National Association of Broadcasters

In response to the nomination of Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] as a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) President and CEO Gordon Smith expressed concern over Sohn's involvement with streaming service Locast. Sohn was a board member at Locast, a non-profit streaming service that transmitted local broadcast signals over the internet. In September 2021, Locast suspended service due to a federal judge's ruling centering on copyright issues.

In its long-delayed 2010 and 2014 ownership review order, which was finally published in the Federal Register Nov 1, the Federal Communications Commission again asserted that “non-broadcast video programming distributors” are not meaningful competitors in local TV markets, virtually ignoring a host of 20th and 21st century technologies (including cable, satellite, mobile devices and the Internet) to retain its local TV ownership restriction. In an even more impressive imitation of an ostrich with its head in the sand, the FCC yet again retained the prohibition on the common ownership or operation of a daily newspaper and a radio or TV station in the same market.

In maintaining a ban adopted in 1975, the FCC essentially concluded that little or nothing of import has changed in the news industry and the marketplace position of print newspapers and broadcast stations for the past 41 years – a nonsensical position on its face. In fact, the FCC appears stuck in a time warp, as merely stating the terms of the print newspaper rule reveals its arbitrariness in 2016. It prohibits common ownership of a broadcast outlet and a newspaper published four or more days per week in the dominant language in the market and circulated generally in the community of publication. The very notion of a rule hinging on a newspaper being printed and circulated shows its analog-era ancestry. It borders on the absurd to contend that the viewpoint diversity concerns supposedly sufficient to ban the common ownership of a station and a newspaper publishing a print edition four days a week magically disappear when the newspaper publishes online every day but publishes in print only three days a week. And this rule is still maintained by the agency that spent millions of taxpayer dollars and countless person hours on producing the National Broadband Plan.

The National Association of Broadcasters announced that Robert Weller, the Federal Communications Commission's Chief of Technical Analysis, will join NAB as Vice President, Spectrum Policy on July 28, 2014.

He will report to Rick Kaplan, Executive Vice President of Strategic Planning.

Since 2008, Weller has led the FCC's group tasked with rulemaking and analysis of spectrum policy areas, including radio propagation, interference, RF safety, frequency allotments and new technologies. He has also served as the technical lead on broadcast coverage and interference issues during the Commission's broadcast spectrum incentive auction proceeding.

Weller first joined the FCC in 1984 as a radio inspector in its San Francisco Field Office before departing in 1993 as director of its Denver District Office. Prior to rejoining the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology in 2007, Weller spent 14 years with the consulting firm of Hammett & Edison, where he did work on broadcast systems engineering, emerging technologies, due diligence, and FCC rule-makings and applications.

Television Board Chair Marci Burdick has appointed Sinclair Broadcast Group's Rebecca Hanson, Senior Vice President for Strategy and Policy to the TV Board of Directors.

She fills the seat previously occupied by Dunia Shive and the appointment is effective immediately. Hanson joined Sinclair in January 2014 to develop and oversee the broadcaster's new Washington office dedicated to a broad range of policy and business matters. She joined Sinclair from the FCC, where she was a Senior Advisor, Broadcast Spectrum with the Media Bureau of the FCC and served on the Incentive Auction Task Force focusing on broadcast issues.

Prior to joining the FCC, Hanson was Vice President, Strategic Initiatives at Sprint Nextel, where she was responsible for the launch and long-term growth strategy for Sprint's 4G wireless broadband. She began her career as an attorney with Brownstein Zeidman and then ShawPittman (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman), where she specialized in the areas of technology, commercial finance and venture capital.