The one-year window for qualified low-power TV stations to apply for Class A status under the provisions of the Low-Power Protection Act opened Friday, and will stretch until May 30, a Media Bureau public notice said Friday in docket 23-126. The window is open to stations that broadcast a minimum of 18 hours daily, carry three hours per week of local programming, are located in markets of 95,000 households or fewer, and met all those requirements 90 days before the LPPA’s approval on Jan. 5, 2023. Fewer than 30 rural stations are expected to qualify. LPTV broadcaster Radio Communication Corporation is challenging the FCC order implementing the LPPA in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (see 2405230040).

Broadcast applications filed after Aug.1 will need to use 2020 U.S. Census data in any interference analyses, said the FCC Media Bureau in a public notice in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. “Failure to do so will require amendment and may result in dismissal of applications as defective,” the PN said. The TVStudy software the agency uses to calculate interference and allot channels will make use of the 2020 census data, the PN said. TVStudy has also been updated to version 2.3.0, said a separate PN listing the updates.

The FCC Media Bureau will allow low-power TV stations to apply to change their channels starting Aug. 20, after a 14-year freeze, said a public notice Tuesday. The freeze on major modification applications for LPTV was put in place in 2010 in anticipation of the broadcast incentive auction. The freeze will be lifted Aug. 20 only for channel change applications. “No other changes will be permitted,” the PN said, but added that allowing channel changes is the “first step” in doing away with the freeze altogether. The channel change applications will be processed “on a first-come, first-serve basis.” Mutually exclusive applications will be handled through a settlement window to be announced by the MB in a later PN. Lee Miller, Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance executive director, told us many LPTV stations have long been waiting for the chance to change channels to improve reception or change their market. The announcement is “a step forward for our industry,” he said.

Radio Communication Corp. “fundamentally misreads the statutory scheme” and is “simply mistaken” in its challenges to the FCC’s implementation of the 2023 Low Power Protection Act (LPPA) (see 2404230058), said the agency's respondent brief Wednesday (docket 24-1004) in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “It is well within Congress’s power to regulate local television broadcasting,” said the brief. RCC's arguments that the FCC’s rules governing which low-power TV stations can upgrade to Class A status violate the First Amendment or discourage cable carriage of LPTV stations are “entirely beside the point,” because RCC is located in too large a market and so “ineligible for Class A status under the plain text” of the LPPA, the FCC said. The agency “correctly interpreted the statutory requirement that an eligible station ‘operate in a Designated Market Area with not more than 95,000 television households’ to mean that an eligible station must be located within a Designated Market Area that has no more than 95,000 television households,” the filing said. RCC is in a DMA with more than 95,000 TV households, so “that conclusion resolves this case,” the FCC said. “RCC’s various policy objections, its strained reading of the Communications Act, and its tenuous constitutional theories cannot change its ineligibility.”

The full FCC rejected an application for review from radio broadcaster Americom appealing a Media Bureau denial of its request to increase the power of a Carson City, Nevada, FM translator station. The rejection was detailed in an order released Tuesday. “We find no error in the Staff Decision,” the order said. Americom had sought a waiver to increase the translator’s power from 40 watts to 250 watts to better reach Nevada's Reno and Sparks markets and better serve Carson City, the order said. The Media Bureau found that “neither the irregular size and shape of the Nielsen Reno Market nor the signal degradation due to terrain obstruction, were unusual circumstances sufficient to justify grant of a waiver,” the order said. In its application for review, Americom argued that the Media Bureau decision didn’t match the spirit of the FCC’s AM Revitalization order, and that the bureau should have been more flexible and didn’t give Americom’s request sufficient consideration. The order said that Americom’s request would have conflicted with language in the AM Revitalization order limiting AM station service areas, and affirmed the Media Bureau ruling. “The benefits of Americom increasing its service area beyond the parameters set forth in the FM Translator Siting Rule do not outweigh the public interest benefits of applying that rule in a fair and consistent manner,” the order said.

The FCC Media Bureau has created two dockets associated with the draft NPRM on new requirements for low-power television stations, said a public notice Monday. Docket 24-147 is for filings on “Political Programming and Online Public File Requirements for Low Power Television Stations” and 24-148 is for “Amendment of the Commission’s Rules to Advance the Low Power Television, TV Translator and Class A Television Service,” the PN said. The draft LPTV NPRM is slated for the June 6 open meeting (see 2405160076).

Expanding the scope of the foreign-sponsored content rules “would create substantial operational burdens and legal costs for all local broadcast stations that sell advertising,” said Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC affiliate associations in videoconference meetings with FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington and an aide to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel Monday, according to an ex parte filing Thursday in docket 20-299. Expanding the rules would encourage advertisers to stop using broadcast outlets in favor of less-regulated internet and social media ads, the filing said. That doesn’t make sense “in a marketplace where most video advertising platforms will not be subject to the rules,” the affiliate groups said. The affiliate groups also objected to their 2021 petition seeking clarification of the foreign-sponsored content policy serving as the basis for expansion of the rules, the filing said (see 2403210071).

The FCC should fundamentally change its relationship with broadcasting, provide more flexibility for the ATSC 3.0 transition, and not allow broadcasting to decline as newspapers have, Commissioner Brendan Carr said Tuesday. Speaking at the Radio and Television Summit of the Americas, Carr referenced The Washington Post slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” The FCC “may be the one flipping out the light” through recent actions that discourage investment in broadcasting, he said. For example, Carr mentioned the Standard General/Tegna deal and the proposed enforcement action against Nexstar and Mission related to their local marketing agreement for WPIX New York. The FCC is “going down the path of imposing enforcement -- fines -- against broadcasters doing exactly what they told us they were going to do,” Carr said. The agency has allowed wireless companies to sunset and transition to new wireless technologies and should do the same for broadcasters on ATSC 3.0, he said.

The Texas Association of Broadcasters filed a petition for review Thursday (docket 24-60226) in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the FCC’s gathering of equal employment opportunity workforce diversity data. TAB's filing alleges the agency, through its Feb. 22 EEO order, “seeks to deputize private activists to pressure” broadcasters to “achieve the FCC’s long-held goal of imposing race and gender quotas on broadcast stations.” The order violates broadcasters' constitutional rights and is arbitrary and capricious, the petition said. The TAB appeal joins another filed in the 5th Circuit earlier this month by the National Religious Broadcasters and the American Family Association (see 2405060057). In addition, groups of religious broadcasters, including the Catholic Radio Association, filed several applications for review (see 2405010070).

The National Religious Broadcasters and the American Family Association filed a joint petition for review asking that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturn the FCC’s February Equal Employment Opportunity order. The EEO order requires that broadcasters file workforce diversity information with the agency using Form 395-B. The Media Bureau issued a public notice Monday announcing that the EEO order would take effect June 3 but said the compliance date hasn't yet been set because the information collection is still under the OMB Paperwork Reduction Act. The bureau will issue a subsequent PN announcing the compliance date, it said. The form was "suspended for 20 years for good reason and revived on highly questionable grounds,” NRB President Troy Miller said in a release late Friday. Requiring the information to be public and attributable to individual broadcasters, the FCC is “opening the door to third-party weaponization of the public file to target specific broadcast stations,” NRB said. The EEO order “violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment and the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment,” said the brief petition. Bringing back Form 395-B exceeds the FCC’s authority and is “an abuse of discretion,” the order said. America First Legal Foundation, a litigation nonprofit led by Stephen Miller, adviser of former President Donald Trump, is representing NRB and AFA in the case. It often represents conservative causes and entities. The petition for review comes on top of two appeals of the order filed at the FCC by religious broadcasters and groups objecting to the planned updating of Form 395-B to recognize nonbinary gender (see 2405010070).