This Week in Regulation for Broadcasters:  July 7, 2025 to July 11, 2025

Here are some of the regulatory developments of significance to broadcasters from the past week, with links to where you can go to find more information as to how these actions may affect your operations.

• The FCC announced that comments and reply comments are due August 4 and August 22, respectively, responding to its Public Notice released last month seeking to refresh the record in the National Television Multiple Ownership Rule proceeding.  In December 2017, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on whether to retain, modify, or eliminate the national television ownership cap (prohibiting attributable ownership interests in broadcast TV stations that reach more than 39% of the TV households nationwide), and the UHF discount (a 50% discount for UHF stations in calculating compliance with the 39% cap).  On our Broadcast Law Blog, we took a closer look at the Public Notice and how it related to other potential changes to the FCC’s broadcast ownership rules.
• The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau entered into a Consent Decree with TEGNA to resolve its investigation into the broadcast of indecent material on its Spokane, Washington TV station.  The investigation started because of a complaint that a “pornographic video” aired during a weather report on the station’s 6:00 p.m. news in October 2021.  TEGNA confirmed the video aired during on a monitor behind the weatherperson for 13 seconds.  TEGNA determined that an unknown party accessed the monitor’s screencasting feature through the station’s unsecured local wireless network.  After the incident, TEGNA directed all of its stations to disable all screencasting features, deactivated the station’s wireless network, removed all of the station’s smart TVs and monitors’ wireless components, and required the station to only use monitors lacking wireless connectivity going forward.  The Consent Decree requires TEGNA to pay a $222,500 voluntary contribution to the U.S. Treasury and to implement a compliance plan at all of its stations to prevent future violations of the FCC’s indecency rules.  On our Broadcast Law Blog, we further discussed the Consent Decree, the need for broadcasters to secure their transmission chain, and how the FCC enforces its indecency rules against broadcasters.
• FCC Chairman Carr released a statement congratulating Congress for passing the One Bill Beautiful Bill, which reauthorized the FCC’s spectrum auction authority that lapsed in 2023.  The bill extends the FCC’s auction authority through September 30, 2034. A few months ago, we wrote on our Blog that the lack of auction authority has kept the FCC from opening windows for the filing of applications for new broadcast stations and noted that the FCC, in anticipation of the authority being renewed, earlier this year budgeted for an FM auction in the upcoming 2026 fiscal year. 
• President Trump posted on Truth Social urging Senate Republicans to support the Administration’s Recissions Bill, which formalizes the DOGE cuts and includes a $1.1 billion claw back in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for fiscal years 2026 and 2027, stripping NPR and PBS of federal funding.  Trump threatened not to endorse any Republican who did not support the bill.  As we noted here, the bill was passed by the House last month.  Senator Cantwell (D-WA) posted a video on X stating that the proposed recission of CPB funding “isn’t just an attack on NPR and PBS – it’s a reckless endangerment of 13 million Americans who depend on these stations for lifesaving emergency information.”  FCC Chairman Carr posted an image on X from a Kansas PBS affiliate asking viewers to tell their senators to vote no on the Recissions Bill, and stated that he directed the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to investigate whether the station violated the FCC’s rules prohibiting noncommercial stations from accepting money in exchange for airing political issue ads.  Seemingly in response to the Recissions Bill, Carr also encouraged “PBS & NPR to focus more on how they managed to lose America’s trust.  That is their problem, not Congress’s work to ensure good stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”
• The Enforcement Bureau also entered into a Consent Decree with a Massachusetts pirate radio broadcaster to resolve its investigation of the individual’s illegal broadcasting activities.  As the result of a sweep of the Boston area (and other parts of Massachusetts) for pirate broadcasting, the FCC proposed a $597,775 fine in April 2024 against the individual for pirate broadcasting.  Due to the individual’s inability to pay the proposed fine and because he ceased pirate broadcasting, the Consent Decree reduced the fine to $10,000, but the Decree requires that the individual pay a further penalty of $587,775 if he engages or assists anyone else in pirate broadcasting during the Consent Decree’s 20-year term.
• There was continued advocacy on the NAB’s proposal to mandate a hard date for an ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) conversion (see our notes on this proposal here and here). Representatives of the electronics, cable, and LPTV industries and a public interest group met with the FCC to urge, for separate reasons, that no mandate be issued (see a summary of those meetings here).  NAB’s Chief Legal Officer Rick Kaplan responded in an article on the NAB’s blog addressing each group’s arguments and contending that they were not protecting the public but instead “protecting their turf.”  Former FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly released a statement opposing such technological mandates, while groups advocating for the hard date also met with the FCC (see the FCC filings of Pearl TV LLC and Sinclair Inc. and EdgeBeam Wireless).  The FCC has taken comments on whether to proceed with a rulemaking on the NAB proposal (which we noted here and here).  The current debate is whether the FCC should move forward with a formal Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to set a hard date for the ATSC 3.0 conversion. 
• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the FTC’s “Click to Cancel Rule” which amended its existing “Negative Option Rule” by requiring sellers to allow consumers to easily cancel their enrollments in subscriptions and services with “negative options.”  As we noted here and here, the amended rule included various consumer protections including requiring sellers to provide a means to cancel a subscription as easy to use as the means of enrolling in the seller’s service.  The court found that the FTC made procedural errors prior to adopting the amended rule, principally by not conducting a statutorily mandated “preliminary” analysis of alternatives to the rule.  These errors required that the rule be rejected, even though the Court was seemingly sympathetic to the FTC’s goals.
• The FCC released its quarterly Broadcast Station Totals.  The release shows that, compared to the same release from a year ago, there are 53 fewer AM stations and 18 fewer commercial FM stations, but 333 more noncommercial stations.  There were also 11 more commercial UHF TV stations but 11 fewer VHF TV stations; and 2 more noncommercial UHF TV stations with 1 fewer noncommercial VHF TV stations.
• The FCC’s Media Bureau issued two decisions reflecting the superiority of UHF channels for the transmission of digital TV signals.  The Bureau granted a TV station’s petition proposing the substitution of UHF Channel 23 for VHF Channel 2 at Las Vegas, Nevada.  The Bureau found that granting the channel substitution was in the public interest due to the Las Vegas area’s topography and the petition’s inclusion of over 200 viewer complaints of the station’s VHF reception issues (which the Bureau found likely to be due to significant interference from outdoor lighting in Las Vegas), even though some viewers would lose reception of the station due to the channel change.  The Bureau also released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on a petitioner’s proposed substitution of Channel 24 for Channel 4 at Jacksonville, Oregon due to the inferior quality of VHF channel signals, especially in indoor areas. 
• The Media Bureau reinstated the following channels in the FM Table of Allotments as vacant due to either the cancellation of the associated station authorizations or the dismissal of the associated long-form auction applications: Channel 264C3 at Crosbyton, Texas; Channel 259A at Encinal, Texas; Channels 263A and 297C3 at Junction, Texas; Channel 297A at Knox City, Texas; Channel 286A at Sanderson, Texas; Channel 244A at Turkey, Texas; and Channel 234C2 at Wells, Texas.  The FCC will announce if and when it will open windows for the filing of applications for these vacant allotments.