July 2013

On July 5, Rick Kaplan of the National Association of Broadcasters met with Federal Communications Commission Chief of Staff Michele Ellison to offer the association’s views on the challenges and opportunities in broadcaster repacking and the 600 MHz post-auction band plan proposed in the FCC’s incentive auction proceeding.

NAB also reiterated two specific requests it has made in the past. First, NAB encouraged the commission to hold — even perhaps as part of its monthly open agenda meetings — hearings on various aspects of the incentive auction proceeding. NAB also discussed what it called “the unfortunate and unnecessary consequences of the indeterminate and now three-month-old freeze on broadcast TV station modification applications.” In the meeting, NAB recommended that, if the Media Bureau did not lift this freeze, the commission should move forward immediately with an order resolving the questions surrounding which full-power and Class A broadcasters will be protected — and to what extent.

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision they see as severely undercutting the Voting Rights Act, the Minority Media and Telecommunications will call on their friends in broadcasting to keep a spotlight on voting issues.

MMTC President David Honig said that his group would be pushing broadcasters to do for voting rights what they did back in 1964 (when the Act was originally passed), which was to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." Honig said that the FCC had historically had "feet of clay" when it came to diversity and entrepreneurship opportunities for women and minorities. He said Acting FCC Chair Mignon Clyburn was wonderful, and clearly understood the importance of the issue -- she is the first African-American woman to chair the commission -- but that there was only so much she could do as acting chair. He also suggested the future could be brighter, saying that the president's nominee for chairman, Tom Wheeler, had a "long and illustrious career in diversity."

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), who running for Senate, is asking the Federal Communications Commission to revoke the license of WWOR, the state’s only high-powered commercial broadcast television station.

FOX, which owns WWOR, announced it was pulling the station’s only newscast and replacing it with “Chasing New Jersey” a 30-minute show focused on “issues driving conversations” in the state. Rep Pallone voiced his thoughts on twitter by saying, “WWOR’s cancellation of nightly news fails New Jerseyans who want & deserve local news coverage. FCC must take action.” In a letter to acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn, Rep Pallone wrote, “WWOR has failed for over a decade to live up to its broadcasting obligations to New Jersey. In addition, since purchasing WWOR in 2001, News Corporation, now 21st Century Fox, has done everything they can to avoid any commitment to serve as a truly New Jersey station.”

Update:
WWOR Station Manager Dianne Doctor defended the new programming: “Based in Trenton, Chasing New Jersey is a news program immersed in all aspects of the state. Politics. People. Issues. It’s enterprise journalism that no one else is doing.”

British lawmakers will ask Rupert Murdoch to return to London to answer further questions about wrongdoing at his U.K. newspapers in light of a secret recording that emerged earlier this month.

The recording — obtained by the ExaroNews journalism website and broadcast on Britain's Channel 4 — had Murdoch calling wrongdoing by his British newspapers "next to nothing" and apparently acknowledging that his reporters paid police officers for information. The outlets say the tape was recorded during a meeting with journalists at The Sun newspaper in March. Murdoch told them: "We're talking about payments for news tips from cops: That's been going on a hundred years."