get closer.”

Non-media ventures for data delivery provide “very promising signals that there may yet be an emerging and scalable market for broadcasters,” Ducey said, citing ventures such as EdgeBeam Wireless. That joint venture, involving E.W. Scripps, Gray Media, Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair, plans to use ATSC 3.0 technology for multipoint data delivery.

Meanwhile, the must-carry diatribes continue with no decision date in sight.