Legislative Update

By: David Oxenford, Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP Everyone knows that a fundamental principle of American democracy is the First Amendment – guaranteeing many freedoms to US citizens including freedom of the press and freedom of speech.  It is one of those concepts that underlies our society, but is often mentioned only in passing, and rarely considered in…

Michigan’s U.S. Reps. Fred Upton (R-6), Tim Walberg (R-7) and Debbie Dingell (D-12) were among the 77 bipartisan cosponsors of House Resolution in support of the Local Radio Freedom Act introduced this week in the Senate. For more than a decade, broadcasters have rallied allies in Congress to proactively take a stand against a performance…

For a third consecutive year the annual regulatory fees that the Federal Communications Commission proposes to collect from radio stations is going up, and this year’s planned increase is twice that of a year ago, according to a report in InsideRadio. The FCC has proposed to hike annual fees by eight percent in 2021 as…

Last week, the FCC released a guide summarizing TV closed captioning quality standards (accuracy, synchronicity, completeness, and placement). The guide includes best practices and discusses how TV stations must monitor and maintain their equipment and signal transmissions associated with closed captioning, perform technical equipment checks, take any corrective measures necessary to ensure that captioning is…

By: David Oxenford, Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP The FCC’s order adopted in late October authorizing AM stations to voluntarily convert to operations in a fully-digital mode became effective yesterday when the approval of its information-collection obligations under the Paperwork Reduction Act was announced in the Federal Register.  This means that AM stations can opt for full-digital operations, which many have argued will…