Two members of the House of Representatives introduced legislation Tuesday to provide the now-defunct Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) with $6 billion in funding to renew the program.

The House bill, proposed by the bipartisan duo of Reps. Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.) and Mike Carey (R-Ohio),  is a companion to the Senate’s Secure and Affordable Broadband Extension Act, sponsored by Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) in May.

“I just introduced a bipartisan bill to restore the Affordable Connectivity Program and reduce internet costs for millions of low-income families,” Budzinski said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “Thank you to @RepMikeCarey and the 10 colleagues from both sides of the aisle who are joining us in this effort.”

The program would provide the ACP with $6 billion in funding, do away with the the program’s one-time $100 subsidy, tighten the qualifications for eligibility and provide $3 billion for the FCC’s rip-and-replace program, an also-underfunded program aiming to rid U.S. networks of technology from suspect Chinese suppliers.

Also Read: Affordable Connectivity Plan Set To Expire Despite Last-Ditch Funding Efforts

The original ACP allowed enrollment of households earning less than 200% of the federal poverty guidelines, or about $41,000 for a family of two.

Prior to February, when the ACP stopped accepting new enrollments, nearly 24 million U.S. households were enrolled in the program.

ACP, which was introduced at the end of 2021, ran out of money on May 31.  High-speed internet providers, including Charter Communications, have attributed recent steep broadband customer losses to the defunding of the ACP.

The Benton Institute for Broadband and Society said ending the ACP for good will result in $2 billion in lost consumer benefits for Americans. 

Under Budzinski-Carey’s proposed bill, the eligibility threshold would fall to those with incomes 135% above the poverty line, or about $28,000 for a family of two.

While the new language would exclude some households once covered by the ACP, $6 billion in new funding would enable the Federal Communications Commission to sustain the program through the end of the year.

The outlook for the U.S. government’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) remains terminal, with none of the multiple late-hour efforts in Congress intended to replenish funding for the depleted program appearing close to achieving that goal.

Introduced in December 2021 as a way to help low-income Americans afford internet, the subsidy program has been on partial rations since May 1 and will officially run completely out of money on May 31, unless Congress acts to save it.

The cancellation of the ACP, which comes at a time when the U.S. broadband industry is already bleeding customers, with Comcast Cable president and CEO Dave Watson telling investors Tuesday to expect increased customer attrition in the second and third quarters. 

On a consumer level, the ACP’s sunset could leave more than 23 million U.S. homes paying up to $40 more each month for internet service, or canceling their service altogether.

And, according to a White House fact sheet, nearly half of ACP subscribers have historically been military families, with seniors, African Americans and Latinos also relying on the service in disproportionately higher rates.

In the past week, two new proposals have surfaced to help refund the program, which is now solely issuing partial payments: one an amendment for an appropriations bill enacted in March, which would include further funding for the ACP; and another that offers a significantly pared-down version of the monthly subsidy.

The latter proposal, introduced Monday by Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.), also provides that all households enrolled in the program will remain eligible for 180 days after the bill’s passage, before having to re-enroll in the ACP, this time through the National Verifier or National Lifeline Accountability Database in order to combat fraud.

According to Williams, the funding for H.R. 8466 would come entirely from existing federal funds, creating no additional taxpayer burden.

But text for the full bill has yet to be released. And with just one co-sponsor — Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.) — it’s highly unlikely that, if passed, it could provide a solution before vulnerable Americans are impacted by the cancellation of ACP aid.

Meanwhile, Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) introduced the ACP Extension Act in January, a bill to fund the program to the tune of $7 billion, with the most bipartisan support of any ACP action item.

Despite its 230 co-sponsors (technically enough support to pass the House), the bill has stalled on the House floor.

Additionally, a discharge petition filed last month to vote on the bill without the support of House Speaker Mike Johnson failed to receive the necessary absolute majority to bring it to vote, leaving the status of the ACP Extension Act uncertain.

In addition to Congressional efforts to save the bill, Charter’s Spectrum Mobile brand is offering a free mobile line for one year for home internet customers who are losing their ACP benefits.

That’s in addition to a buyout plan, which offers up to $2,500 for customers who switch to Spectrum Mobile and purchase at least three lines.

“Our new phone buyout program is designed to help customers switch from the steep costs associated with other mobile providers,” Sharon Peters, Charter executive VP and chief marketing officer, said in a statement.  

While no single program can replace the benefit of the ACP, if it expires, there are a variety of local and state subsidies, and discounted plans that can help those customers struggling with the additional financial burden.

Lifeline, a federal subsidy that provides $9.25 a month to low-income households for internet or cellphone plans is available to individuals with an income totally 135% of federal poverty guidelines or less.

Customers can also receive Lifeline support if they are enrolled in Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, Federal Public Housing Assistance, Veterans Pension and Survivors Benefit or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

It was probably inevitable Congress would start looking into the move of sports to streaming platforms.

Pay TV knows the feeling of being the free TV spoiler when it comes to sports siphoning, in that case from broadcast — think Monday Night Football’s move to ESPN — but now multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) are the ones complaining about losing access to big-ticket sports.

That was made clear at what was described as an “educational” hearing, titled “TV Timeout: Understanding Sports Media Rights” in the Communications and Technology Subcommittee on Wednesday (January 31).

Also Read: The Game’s on Cable

“One of the most pressing issues facing the video industry is the migration of key sports programming from pay TV to the ‘direct-to-consumer’ offerings of the largest programmers, like Peacock, Amazon, and WarnerMedia,” DirecTV chief content officer Rob Thun said.

The current flashpoint was the January 13 Peacock-exclusive Kansas Chiefs-Miami Dolphins NFL wild card playoff game.

Rep. Kathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), chair of the parent Energy & Commerce Committee, called it a streaming-only game, but technically that was not the case since it was available via broadcast in the teams' home markets, as is the case with Monday Night Football (though the Hollywood writers and actors strikes led to ABC simulcasting most games this season).

Rodgers also cited Amazon’s deal with the Bally Sports regional sports networks for MLB, NBA and NHL games. She even cited scripted sports siphoning, with Netflix as the new home to WWE’s Monday Night Raw.

Subcommittee chairman Bob Latta (R-Ohio), called the “transition” of sports to streaming a “pivotal shift” and cited the Peacock exclusive, pointing out that it was the most streamed event in U.S. history.

But he also pointed out that the Peacock platform’s comparatively limited reach made it the least-watched playoff game so far this year.

“[I]f sports programming is the lifeblood of our media ecosystem, we must ask what it means if this valuable content increasingly moves from local broadcast stations to national platforms, like most streaming services,” ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said. 

Both Pallone and Latta signaled Congress would also be looking to get educated on the impact of the escalating cost of sports rights, which has been driven by the expanded competition for rights among broadcast, cable and streaming.

“Escalating sports licensing fees have been a major driver of increasing pay TV costs, even for consumers who don’t watch sports,” said Pallone, offering one of the arguments long made by fans of a la carte programming. “This has contributed to cord-cutting.”

He added: “[T]he rise of online streaming options, including games that air exclusively online, has caused significant confusion among consumers, with 60% saying they have trouble finding the games they want to watch.” 

Broadcasters are finding they increasingly have the government's backing when it comes to promoting the importance of local news and information.

The House has just passed the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (PRESS) Act (H.R. 4250), which protects journalists from government attempts to compel them to reveal sources or to access their work product.

Cable broadband operators would also benefit because the bill protects broadband and phone-service providers from having to reveal the contents of documents or communications created by journalists, with carveouts for imminent harm or terrorism.

That move comes as Congress continues to consider a bill that would allow broadcasters and other news outlets to collectively negotiate payment from websites for the right to aggregate and reuse their valuable content, and as the Federal Communications Commission is proposing to require rebates from MVPDs when subscribers lose access to their TV stations’ local news and information and other content due to retransmission consent-related blackouts.

The FCC also voted to incentivize broadcast local news production by prioritizing applications for new stations or license transfers from broadcasters who certify that they provide locally originated programming.

The PRESS Act must still pass the Senate, but the National Association of Broadcasters was praising the important House vote.

“NAB applauds the House for passing the PRESS Act, underscoring the vital importance of freedom of the press,” NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt said. “This legislation acknowledges the critical role of journalists in our democracy — from exposing injustices to educating and informing the public. The PRESS Act protects journalists' ability to maintain confidential sources, ensuring they can perform their duties without the threat of retaliation.”

He urged the Senate to “quickly” pass the bill. 

While the Federal Communications Commission still does not have renewed spectrum auction authority, which Congress allowed to expire, it has passed a law that will allow the regulator “one-time, temporary” authority to license the 2.5-GHz 5G spectrum it auctioned last year.

That midband spectrum auction, which ended in August 2022, drew $427,789,670 in gross bids for for 7,872 licenses. The band had been reserved for educational (EBS) licenses, but the FCC in 2019 converted it to flexible use, including for 5G.

The licenses can be used for any terrestrial fixed or mobile broadband service. They have buildout requirements of signal coverage of 50% of the license area within four years and 80% within eight years.

Also Read: FCC’s Jessica Rosenworcel Has No Worries About Auction Authority Sunset and 2.5 GHz Spectrum

The stopgap 5G Spectrum Authority Licensing Enforcement (SALE) Act had already passed the Senate in September and passed the House Monday (December 11). It authorizes the FCC to process the applications for those successful bidders, even though the FCC’s authority over such auctions expired March 9, 2023.

The FCC had begun handing out the licenses in December 2022.

“CCA commends Congress for passing S. 2787, the 5G Spectrum Authority Licensing Enforcement (SALE) Act and urges President Biden to swiftly sign it into law,” Tim Donovan, president of the Competitive Carriers Association, said. “CCA hopes this momentum will carry into Congress fully reinstating FCC spectrum auction authority.”

Said bill sponsor Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.): “My 5G SALE Act provides Americans with access to broadband by giving the FCC the authority to finish transferring previously auctioned spectrum to companies that offer 5G coverage.” 

The FCC’s spectrum authorization lapsed in March due to Congress’s inability to pass a must-pass spending bill with auction authority attached. That came after several bills had extended the FCC’s authority temporarily after it was set to expire in September 2022.

House and Senate Democrats have introduced a bill that could take a bite out of Big Tech’s online advertising marketplace by banning co-called surveillance advertising.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, made it clear that the bill was clearly aimed at hitting Big Tech in the wallet.

“The first place to start in holding companies accountable is to attack the business model so many of the big tech companies depend on,” Wyden said of the bill. “If you take away the incentive to hoover up users’ personal data, you make it much harder to target them both with objectionable content and take a sledgehammer to the incentive to design platforms in a way that can be harmful — especially for kids and teens. That’s exactly what this legislation does.”

The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act prohibits the use of personal data to target advertising or from targeting ads based on race, gender, religion or other "protected class" categories.

The bill only allows targeted advertising based on a consumer’s location, but does allow contextual advertising, which are ads based on the content the user is engaging with.

A key to any such prohibition is the definition of “personal information.” The bill’s definition includes “a unique identifier that may be used to identify an individual or a connected device; or other personal information that can be used to identify an individual or a connected device.”

Violations of the ban would be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission under its “false and deceptive acts” authority.

In addition to Wyden, the bill is co-sponsored by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). “I'm proud to partner with Representative Schakowsky and Senators Wyden and Booker on legislation to ban this toxic business model that causes irreparable harm to consumers, businesses, and our democracy,” Eshoo said.

House Republicans are once again trying to zero out funding for noncommercial media.

Public media groups such as PBS and NPR have long drawn the ire of some Republicans, who claim they are liberal outlets often carrying water for Democrats. Other members of the GOP — including at least one prominent Republican who knows a lot about noncommercial media — funding, support the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as a nonprofit news and entertainment outlet crucial to early education.

But the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Education Subcommittee on Friday (July 14) voted to zero out funding for CPB starting in 2026. Public media are forward-funded in an effort to avoid the sort of political football game that, despite that effort, its funding became at the hands of angry Republicans.

That group included former President Donald Trump, who tried to zero out funding in 2017. 

The reduction is part of $64 billion in cuts the bill makes across numerous programs. At the markup Friday (July 14), subcommittee ranking member Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) likened those cuts to attempting to “end public education in America,” both in the media and elsewhere, and branded the bill the “Every Child Left Behind” Act.

CPB is currently slated to get $535 million in 2026, all of which would go away if the funding bill reported out of subcommittee actually made it into law. It would be one of 60 programs slated for elimination in the bill, which Republicans say is all about returning to fiscal responsibility.

Subcommittee chairman Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) said the cuts were about reining in “reckless D.C. Beltway spending.” He said the bill’s cuts were only a "first step." He also said the bill maintained funding for “high value” programs, which definitely sent a clear message to public media about how much they were valued by Republicans on the subcommittee.

Those media outlets got the message.

“This is a dark day for America’s Public Television Stations, and we are only one of the casualties of a severe cutback that would also affect other important national institutions,” APTS president Patrick Butler said. 

Previous Republican efforts to zero out noncom funding have failed and Butler is hoping for a similar result. “We remain hopeful that the strong bipartisan support for public media, both in Congress and among the American people, will ultimately result in full funding for CPB, system interconnection and infrastructure and Ready To Learn as the appropriations process moves forward,” he said.

The bill also zeros out funding for CPB's Ready To Learn preschool educational effort and $60 million in funding for technical infrastructure.

CPB is headed by Republican Pat Harrison, the longest-serving president in its history and former co-chair of the Republican National Committee. She has said Republican-backed cuts would “devastate and ultimately destroy public media’s role in early childhood education, public safety, connecting citizens to our history and promoting civil discussions for Americans in rural and urban communities alike.”

“Americans in rural and urban communities who depend upon public media content and services are very disappointed by the House Labor-H subcommittee’s move to eliminate CPB’s two-year advance funding," Harrison said following the vote. "The elimination of this nearly 50-year funding structure would destroy the firewall that protects public media’s independence, and significantly weaken the public-private partnership that enables stations to raise needed funds.

“Public media has always enjoyed strong bipartisan support, affirming its essential role in strengthening our nation’s civil society," she said. "The federal appropriation ensures universal access to free, high-quality, innovative, and diverse content that educates and enriches the public dialogue.”

The issue of noncommercial funding became a flashpoint in the 2012 presidential campaign, when Republican candidate Mitt Romney suggested during a debate that he liked Big Bird, just not well enough to keep funding the popular Sesame Street character. (Just three years later, in 2015, first-run episodes of the groundbreaking children’s show shifted to the private sector via a deal with HBO; episodes now run on streaming service Max before they play on public stations.) 

Then, under the winner of that election, Democrat Barack Obama, the co-chairs of the President's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform back in 2010 recommended zeroing out funding for CPB as one way to help save $200 billion. Obama wound up not acting on those and other recommendations that drew flak from various quarters, including Democratic fans of Big Bird.

Congress is taking another shot at renewing the Federal Communications Commission’s spectrum auction authority, after that authorization lapsed in March due to its inability to pass a must-pass spending bill with auction authority attached. But the legislation is yet another stopgap renewal.

Listed last on a raft of 28 House bills all targeted at closing the digital divide is one that will be key to freeing up more spectrum for Wi-Fi: Allowing the FCC to auction spectrum by extending its authority, though only until June 30, 2023.

A marathon markup in the House Communications Subcommittee Wednesday (May 16) will include a bill, not yet named or numbered, “to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to extend the authority of the [FCC] to grant a license or construction permit through a system of competitive bidding.”

A markup is a committee or subcommittee business meeting during which bills are amended, debated and ideally get an up or down vote out of the subcommittee. Next stop would be a full committee vote.

Also Read: House E&C Leaders Decry Looming Lapse of FCC Spectrum Auction Authority

The FCC spectrum auction authority bill is being introduced by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (D-Wash.), chair of the full Energy & Commerce Committee.

The House last month passed H.R. 1108, which at least would have extended the FCC’s authority to May 19, but the Senate failed to follow suit before that authority expired. The FCC’s authority was set to expire on September 30, 2022, but then was extended four times through March 9, 2023.

FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel has called on Congress to pass a long-term extension.

In 1993, Congress authorized the FCC to grant licenses via competitive bidding, bringing in billions of dollars for the treasury.

In a report on FCC spectrum auction authority, the Congressional Research Service warned that allowing the authority to expire will create potential uncertainty “for both agencies and industry.”

Among the other 27 bills getting vetted Wednesday are a number of deregulatory bills that are intended to speed both wired and wireless broadband deployment by 1) goosing tower citing decisions; 2) setting deadlines for local franchising authorities to grant or deny applications for cable franchises and requiring those authorities to provide plenty of supporting evidence for decisions to deny a franchise; and making it easier to deploy on federal lands.

“Access to reliable high-speed broadband services has become an essential tool,” Rodgers said in announcing the markup. “In order to ensure all Americans are connected, we need to remove regulatory burdens and cut the red tape, which have resulted in unnecessary permitting delays and exorbitant costs to deploying our communications infrastructure.”

The full list of bills being marked up is below:

• H.R. 3279, the “Winning the International Race for Economic Leadership and Expanding Service to Support Leadership Act” or the “WIRELESS Leadership Act” (Rep. Latta)
• H.R. 3295, the “Barriers and Regulatory Obstacles Avoids Deployment of Broadband Access and Needs Deregulatory Leadership Act” or the “BROADBAND Leadership Act” (Rep. Griffith)
• H.R. 3287, the “Cable Access for Broadband and Local Economic Leadership Act” or the “CABLE Leadership Act” (Rep. Balderson)
• H.R. ___, the “Connecting and Building Lines for Expedited Expansion Act” or the “CABLE Expansion Act” (Rep. Lesko)
• H.R. ___, the “Consumer Access to Broadband for Local Economies and Competition Act” or the “CABLE Competition Act” (Rep. Burgess)
• H.R. ___, the “Cable Transparency Act” (Rep. Weber)
• H.R. 3298, the “Broadband Expansion and Deployment Fee Equity and Efficiency Act” or the “BEAD FEES Act” (Rep. Allen)
• H.R. ___, the “Granting Remaining Applications Not Treated Efficiently or Delayed Act” or the “GRANTED Act” (Rep. Obernolte)
• H.R. 3300, the “5G Using Previously Granted Rulings that Accelerate Deployment Everywhere Act of 2023” or the “5G UPGRADE Act of 2023” (Rep. Harshbarger)
• H.R. ___, the “Streamlining Permitting to Enable Efficient Deployment for Broadband Infrastructure Act of 2023” or the “SPEED for Broadband Infrastructure Act of 2023” (Rep. Pence)
• H.R. 3289, the “Wireless Broadband Competition and Efficient Deployment Act” (Rep. Johnson)
• H.R. 3288, the “Broadband Competition and Efficient Deployment Act” (Rep. Joyce)
• H.R. ___, the “Wireless Resiliency and Flexible Investment Act of 2023” (Rep. Bucshon)
• H.R. ___, the “Broadband Resiliency and Flexible Investment Act” (Rep. Crenshaw)
• H.R. 3291, the “Proportional Reviews for Broadband Deployment Act” (Rep. Carter)
• H.R. ___, the “Reducing Antiquated Permitting for Infrastructure Deployment Act” or the “RAPID Act” (Rep. Hudson)
• H.R. ___, the “Coastal Broadband Deployment Act” (Rep. Bilirakis)
• H.R. 3292, the “Brownfields Broadband Deployment Act” (Rep. Walberg)
• H.R. 3280, the “Timely Replacement Under Secure and Trusted for Early and Dependable Broadband Networks Act” or the “TRUSTED Broadband Networks Act” (Rep. Guthrie)
• H.R. 3301, the “Connecting Communities Post Disaster Act of 2023” (Rep. Dunn)
• H.R. 3296, the “Wildfire Communications Resiliency Act” (Rep. Rodgers)
• H.R. 3297, the “Reducing Barriers for Broadband on Federal Lands Act” (Rep. Fulcher)
• H.R. 3309, the “Standard Fees to Expedite Evaluation and Streamlining Act” or the “Standard FEES Act” (Reps. Palmer and Ryan)
• H.R. 3293, the “Expediting Federal Broadband Deployment Act” (Reps. Duncan and Craig)
• H.R. 3299, the “Deploying Infrastructure with Greater Internet Transactions and Legacy Applications Act” or “DIGITAL Applications Act” (Reps. Cammack and Matsui)
• H.R. 3283, the “Facilitating the Deployment of Infrastructure with Greater Internet Transactions and Legacy Applications Act” or “Facilitating DIGITAL Applications Act” (Reps. Miller-Meeks and Dingell)
• H.R. ___, the “Federal Broadband Deployment Tracking Act” (Reps. Pfluger and Soto)
• H.R. ___, to amend the Communications Act of 1934 to extend the authority of the Federal Communications Commission to grant a license or construction permit through a system of competitive bidding (Rep. Rodgers)

Among the major broadcast and cable news outlets, only Fox News Channel gave live coverage Wednesday (May 10) to a press conference called by Republican leadership of the House Oversight Committee to allege that President Joe Biden’s family enriched themselves via an influence-peddling scheme when Biden was vice president and which they say the vice president must have known about.

The White House has branded that House Committee probe “investigation-free” and filled with “absurd innuendo.”

Fox covered the press conference as breaking news, with live coverage of the entire conference and some preconference reporting on the issue and post-conference analysis.

Also Read: Former President Trump Lined Up for CNN Town Hall

CNN and MSNBC provided no live coverage of the conference, instead reporting on the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s conviction of battery and defamation in a civil suit and the charges of wire fraud and more filed Tuesday by the Justice Department against Republican Rep. George Santos.

Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said that no one watching the press conference on C-SPAN or other networks would believe that the President did not know about the alleged money funneling.

In fact, while the Republican reps asserted that it was “a very, very important issue to the country” and “Pulitzer” material for reporters in the audience if they just followed the facts in the bank records the committee has received, none of C-SPAN’s three TV channels covered the press conference live, nor did any of the broadcast network news operations, instead sticking with their usual lineups of local or national morning shows.

Comer accused media outlets of not doing their jobs as investigative reporters by not pressing the president on the issue of his family receiving money from foreign interests, an allegation Biden has repeatedly denied.

House Energy & Commerce Committee Democrats are trying to revive the Community Broadband Act, long-pushed legislation that would preempt the state laws limiting municipal broadband that service providers have worked hard to put in place.

But given that the House is controlled by Republicans generally opposed to legislation they have suggested “usurps” state authority, the prospects are not great for passage this time around either.

The House bill is backed by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and in the Senate by Cory Booker (D-N.J.).

For most of two decades, Democrats in both the House and Senate for most of two decades have tried to pass legislation that would ensure states and public-private partnerships cannot be prevented from offering advanced telecommunications services in competition with private industry, with the caveat that if that the state regulates those competitors, it cannot favor its own service.

“Currently, millions of Americans lack access to high-speed broadband, and this bill will enable local communities to build affordable, reliable broadband networks in areas that have been left without connectivity,” Consumer Reports, an advocate for the bill, said. “Additionally, it will remove barriers for local governments and communities to build and operate broadband networks, promoting healthy competition.”

The bill targets the 21 states that have passed laws restricting or preventing municipal broadband.

ISPs have long argued that municipal networks — which, they say, often wind up being government-subsidized overbuilds of existing private networks — can leave taxpayers holding the bag when initial investments don’t convert to ongoing sustainability. 

Democrats say municipal networks “improve broadband options or build-out to unserved areas that private providers refuse to connect,” as Eshoo put it in announcing the latest of multiple efforts to pass the bill since at least 2007.

Democrats on the House Energy & Commerce Committee have a lot of unanswered questions about embattled short-form video site TikTok that they want the company to clear up, but they have also given the social media outlet some input on how it might save itself amid calls for an outright ban.

TikTok has been promoting its pro-social uses — helping diverse small businesspeople and veterans — in high-profile ads in the Washington, D.C., market as it attempts to avoid such a ban.

While TikTok CEO Shou Chew was grilled by those Democrats at a hearing last month, ranking member Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and his colleagues signaled in a letter to Chew that many of their questions remained unanswered.

The letter does not attempt to cull TikTok from the social-media herd, but instead makes it part of a larger problem and, at the same time,  provides some guidance on how TikTok might avoid the absolute ban some have called for.

Pallone said that the hearing had reinforced Americans’ fears about social media platforms in general, “including TikTok,” Rather than suggesting TikTok was an outlier, the letter says TikTok “embodies” their broader concerns about online privacy abuses.

“Across the industry, platforms have leveraged this highly unregulated market to

aggregate troves of data on hundreds of millions of citizens,” Pallone said,

Pallone used the letter to plug a bill, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, that would apply to all those platforms.

The letter asks for a lot of data from TikTok, including revenue forecasts, targeted advertising projections, content moderation strategies and information about algorithms. It also givens Shou an opportunity to make commitments related to continued operation in the United States.

For example, there are quite a number of “will they” questions, including:

1. “Will TikTok commit to ending the collection of data related to its users’ health absent their affirmative consent?”
2. “Will TikTok commit to stop utilizing data related to its users’ health from third parties for targeting advertisements or for any other purpose?”
3. “Will TikTok commit to not selling American user data to third parties, including subsidiaries or parent companies, in the future?”
4. “Will TikTok commit to ending targeted marketing to users under the age of 18?”
5. “Will TikTok commit to fixing a loophole that allows underage users to delete their accounts and set up a new one with a false, older age with the same email address?”
6. “Will TikTok commit to developing methods for parents to monitor their child’s use of the app that does not require them to download the app?”
7. “Will TikTok commit to creating an option that would allow parents to set their own screen limits for their kids?”
8. “Will TikTok commit to extending the same protections given to children in the U.K., under its age-appropriate design code, to American children?”
9. “Will TikTok commit to expanding access to its Application Programming Interface so that researchers can investigate how your algorithm is pushing content to users on their For You pages, the hashtag page, or anywhere else on the platform?”

Those are obviously a lot of asks, but the more “yes” answers the company can supply, it would appear, the more likely it would be to get support from Democrats for continuing operations in the U.S.

There have been bills introduced to restrict or ban TikTok beyond the current ban on use of the app on government phones. Expanding that legislation to target the wider echosystem is one way TikTok supporters could table those efforts, since bans on Facebook and Twitter would be nonstarters.

There is hardly consensus on what to do about TikTok. Despite those government concerns, the Biden White House has reached out to influencers on TikTok and other social media to try to reach young people.

Shou Chew, CEO of embattled short-form video streaming site TikTok, took a rhetorical beating from both sides of the aisle as the CEO ran the D.C. gauntlet of House Energy & Commerce Committee critics of the China-based company’s social media site.

But TikTok also got some credit from both sides for doing something difficult —uniting the parties on an issue, in this case the dangers of TikTok, as it is currently constituted, to U.S. citizens.  

In her opening statement for a marathon (over five and a half hours) hearing Thursday (March 23) featuring the top TikTok exec, House Energy & Commerce Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) commenced the beating by saying she did not believe the company could ever be trusted given its ties to the Chinese Communist government and should be banned.

And while Chew provided extensive testimony on why that was not the case, Rodgers had alread cut the legs out from under that testimony by saying she exepcted the company would say anything to avoid that outcome.

She pointed out that the Justice Department is currently investigating TikTok parent ByteDance for spying on American journalists' data and movements using TikTok. Shou said he disagreed with the characterization of that as “spying.

Ranking member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) widened his criticism to Big Tech in general.

In his opening statement, Pallone said that Big Tech had tranformed the information superhighway into a “superspreader of harmful content, invasive surveillance practices, and addictive and damaging design features.”

He said his goal was to bring greater transparency to TikTok. Pallone said he recognized the site provided “a new, fun way for people to express their creativity and enjoy the videos of others,” so while he did not call for a ban, he did say he was not sure that upside “outweigh[s] the risks that it poses to Americans in its present form.”

“The combination of TikTok’s Beijing Communist-based ownership and its popularity exacerbates its dangers to our country and to our privacy,” Pallone said.

Among the legislators’ concerns are the sale of illegal drugs via the platform, its hosting of political disinformation, inappropriate sexual content, and more. But the big issue is collection of user information that could be, and many argue is being, shared with the Chinese government.

Shou said bad actors are an industrywide problem, that the company does protect user privacy via a "firewall" it is creating between U.S. data and China — TikTok has pledged to allow third-party monitors of its data “firewall,” a point Chew made at the hearing — and that drug-related information, political misinformation and inappropriate sexual content violates TikTok’s terms of service and is taken off when found.

The response from legislators was that they aren't doing a sufficient job of finding and eliminating it if that is the case.

Both Rodgers and Pallone said TikTok’s firewall project is insufficient protection and that, more broadly, privacy protection legislation is generally needed for Big Tech players.

As if to put an exclamation point on the bipartisan pushback on TikTok, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John Thune (R-S.D.), issued a joint statement following the marathon hearing.

“Under [People’s Republic of China] law, all Chinese companies, including TikTok, whose parent company is based in Beijing, are ultimately required to do the bidding of Chinese intelligence services, should they be called upon to do so,“ the senators said. “Nothing we heard from Mr. Chew today assuaged those concerns.” ■

The Senate came in for plenty of criticism Friday for its failure to pass House-passed legislation extending the Federal Communications Commission’s spectrum auction authority beyond March 9.

That came at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing on spectrum policy.

House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) had teamed with ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) to co-sponsor the legislation (H.R. 1108) extending authorization to May 19, which passed the House February 19.

She was not pleased with the turn of events. “For reasons unknown to me, certain senators decided to risk U.S. wireless leadership over a date change,” she said in her opening remarks. “A date change. That is unacceptable.”

Pallone echoed that concern in his statement. “Yesterday, for the first time since the agency gained this authority 30 years ago, Congress failed to extend it when the Senate refused to act,” he said. “The House did its work — we unanimously passed a bipartisan bill introduced by me and Chair Rodgers last month to extend the spectrum auction authority to May 19th. Our legislation would have prevented this lapse in authority. I am disappointed that the Senate did not pass the House’s bipartisan bill, but we cannot give up and our work continues.”

Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Communications Subcommittee, joined the chorus: “To say this hearing comes at an unprecedented time is no overstatement. We’re here today under alarming circumstances — during a lapse in the FCC’s auction authority. Something that has never happened before.

“Simply put, this is a failure,” she continued. “To add insult to injury, it was a completely avoidable failure … The consequences of this lapse hold the potential to be severe and far-reaching. It undercuts economic growth and long-term national security.” ■

The FCC’s authority to auction spectrum was set to expire Thursday (March 9) after the Senate failed to pass a bill to extend it, prompting bipartisan pushback from House leadership.

The House last month passed H.R. 1108, which at least would have extended the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to May 19, but the Senate failed to follow suit before that authority expired.

The FCC’s authority was set to expire September 30, 2022, but was extended to December 16, then to December 22, then December 30 then March 9, 2023.

FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel has called on Congress to pass a long-term extension.

Also: Rosenworcel Not Worried About Auction Authoroity Impact on 2.5 GHz Auction

On Friday, after the authority had officially expired, Rosenworcel weighed in on the situation.

“For three decades, the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to auction the nation’s airwaves has been an indispensable tool for harnessing the promise of new wireless technologies while also spurring economic growth, creating jobs, and strengthening our national security and global leadership," she said. " Time and time again our auctions have proven to be an enormous engine for market innovation and the flourishing internet ecosystem, and for expanding the reach of next-generation connectivity to everyone, everywhere.  To date, the FCC has held 100 auctions and has raised more than $233 billion in revenues and unlocked extraordinary benefits for the American people.  

“It is my hope that the FCC’s auction authority is restored quickly so that this important program is once again able to produce results for consumers and the economy.”

In a joint statement, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.), Communications Subcommittee Chair Bob Latta (R-Ohio), and Subcommittee Ranking Member Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) said they were disappointed that a single senator — they did not name names — was able to hold up passage of the bill, resulting in the first time the FCC has lost spectrum auction authority since its inception three decades ago.

“Extending the FCC’s spectrum auction authority is vital to maintaining American leadership in wireless technology, providing certainty to the public, and securing our global competitive edge — including against countries like China that do not share our fundamental values of democracy, free speech and human rights,” they said.

In 1993, Congress authorized the FCC to grant licenses via competitive bidding, bringing in billions of dollars for the treasury.

In a report on FCC spectrum auction authority, the Congressional Research Service warned that allowing the authority to expire will create potential uncertainty “for both agencies and industry.” ■

A group of congressional Democrats from both the House and Senate have introduced a bill banning the use of facial recognition and similar technologies by the government, which they suggest have been weaponized against minorities by the police.

It is yet another privacy and data-collection volley by Congress against Big Tech, in this case specific tech in the hands of government officials. It also has free speech implications if it is used to stifle protests.

The Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act comes in response to reports of the growing use of the technologies by local, state and federal agencies, including law enforcement, combined with what the legislators said have been false facial recognition matches, particularly affecting Black men.

Also: Amazon Suspends Sale of Facial Recognition Tech to Police

In introducing the bill, the legislators cited research they said found that Black, Brown and Asian people were “up to 100 times” more likely to be misidentified by such technologies.

“The year is 2023, but we are living through 1984,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a longtime advocate for tougher privacy laws and one of the lead sponsors of the bill. “The continued proliferation of surveillance tools like facial recognition technologies in our society is deeply disturbing. Biometric data collection poses serious risks of privacy invasion and discrimination, and Americans know they should not have to forgo personal privacy for safety. As we work to make our country more equitable, we cannot ignore the technologies that stand in the way of progress and perpetuate injustice.”

The bill was applauded by the American Civil Liberties Union and Fight for the Future, among others. ■

Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) have reintroduced a bill that would reregulate cable franchise fees.

The Protecting Community Television Act would “clarify” that the 5% cap on a cable franchise fee applies only to monetary “assessments” and not in-kind contributions.

“In 2019, the FCC allowed cable companies to put a price tag on in-kind contributions they provide to communities, including PEG [public, education and government] channels,” said Markey in re-reintroducing the bill. “Under the rule, cable companies can then subtract the ascribed value from the franchising fees that they pay in order to operate. The FCC’s decision has forced local governments across the country to decide between supporting PEG programming and supporting other public services for schools, public safety buildings, and libraries in cable franchise agreements.”

The bill, first introduced in 2020, was reintroduced in December 2021. Given that the House is now controlled by Republicans, who generally oppose the bill, and that it did not pass when Democrats controlled both Houses makes its fate likely to match those of the earlier, unsuccessful, efforts.

The Federal Communications Commission, under then-chair Ajit Pai, and with the backing of NCTA, voted along party lines in 2019 that non-cash, “in-kind’ exactions from cable operators by local franchise authorities as part of their franchise agreements were indeed fees subject to the 5% cap. It also preempted state or local franchise regulations that conflicted with those conclusions and extended its rules to state as well as local franchises.  A federal appeals court upheld that FCC vote.

Also: Dems Seek to Reregulate Cable Franchise Fees

As an example of one of those non-cash exactions that needed to count toward the fee, the court noted, was “a demand by St. Louis that a cable operator contribute 20 percent of its stock to the city.”

Markey and Baldwin hope that a new Congress will give them a new opportunity to “clarify” the rule, or put another way, reverse the rule voted by an FCC majority and upheld by the courts.

Currently, the FCC could not reverse its own rule unless one of its Republican members supported that move, which would be highly unlikely. ■

DirecTV is getting more pressure — this time from a group of Senate Republicans — over its decision to drop the conservative Newsmax network after a carriage agreement expired.

DirecTV had said dropping Newsmax was a business decision, but Newsmax accused it of political discrimination and censorship. That’s something congressional Republicans have their antennas up for on multiple fronts, most prominently with social media platforms but also traditional TV.

DirecTV is free to drop channels for legitimate business reasons, just not to discriminate in channel carriage for other reasons, which would run afoul of Federal Communications Commission rules.

In response to the DirecTV move and Newsmax complaints, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee; Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; Mike Lee (R-Utah); and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote the CEOs of DirecTV and parents AT&T and TPG Capital, voicing concerns and “demanding” answers.

Also: DirecTV Drops Bloomberg TV After More Than 25 Years

The legislators said the move looked like “the latest example of big business suppressing politically disfavored speech at the behest of liberal Democrats.”

DirecTV also dropped conservative channel One America News Network, which Cruz and company cited as another possible decision pressured by Democrats, who had called on it to drop OANN.

The senators want answers to a raft of questions — for example: “Why did DirecTV decide to drop Newsmax while it continued to carry and pay the liberal news and information channel Vice, which reportedly has much lower ratings than Newsmax?” — as well as any documents related to the dropping of both channels as well as “any communications they have had with the White House, Democrat members of Congress, or Democrat campaign committees relating to Newsmax or OANN.”

Since Republicans do not control the Senate or committee chairmanships and their investigative authority, the best they can do is ask for the info and hope. ■

Social media, including short-form video site TikTok, continues to be in the hot seat in the new Congress, particularly as it relates to children's health.

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), who last Congress introduced the Stop Online Suicide Assistance Forums Act (it has Democratic support), which would make it a felony to use online forums to assist someone else's suicide attempt, is introducing a new bill that would ban children 15 and younger from social media entirely.

Speaking on CNN Tuesday (January 31), Stewart called sites like TikTok “emotional heroin“ with direct ties to youth anxiety and depression. Stewart says the key is effective age verification and penalties — legal class-action suits — for ineffective verification in the case of negative outcomes. 

He pointed out that those under 13 are currently not supposed to be on many sites, but that is not enforced.

Asked how he was getting ready for the expected pushback from Big Tech, Stewart said in a TV interview: “Put on your helmet and prepare to get beat over the head.”

The move comes as Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and Gov. Spencer Cox, both Republicans, have signaled they will sue social media companies over their impact on kids.

Elsewhere this week, the House Energy & Commerce Committee under new chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said that TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has agreed to testify before her committee about the site's impact on children as well as its connections to the Chinese government.

Rodgers made it clear TikTok’s CEO will get some tough questioning. “Big Tech has increasingly become a destructive force in American society,” she said. “The Energy and Commerce Committee has been at the forefront of asking Big Tech CEOs — from Facebook to Twitter to Google — to answer for their companies’ actions.”

The hearing is scheduled for March 23. ▪️

Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO David Cohen has drawn pushback from Capitol Hill and the advertising community for some tough talk about privacy at IAB’s annual leadership conference last week, with a couple of major ad association’s taking part of the blame for the current problems and suggesting it was time for the industry to clean up its own messes and do better going forward.

Cohen told Next TV that his goal was to unite, not divide.

According to one attendee, talk on stage at the conference included: “I’m not going to talk about privacy. Because privacy is boring, it makes our eyes glaze over.”

IAB says that, if so, Cohen did not say it. But his speech was filled with red meat on the issue, according to a copy.

"Extremists are winning the battle for hearts and minds in Washington D.C. and beyond. We cannot let that happen," he said. "These extremists are political opportunists who’ve made it their mission to cripple the advertising industry and eliminate it from the American economy and culture."

And he named some Capitol Hill names. "Washington D.C. leaders including [Sen.] Amy Klobuchar  [D-Minn.]and [Sen.] Ted Cruz [R-Tex.] will throw our industry under their campaign buses, if we let them," he said.

Cohen also took aim at one of the biggest tech platform players. "We must all be in this together. If we can’t fix the rotting at our core, we won’t survive. While there are no shortage of extremists attacking our industry from the outside, there are some attacking it from the inside out. Most notably, Apple exemplifies the cynicism and hypocrisy that underpins the prevailing extremist view."

Online privacy is a big issue in D.C. and elsewhere. The Federal Trade Commission is looking to crack down on “surveillance advertising,“ while there are several efforts in Congress to pass legislation cracking down on data collection and targeted marketing — all efforts that IAB, representing Big Tech's biggest online platforms, has strongly opposed. Cohen doubled down on that opposition in his conference keynote by calling those behind the privacy efforts, which include some powerful legislators, radicals and extremists, according to Politico Pro.

Also: Bill Allows For ‘Turning Off’ Targeted Marketing

On Tuesday (January 31), the American Association of Advertising Agencies (the 4A’s) and the Association of National Advertisers tried to distance themselves from Cohen’s remarks.

“The 4A’s and ANA reject the acerbic tone, texture and prescriptions offered by the IAB at their recent ALM conference,” the statement read. “Our industry was built on a foundation of responsible marketing. While we, as an industry, may not always get it right, we do know when we must lead to restore balance — especially when we have created the conditions for our industry to be ‘out of balance.’ ”

ANA and the 4A’s, neither of which is a big fan of government regulation of the advertising marketplace, called Cohen’s speech a “tirade against the forces that disagree with our industry” and put some of the blame for the current ad issues on their own industry.

Also: IAB Calls Privacy Legislation Biggest Threat to Addressability

“Many of the problems that the IAB cited were because of an imbalanced industry that we all created and supported with our advertising investments,” the statement said. “Did we ever utter the issues of ‘brand safety’ or ‘digital ad fraud’ 10 years ago? Of course not. But it is time for our industry to clean up its messes and present a far more responsible approach to address the issues that are prevalent in our industry.”

IAB has said it supports national privacy legislation, just not the brand currently being pushed or what it labels “ill-considered regulatory regimes.” 

Cohen said in an emailed statement addressing the pushback that he was not out to put anyone down for working towards the shared goal of privacy protection.

“Rather than be divisive, the goal of my opening keynote was to rally the industry and instill a sense of urgency so that we can work together to build a healthy and sustainable ad-supported digital industry," he said. "It was also to accurately reflect the interests of our members which now include all sides of the digital ecosystem.

"We have deep respect for Congress and appreciate all the work going towards national privacy reform,“ he said. ”However, we need to recognize that there is a perception issue that we need to overcome. The negativity around the technology sector fueled by select viewpoints has the potential to adversely impact us all. The industry must all work collaboratively to ensure we get a rational and sound national policy on data use. We look forward to working with legislators and regulators as well as the ANA, 4A’s and others over the coming months to develop solutions that work for all constituents: consumers, regulators, and industry.” ■

Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) has been named chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee's Communications and Technology Subcommittee by E&C chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.). Latta had been ranking member of the subcommittee.

The committee has primary oversight of the Federal Communications Commission.

Rep. Buddy Carter (Ga.) was named vice chair.

The other Republican members on the committee: Reps. Gus Bilirakis of Florida, Tim Walberg of Michigan, Neal Dunn of Florida, John Curtis of Utah, John Joyce of Pennsylvania, Randy Weber of Texas, Rick Allen of Georgia, Troy Balderson of Ohio, Russ Fulcher of Idaho, August Pfluger of Texas, Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee, Kat Cammack of Florida, Jay Obernolte of California and Rodgers.

Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) will be vice chair of the full committee.

Latta is a longtime opponent of network neutrality rules, once calling former President Barack Obama reckless for his support of them. He is also co-founder of the bipartisan Rural Broadband Caucus and, with Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.), of the bipartisan Wi-Fi Caucus.

Conservative news network Newsmax might be dropped from DirecTV this week, in a move that House Republicans are saying they will investigate although the pay TV provider said the motivation is saving costs.

 Also Read: DirecTV Stops Carrying Newsmax As Contract Extension Expires

DirecTV said it has been carrying Newsmax on its satellite TV service, DirecTV Stream and U-verse TV platforms at no cost to customers because Newsmax has not been charging a fee to carry the channel. That allows Newsmax the ability to generate advertising revenue. 

“However the network is now seeking significant fees that we would have to pass on to our broad customer base,” DirecTV said.  

After losing 500,000 subscribers in the third quarter, DirecTV has about 13.3 million customers.

If Newsmax insists on receiving a fee, it could be dropped from DirecTV. That could happen as soon as Tuesday at 11:59 p.m.

The dispute has reached Washington, D.C., where freshman Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) wrote a letter to DirecTV and its owners seeking information about the situation. The letter was cosigned by more than 40 other members of Congress.

“It is our understanding that DirecTV — still majority-owned by AT&T and minority-owned and managed by TPG Capital — is moving to deplatform Newsmax by denying it cable fees on a fair and equitable basis,” the Hunt letter said. 

The letter notes that DirecTV no longer carries One America News Network, which is another right-leaning news service, and carries “11 ‘liberal news and information‘ ” networks, including Vice. OAN's owner, Herring Networks, cried foul over the OAN drop and sued DirecTV in California. A court recently dismissed the central claims in that breach-of-contract lawsuit. 

“Taken together, these two actions lead us to believe that DirecTV, one of the nation’s largest multichannel video programming distributors, is actively working to limit conservative viewpoints on its system,” the letter said. “This is extremely concerning for Members of Congress because it suppresses political discourse and hamstrings our ability to connect with our constituents.”

If Newsmax is dropped, following the removal of OAN, the letter said “Congress intends to conduct extensive oversight on the extent to which House Democrats and officials in federal offices colluded with private companies to limit, restrict, and circumvent First Amendment rights. These investigations will not be limited to social media companies.”

The letter asks DirecTV to respond and provide ratings for the ratings of the news networks, set-top box data and information about the fees paid to those networks.

According to Nielsen, Newmax’s averaged 101,000 households, or less than 0.1% of total TV households, which is 92% lower than Fox News Channel, 84% lower than MSNBC and 79% lower than CNN.

DirecTV noted that Newsmax makes its channel available to viewers at no charge via NewmaxTV.com, YouTube.com and streaming platforms including Amazon Fire TV, Roku and Google Play. ■

The opponents of Gigi Sohn's nomination to the Federal Communications Commission are bringing out their familiar artillery in their effort to keep her off the agency, where she would be the third Democrat, giving the Biden administration the majority it would need to tackle partisan issues, notably network neutrality rules.

Following President Joe Biden's renomination of Sohn last week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), launched an attack on her character and her politics, while Fox News Channel also ran a story taking aim.

“Gigi Sohn is one of the most radical and ethically compromised nominees I have ever seen during my Senate tenure and should never have been nominated in the first place,” Cruz said in a statement.

Also: Sohn: Fox News Criticism Does Not Extend to Viewers

Cruz — ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which votes on FCC nominations — said it was the committee's duty to conduct a “full and thorough vetting process” now that the president has thrown Sohn’s hat into the ring for a second time.

Sohn has already been nominated and vetted in two separate hearings, but that initial nomination failed to make it out of the Commerce Committee due to pushback from Republican critics and some concerns by a Democrat or two related to her net neutrality advocacy, views on rural broadband and tweets — as a public citizen — about Republicans, including former President Donald Trump.

Also: Sohn Says She Has Been Victim of Unfair Attacks

Cruz said there needs to be “updated paperwork, meetings with Senators and staff, and a new public hearing.”

Fox News ran a story January 8 pointing to a past Sohn tweet — actually a retweet of someone else — critical of former President Trump’s handling of racial issues, not a unique view among progressive Democrats. Sohn has tweeted criticisms of Fox News — also not unique among Democrats, which Fox pointed out in its story.
The story cited various Sohn critics, but she also has plenty of fans. Those include media mogul Byron Allen and three former chiefs of the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, including two former top military officers. 

Sohn is the former head of fair-use advocacy group Public Knowledge and a former top adviser to Obama-era FCC chairman Tom Wheeler. She would be the first openly gay commissioner and first from the public advocacy sector — there have been several from the private advocacy sector, including Wheeler, who once ran NCTA-The Internet & Television Association.

FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel is waiting on a fifth commissioner to be able to tackle potential broadcast and internet service provider reregulation that the two Republican members are unlikely to support. ▪️

With Kevin McCarthy finally getting enough votes to be elected speaker of the House and that body cleared for the takeoff of Republican committee leadership, look for that leadership to launch FCC and NTIA oversight hearings. Of particular interest is the Biden administration's mechanisms for handing out tens of billions of government — meaning taxpayer — dollars in broadband subsidies.

That oversight could come on at least two fronts — the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (formerly Oversight and Reform) and the House Energy & Commerce Committee, which has principal jurisdiction over communications issues. 

The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) is overseeing the distribution of most of the subsidy money, but the Federal Communications Commission also has billions of dollars through both historic and new subsidy programs.

On January 7, in a speech to CES 2023 in Las Vegas, NTIA chief Alan Davidson talked up the billions in subsidy money being teed up for this year, saying approximately $65 billion would be an investment in a “simple but ambitious’ goal: “[T]o connect everyone in America to affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet service.”

Also: McMorris Rodgers Warns FCC to Stay in Regulatory Lane

But Republicans also have a goal: to make sure that money goes to connecting the unconnected, rather than overbuilding existing service, and without waste, fraud and abuse.

Speaking on CNN, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the incoming chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said government spending programs had gone without sufficient congressional oversight under Democratic control and signaled that would change.

Back in October, House E&C chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers sent a letter to FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel warning her of what could happen if the Republicans took control of House chairmanships.

“As the committee of jurisdiction overseeing the FCC, I assure you the committee and its members will exercise our robust investigative and legislative powers to not only forcefully reassert our Article I responsibilities but to ensure the FCC under Democrat leadership does not continue to exceed Congressional authorizations,” McMorris Rogers wrote. 

And while Republicans don't control the Senate, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) last month wrote Commerce Department inspector general Peggy Gustafson, saying she had failed to do congressionally mandated oversight of past broadband funds. 

Specifically, he said that Commerce had failed to produce the requisite IG reports on the $1.5 billion NTIA has handed out through its Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP).

Davidson said over the weekend that 2023 would see another $1 billion going to that Tribal program. ■

A bill that would free up more money for the FCC’s suspect tech rip-and-replace program — mandated by Congress — did not make it into the $1.7 trillion must-pass omnibus appropriations bill this week, according to an unhappy Competitive Carriers Association. The fact that the bill did extend FCC auction authority for a few more months, though, was some solace.

In the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks legislation, Congress mandated, and the Federal Communications Commission fully supported, a program for compensating providers with 10 million customers or fewer for removing and replacing network technology the agency has concluded is a potential national security threat — a list that started with Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei and has since expanded.

The proposed cap on reimbursing providers of advanced telecom services for the reasonable costs for removing, replacing and disposing of equipment had been for providers with 2 million customers. Now, the cap is 10 million. (The FCC in July 2021 voted to extend the reimbursement program to larger players.)

Congress set aside $1.98 billion of funding in the legislation mandating the program, while the FCC said in February it had received more than $5.5 billion in funding requests. The FCC may not approve all of those asks, but it will clearly need more money than Congress set aside.

Also: FCC Opens Rip-and-Replace Window

“It is very disappointing that the remaining $3.08 billion shortfall in funding for the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program was not included as part of the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act,” CCA president and CEO Stephen K. Berry said. “Many eligible small and rural carriers began work over two years ago, or are frozen without sufficient funding to begin work, to remove and replace covered equipment to answer Congress’s national security mandate to address the threat posed by Chinese equipment. Full funding is desperately needed for this work to be completed. Without adequate funding, not only their customers, but also the millions that roam on their networks each year, risk losing service. This is unacceptable in today’s day and age.”

Berry did give Congress credit for including legislation extending the FCC’s auction authority, which would have expired without reauthorization, until March — essentially kicking the can down the road. But he said he would have preferred a longer extension of that authority. ▪️

A bill with at least one Democrat onboard has been introduced in the Senate and House that would ban social-media platform TikTok in the United States.

The creatively named Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act) was introduced by a pair of Republicans, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (Wis.), and Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois.

The CCP is a reference to TikTok’s alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party —Chinese law requires that data from the company's app be made available to the party.

The bill would direct the president to use all powers necessary to “prevent commercial operation of the social media company in the United States.”

Also: Senators Seek DOJ Investigation of TikTok

The bill says that social media company is TikTok and parent Bytedance until and unless the president can certify the company is not under the influence or control of the Chinese government.

“At a time when the Chinese Communist Party and our other adversaries abroad are seeking any advantage they can find against the United States through espionage and mass surveillance, it is imperative that we do not allow hostile powers to potentially control social media networks that could be easily weaponized against us,”  Krishnamoorthia said. “The bipartisan ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act is a strong step in protecting our nation from the nefarious digital surveillance and influence operations of totalitarian regimes. Recent revelations surrounding the depth of TikTok’s ties to the CCP highlight the urgency of protecting Americans from these risks before it’s too late.”

Gallagher said, “TikTok is digital fentanyl that’s addicting Americans, collecting troves of their data, and censoring their news.”

TikTok has been in Washington's sites as part of a larger concern both with social media privacy in general and, in this case, with technology/operations allied with China in particular.

Back in 2020, Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who are pretty far apart on the political spectrum, agreed that the Department of Justice should investigate both Zoom and TikTok for “reported violations of Americans’ civil liberties and [for] their close ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).” 

Elsewhere on the TikTok ban front, Hawley planned to take to the Senate floor to call for passage of his existing legislation to ban TikTok from government devices.

He originally introduced the bill in 2020 and it unanimously passed the Senate homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. ▪️

Ever since the Titanic sank, the U.S. government has regulated the airwaves within its borders. After the Titanic’s distress signal was drowned out by amateur radio operators, Congress passed the Radio Act of 1912, putting an end to the era of a “cacophony of competing voices, none of which could be clearly and predictably heard,” as the Supreme Court described it. Now that the Federal Communications Commission’s spectrum auction authority is set to expire, Congress must once again cut through the noise to find a path forward for America’s wireless future. 

Given the inherent scarcity of airwaves, or “spectrum,” federal intervention made sense to prevent a tragedy of the commons — or tragic shipwrecks. Since 1934, the FCC has governed commercial and other non-federal uses of spectrum, while the Department of Commerce has governed federal use. But it wasn’t until 1993 that Congress gave the FCC the authority to auction spectrum licenses: the right to transmit wireless signals at particular frequencies. This introduced market forces into the process and helped turn the page on the arbitrary bureaucratic decision-making that predated auctions. Since 1994, the FCC has conducted over 100 spectrum auctions, raising more than $200 billion in revenue.

Periodically, Congress must renew the FCC’s authority to auction spectrum. Given the agency’s history as an instrumental player in America’s leadership in wireless innovation, one might think this should be a formality for Congress. But very little is simple in Washington these days, and the FCC’s expiring authority has created an opportunity for various stakeholders to jockey for position.

Stakeholder Spats

In recent years, federal agencies and private stakeholders unhappy with the FCC’s decisions have resorted to hyperbolic rhetoric and circumvention of the proper interagency processes to air their grievances. These stakeholders have peddled unfounded fears that FCC decisions would cripple our electric grid, increase car crashes, cause plane crashes, blind meteorologists to impending natural disasters, cripple GPS and more. A failure to reauthorize the FCC’s spectrum authority would undermine the commission and embolden entities who seek to wrest control of the commercial airwaves from the regulator.

The FCC is the sole regulator of commercial use of spectrum, and auctions are an important tool for the agency as it seeks to maximize the use of the airwaves and the benefits to the American people. Thus, Congress will almost certainly reauthorize the FCC’s spectrum auction authority in the coming months, but two questions remain. First, for how long should this authority be reauthorized? Second, should reauthorization be coupled with any directives to reallocate and/or auction certain spectrum bands?

On the first question, 10-year extensions have been the norm for reauthorization. But Congress is in the midst of critical debates about how to balance the interests of commercial and federal users. Americans are ever hungrier for faster Internet speeds, fueling demand for 5G and next-gen WiFi. Their appetite will only grow as data-intensive applications such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and quantum computing continue to mature. With little to no unused spectrum left, Congress and the FCC must find ways to make room for new use cases without disrupting critical government functions or causing interference to existing users.

A shorter reauthorization, such as two years, would give Congress, the FCC, federal spectrum users, and commercial interests time to hash out how best to create a pipeline of spectrum to meet the needs of various wireless technologies — from next-gen WiFi to 5G to low-Earth orbit satellites. However, this raises the second question: what auctions, if any, should happen during those 18 months?

This question is the sticking point of the current debate over spectrum reauthorization. The wireless industry has identified the lower 3-GHz band (3.1-3.45 GHz) as ideal for 5G. The problem is that this band is currently used by the Department of Defense for radar systems. While the industry would prefer exclusive access to all 350 MHz in the band, it is a tough sell in Congress when national security is involved. The recent National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Spectrum Policy Symposium only reinforced that notion, as a Department of Defense official warned that vacating the entire band would cost the agency billions of dollars and take decades to complete. 

Legislative Solution

If forcing the Pentagon to fully vacate the band is a nonstarter, then how should Congress proceed? The Spectrum Innovation Act, as it was originally introduced, could serve as a guide. 

The initial version, introduced by Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), would make at least 200 MHz of the lower 3-GHz band available for non-federal use and provide incentive payments for the DoD to either share or vacate portions of the band. This approach not only provides flexibility to find the right mix of federal and commercial use that will satisfy both the DoD and the telecommunications industry, but it also gives stakeholders time to consider other arrangements for the remaining 150 MHz in the band. 

In order for this structure to work, however, Congress would need to remove the provision of the Spectrum Innovation Act preventing the FCC from auctioning spectrum outside the designated 200-MHz band. With that provision removed, Congress could package the bill with a reauthorization of the FCC’s authority. This would not only send a clear message that the FCC’s purview over commercial spectrum is here to stay, but it would also put valuable spectrum in the pipeline for 5G. 

Efficient and effective use of spectrum is critical for the U.S. to maintain its global leadership in wireless technology. At a time when countries are competing to dominate the next wave of innovation and federal agencies are increasingly looking to undermine the FCC’s domain over commercial spectrum, Congress can ill afford to leave the agency without the auction authority it needs to continue doing its job. ▪️

Technology think tank ITIF–The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation said the United States should lead an international forum of online stakeholders to come up with voluntary content-moderation guidelines, rather than push for new rules and regulations on targeted advertising or algorithms.

That point came in a new ITIF-penned report responding to what it calls a “crisis of legitimacy” in social-media content moderation.

ITIF issued its report as both Democrats and Republicans call for new regulations on edge providers due to a number of issues, including privacy protections, or the lack of them; targeted advertising; allegations from Republicans of anti-conservative bias; allegations from Democrats of insufficient policing of hate speech; allegations from both sides of insufficient protections of children online; and more.

The report, authored by ITIF senior policy analyst Ashley Johnson and ITIF VP and Center for Data Innovation director Daniel Castro, contends social media companies can’t solve all of these issues by themselves. But Congress is deadlocked, they argued, so solutions lie elsewhere than new rules and regulations on algorithms and targeted advertising.

On the issue of weeding out “harmful” state-sponsored content, ITIF says the U.S. should fund research grants and promote better information-sharing.

And although Congress is deadlocked, the report authors said, the legislature should unlock itself long enough to pass laws “establishing transparency requirements for content moderation decisions of social media platforms and requiring platforms to enforce their content moderation policies consistently.”

That essentially tracks with some of the proposed legislation, but without what tech companies see as a heavy-handed regulatory backstop, such as new Federal Trade Commission rules under its Section 5 authority over false and deceptive practices.

“[S]everal of the structural or technical changes that have been proposed for social media would likely make things worse for both content moderation and other issues impacting consumers,” the report said. ▪️

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida — With more than $40 billion in federal funding available through state agencies for rural broadband expansion, most small cable operators are hard pressed to know how to navigate the bureaucratic quagmire. But one former Congressman has a simple answer — get to know the decision-makers.

The federal government is making about $42.5 billion in rural broadband grants available to companies through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, which will be administered through several states. At the Independent Show Tuesday session “Uncle Sam’s Broadband Bucks, Who’s Holding the Purse Strings,” and moderated by outgoing ACA Connects CEO Matt Polka, former Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) suggested that to win those funds, small operators are going to have to learn how their state government machinery works.

“[E]ach state is going to be a little different, some will be better staffed and ready for this money,” Walden said. “You’re going to have to work and get to know who makes those decisions in your state and how do you take advantage of it.”

That means not just getting to know the heads of the state agencies that distribute funding, Walden added, but local and state legislators as well, who can be supportive in dealing with the various bureaucracies involved with each application.

“The extent to which you can build partnerships when you go in, [is] probably the better,” Walden said. “Most elected officials don’t like to choose among their children, so if you can move up, you’ll have a stronger case to make and they will too to whoever is going to make the decision in the state.”

Legislators on both the federal and state side also will have to work hard to ensure that funds go to the right companies, adding that stringent oversight was not a hallmark of past federal programs. But he was encouraged by the current BEAD structure.

“This is a much better statute,” he said.

Stricter oversight could be in store for the House Energy & Commerce Committee, which Walden chaired for six years before retiring on January 3, 2021. With expectations that there will be big turnover in Congress after the 2023 midterm elections, Walden was confident that friendly ears will abound in the House.

“Watch for Congress,” Walden advised, adding that typically the party in power loses 26 seats in Congress after its first midterm election.

“If your president has more than a 50% approval rating that number changes to 14 seats, if it’s less than a 50% approval rating that’s 36 seats,” he continued. President Biden’s current approval rating is about 38%.

“So I would look for a change of control, which means Republicans will take over,” Walden said.

Walden also had some advice for operators who are considering applying for grants to build out broadband services.  

“I would find out what your state has, if they have any kind of broadband buildout plan already, so they already have an idea about what they want to do,” Walden said. “I would also watch for other unmet needs.”

Walden added that in some large rural states, governors are worried about the overall lack of communications infrastructure in their states and could use the lure of broadband money to improve that. 

“They are going to try to leverage this to improve communications overall,” Walden said. “I think, especially in the big rural states, the Montanas, the Wyomings, they are really struggling to get adequate communications one way or another.” ■ 

Wireless carriers are getting understandably antsy about potentially having to foot much of the multi-billion-dollar bill for ripping and replacing suspect tech from their networks, which they must do at the command of Congress and the FCC.

In a letter to House and Senate leaders, the Competitive Carriers Association and others called on Congress to fully fund the program.

The FCC signaled last week it would come up about $3 billion short given how much money was applied for -- over $5 billion -- and how much Congress set aside -- under $2 billion -- in the Secure and Trusted Communications Network Act.

Also: FCC Is $3 Billion Short on Rip and Replace

If Congress does not fork over more, the FCC says that it has no choice -- given Congress' directive on the program -- to pay cents on the dollar and only to the first priority group. The FCC said that all the money it currently has will not even cover the eligible applicants in group 1 -- there are four groups -- which will only get 39.5 cents on the dollar.

Group one comprises applicants with fewer than two million customers.

“This is not only a national security issue, but it is an important consumer issue as well," said CCA President Steven K. Berry. "Failure to make up for the funding shortfall threatens the availability of advanced communications to residents and visitors in large parts of the country, especially in rural areas – an outcome that no one wants to see."

The outcome of cents on the dollar is definitely not the outcome Berry is looking for.

"The FCC has pro-rated available funds as directed by law, leaving affected carriers in a hole they may never be able to climb out of," he said. "I strongly encourage Congress to act immediately to help secure support to fully fund the program and provide the FCC with the necessary funds to address the current shortfall. Time is of the essence."

Help could be on the way.

On July 13, the House Energy & Commerce Committee unanimously approved -- 52 to 0 -- the Spectrum Innovation Act of 2022, which reauthorizes the FCC's spectrum auction authority. Among many other things, that bill would direct some of the proceeds from upcoming auctions to help pay for rip and replace. ■

The bipartisan, bicameral efforts to rein in edge provider data collecting and sharing practices just keep on coming.

Only hours after the House Energy & Commerce Committee marked up and favorably reported the legislative framework for a comprehensive data privacy bill (the American Data Privacy and Protection Act), Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) were applauding the decision by the Senate Commerce Committee to mark up their Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (S. 1628).

The markup has been scheduled for July 27.

“The Commerce Committee’s markup of the Kids Online Safety Act will bring us closer to holding Big Tech accountable for putting profits above kids’ safety,” said Blumenthal in a statement. 

Also: New Bill Would Break Up Big Tech Ad Giants

The bill, which the pair introduced in February came after hearings headed by the legislators on Big Tech's "repeated failures to protect children & teens from serious dangers on their platforms," as they put it at the time.

The legislation does the following:

1. “Requires that social media platforms provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of algorithmic recommendations. Platforms would be required to enable the strongest settings by default.
2. “Gives parents new controls to help support their children and identify harmful behaviors, and provides parents and children with a dedicated channel to report harms to kids to the platform.
3. “Creates a responsibility for social media platforms to prevent and mitigate harms to minors, such as promotion of self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and unlawful products for minors (e.g. gambling and alcohol).
4.  “Requires social media platforms to perform an annual independent audit that assesses the risks to minors, their compliance with this legislation, and whether the platform is taking meaningful steps to prevent those harms.
5. “Provides academic and public interest organizations with access to critical datasets from social media platforms to foster research regarding harms to the safety and well-being of minors.”

Also: Blumenthal Says Facebook Weaponizes Childhood Suffering

"Protecting our kids and teens online is critically important,” said Sen. Blackburn in a joint statement with Blumenthal. “I have heard firsthand countless stories of physical and emotional damage of teen suicide and mental health issues affecting young users, along with Big Tech’s unwillingness to change. The Kids Online Safety Act will address those harms by setting necessary safety guiderails for online platforms to follow that will require transparency and give parents more peace of mind."

Also: Blumenthal Presses TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat for Documents

The American Data and Privacy Protection Act also has a protections for kids, banning knowingly targeting advertising to anyone under 17. ▪️

A comprehensive data privacy bill that would, among many other things, allow web users to opt out of targeted advertising — and ban ads aimed at children entirely — is heading to a markup July 20 in the House Energy & Commerce Committee.

The bipartisan American Data Privacy and Protection Act (H.R. 8152) is a comprehensive national privacy regime that would require companies to collect only the data necessary to provide their products or services, bill proponent Common Cause said, and would allow consumers to correct or delete their data. There are also prohibitions on discriminatory data practices/algorithms/ad delivery.

Also: Twitter to Pay $150 Million to Settle Privacy Complaint

The bill would require that consumers get a clear and conspicuous opportunity to opt out of targeted advertising. If a consumer is under 17, and an advertiser knows that, they cannot be targeted with advertising at all. 

The bill also creates a Youth Privacy and Marketing Division within the Federal Trade Commission, charged with protecting the privacy of children and minors and tasked with looking out for marketing directed at them. The division must report to Congress annually on how successful it has been in its mission and on any emerging concerns about protecting the privacy of children and minors.

The measure has supporters on both sides of the aisle and in both houses of Congress. That’s saying something in these politically divided times, particularly on an issue as complicated as data privacy protections.

Also: Bill Would Break Up Big Tech Ad Giants

“We are glad to see that the American Data Privacy and Protection Act is going to a full committee markup, and that Republican and Democratic leadership on the House Energy & Commerce Committee has come together on a comprehensive privacy proposal to protect our data online," Common Cause media and democracy program director Yosef Getachew said.

Watchdog group Common Cause is particularly heartened by the inclusion of civil-rights protections, given that privacy and data abuses have hit minority communities particularly hard, the organization said. ▪️

The Federal Communications Commission is asking for input on its congressional mandate to coordinate tens of billions of dollars of government money in various broadband subsidy programs with the National Telecommunications & Information Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The NTIA, the White House’s chief telecom policy arm, has been charged with handing out most of the $65 billion worth of infrastructure-related broadband buildout money, but the FCC also hands out billions of dollars through various Universal Service Fund subsidies as well as telehealth and distance learning money related to the COVID-19 pandemic. USDA gives out money through the Rural Utilities Service.

The FCC’s Wireline Communications Bureau wants comment by August 16 on its interagency coordination agreement, which will be factored into a mandated report to Congress.

Also: FCC, NTIA Authorize More Broadband Funding

Under the direction of statute, which calls for the answers to some specific questions, the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau, which issued the request for comment, wants to hear specifically about the agreement’s effectiveness in making sure the funds are distributed efficiently. One big issue: Congress wants to ensure there is no duplicative funding.

The FCC (read Congress) also wants to know how much deployment availability data from states, localities and tribal areas is available; how much of that is being used in interagency coordination; and what, if any, modifications are needed to improve coordination.

In May, the FCC, NTIA and USDA agreed to share and standardize their broadband data.

At times, particularly under the Trump administration, the FCC and NTIA would not have scored high marks in that “getting along well with others” checkbox on elementary school report cards, particularly over the issue of freeing up government spectrum by sharing it with commercial users. That was particularly the case when it comes to spectrum-sharing by commercial aviation operators and 5G WiFi providers.

Even before the infrastructure legislation mandated a formal agreement, though, FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and new NTIA administrator Alan Davidson were talking regularly, according to the FCC. 

The Government Accountability Office has suggested there is a broadband coordination deficit that requires more than an agreement to play nice among the three agencies.

In a report earlier this month, GAO said Congress needs to come up with a national broadband plan to rectify what it says is a “fragmented, overlapping patchwork” of broadband accessibility funding, though the White House has not decided whether it plans to do that or not. ▪️

Broadcasters are applauding a move by Congress that would effectively provide a federal shield for TV and radio stations from any FCC retaliation airing cannabis ads.

By a vote of 31 to 22 the House Appropriations Committee Friday (June 24) approved the fiscal year (FY) 2023 Financial Services and General Government bill.

The bill includes funding for the FCC, but only so long as none of it is used to prevent local broadcasters from airing cannabis ads in states where it is legal or punishing them for doing so.

The FCC appropriations section includes the following caveat: "[N]one of the funds made available in this Act to the Federal Communications Commission may be used, with respect to an authorization for radio or television stations, to deny, fail to renew for a full term or condition the authorization, decline to approve an application for authority to assign the authorization or transfer direct or indirect control of the licensee, require an early renewal application, or impose a forfeiture penalty because the station broadcast or otherwise transmitted advertisements of a business selling cannabis or cannabis-derived products, the sale or distribution of which is authorized in the State, political subdivision of a State, or Indian country in which the community of license of a station is located, or of a business selling hemp, hemp-derived CBD products or other hemp-derived cannabinoid products."

Also: Season Two of 'Growing Belushi' Debuts

Broadcasters have been looking for such protections, arguing that without them they cannot air cannabis ads even where the product is legal, which is in most states.

The National Association of Broadcasters applauded the proposed protections for stations.

"We are pleased to see that this bipartisan language has advanced in the House today," said NAB spokesman Alex Siciliano. "As the vast majority of states have legalized cannabis in some form, today marks a long overdue step toward finally allowing broadcasters to receive equal treatment regarding cannabis advertising that other forms of media have had for years."

Cable and streaming services, with essentially no FCC licenses at risk, can and do air cannabis ads. 

But NAB was looking for more help. "While we welcome today's progress, local broadcasters will continue to work with all policymakers towards a broader resolution of this competitive disparity and in support of our unique service to local communities."

State broadcast associations have been pushing for the right to air ads for a legal product in their states. The New York State Broadcasters Association has pointed out that stations currently run the risk of losing their license--a risk the bill is meant to remove--for airing any cannabis ads since the substance remains illegal under federal law. 

The association also points out that broadcasters have for years imposed their own limits on alcohol ads, including limiting them to shows the majority of whose audiences (at least 71.6%) are over 21, and said that should apply to cannabis ads.

“We are grateful to House Appropriations Committee chair Rosa DeLauro, Subcommittee chairman Mike Quigley and members of the Committee for recognizing the unfairness of the present situation with respect to cannabis advertising," said New York State Broadcasters Association president David Donovan. "The provision in this House appropriations bill is a major step forward for leveling the playing field for local broadcasters. We believe the law of the state in which a station is licensed should determine whether a station can accept cannabis advertising if they so choose. We look forward to working with members of Congress and the Administration to help restore parity between local broadcasters and other media outlets.” ■

Congress took another step Thursday (June 23) in its years-long process of trying to come up with a bipartisan comprehensive federal data-privacy law, a measure both Democrats and Republicans have said is needed in an online world of ubiquitous movement and use of data.

That step came in a lengthy markup and subsequent “yes” vote on an initial version of the American Data Privacy and Protection Act in the House Energy & Commerce Committee's Consumer Protection subcommittee. The vote approved what both sides signaled was an initial pass at a bill that needs more work.

Democrats and Republicans indicated this latest attempt had the best chance in years of gaining bipartisan support, but all said more work needed to be done. The decision to advance the bill was more about signaling that all were willing to continue to work on it than that it had reached even its approximate final form.

The legislation was approved and favorably referred to the full committee by voice vote with no audible nays to be heard. It has already seen various changes since the initial draft, changes reflected in the bill which was approved as an Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute (which committee members shorthand to “AINS”) to the original draft.

That draft bill was circulated earlier this month. 

There were four amendments offered up to the substitute during the Thursday markup, but all were immediately withdrawn. The idea behind offering them was to make various points about what their sponsors felt needed to be changed in the bill. They were withdrawn so the bill could continue the process of change, which will come in negotiations between now and a markup/vote in the full committee, and also between that vote and a full House vote if necessary.

Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) offered and withdrew three of the four amendments. His issues were with what he said was an insufficiently clear preemption of state laws, raising the possibility privacy violators could face multiple lawsuits.

Armstrong said he was concerned courts will read the bill's numerous exemptions from state law preemptions as the effective absence of state law preemption altogether. Some courts view carveouts from preemptions as fatal to the overall preemption clause because it clouds Congress' intent and those courts default to preserving all relevant state laws, he said.

Rep. Armstrong said the bill as currently written could subject a covered entity to multiple enforcement actions — federal, state and private rights of action— on the same prohibited conduct.

The other amendment offered to make a point and signal further negotiation was from Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.). It related to what she said was Big Tech's discrimination based on political viewpoint, both Republican and Democrat.

Among many other things, the bill as approved by the subcommittee would allow web users to opt out of “targeted advertising” when surfing the web, whose free content has been supported by such ads.

Also: Privacy Bill Allows for Turning Off Targeted Advertising

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) has told Congress that while it thought the legislators were on the right track, the bill's definition of “targeted advertising” would “prevent the ad-supported internet business model from continuing.”

Since 2019, ITI, whose members include some of the most-affected edge providers — Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta (formerly Facebook) and Twitter — has been arguing that it is part of the solution to data privacy, offering up what it says is a legislative roadmap for a federal privacy law. ▪️

“For years, the technology sector has called on Congress to enact comprehensive federal privacy legislation that builds mutual trust, protects consumers, and supports continued innovation,” said John Miller, ITI SVP of policy and general counsel of the subcommittee's vote Thursday. “Today we are one step closer to that reality. While the bill in its revised form represents tangible progress, and we appreciate the Subcommittee’s efforts to address critical issues we and others raised, more work remains to recalibrate this measure before it is enshrined as a national privacy standard. We commend the Subcommittee for advancing this important effort and look forward to continuing to constructively engage with policymakers as the bill moves forward.”

The broadcast networks joined cable news and streaming outlets to go live with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s remote address to Congress Wednesday (March 16) as the president used a striking video of the destruction and carnage to try and drive home his point that the U.S. needed to “close the sky over Ukraine.”

In Washington, the ABC, NBC and CBS outlets all carried the speech, with only the Fox station sticking with regular programming on its broadcast channel, while streaming the speech live on its website.

Zelensky, in his trademark green T-shirt, asked his audience to remember the U.S.’s own attacks from the skies:  Pearl Harbor with a sky black from planes attacking, and Sept. 11, 2001, “when evil tried to turn cities into battlefields and innocent people were attacked.” He said his country has been suffering the same fate every day and night for three weeks.

Also: Fox News Consultant Sasha Kuvshynova Killed in Ukraine

He ticked off the city names and said Russia had turned the skies into death, including using drones. He said he was asking the whole world for a reply from the world, including a no-fly zone to prevent the terrorizing of free cities. “Is this too much to ask?”

He called for more planes to help protect not only his country, but Europe. “You recognize the words “I have a dream,’ ” he said. “I have a need,” a need to protect his country, he said.

He thanked the U.S. for what it has done, but called on it to do more, including new sanctions. He proposed that the U.S. sanction all Russian politicians who remain in office.

Zelensky said Russia should not receive a single penny that they will use for war. He said U.S. ports should be shut to Russian goods.

He said the institutions that are supposed to protect us from war [NATO, UN] have not worked, and that new alliances are needed. He proposed such an alliance, which he dubbed U 24, an alliance for peace.

Also: CNN Stops Broadcasting in Russia as Law Changes

Zelensky, a former media producer and actor, then aired a graphic video showing Ukrainian cities before the war filled with happy, smiling people, followed by pictures of bombs and wreckage and human suffering, of dead and dying and injured, while plaintive violin music played in the background. The video ended with the words in white on a black background: “Close the sky over Ukraine.”

CNN, for one, did not put a warning on screen before the graphic video, but said that was because network officials did not know the footage would be shown.

He spoke directly to President Joe Biden and in English (the rest of the speech had been translated into English): “I wish you to be the leader of the world," he said, which means “being the leader of peace.”

The speech drew a brief standing ovation from the audience in the Capitol.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Subcommittee on Aviation heard mostly from concerned aviation witnesses about safety issues related to the rollout of 5G wireless services in the C-band in a marathon hearing Wednesday (February 2) titled “Finding the Right Frequency: 5G Deployment & Aviation Safety.”

Federal agencies came under withering fire for failure to communicate over the issue. One legislator, though, suggested that it was a case of two sets of engineers at two different agencies — the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration — not speaking the same language when they were speaking at all.

Legislators also pointed out that the C-band interference issue had been identified years earlier, but there was still a last-minute scramble and talk of catastrophic consequences.

The telecom industry and the FCC were hammered by committee leadership for putting the telcos’ bottom line before safety — and not just in regard to aviation, but also to automobiles and GPS reliability.

Also: Wireless Companies Agree to Modified C-Band 5G Rollout

Democratic and Republican senators set the contentious tone by saying there had been an extraordinary lack of communications and coordination among the FCC, the FAA and the National Telecommunications & Information Administration. The result, the lawmakers said, was ridiculous, embarrassing and inexcusable. AT&T and Verizon Communications delayed their 5G rollouts twice over fears towers close to some airports could cause interference to altimeters, and then had to agree not to light up 5G towers in proximity to airports with low visibility issues while the FCC and FAA attempted to resolve an issue legislators said they had years to hammer out.

Full committee chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) put much of the blame on the wireless industry, saying it had kept key data on tower heights and positioning proprietary — refusing to share that data even though it was requested by the FAA — and then only late in the process releasing data on its “secret towers and powers.” Only then did it become clear that 5G and altimeters were going to be a big problem, DeFazio said.

He also blamed the FCC for auctioning the C-band spectrum, adding it had also sold off half of the vehicle-to-vehicle spectrum despite arguments from the transportation industry that it was needed for auto safety. He suggested it was much more important to the FCC that consumers could stream HD while walking down the street. DeFazio pointed out that the FCC’s V2V decision had been taken to court and he hoped it would lose. 

Adding in a third FCC decision — to allow Ligado to launch a satellite-delivered broadband system near GPS spectrum — DeFazio suggested the agency was ignoring any consequences beyond the telecom industry‘s bottom line. “That has to change,“ he said, then clearly angry, he argued the country does not even regulate telecom anymore, “which is why we have the crappiest cell phone service in the world.”

“Having a dropped call is way less serious than having a dropped airplane out of the sky,“ DeFazio said.

After AT&T and Verizon paid billions for C-band spectrum — and after the FCC engineers cleared their 5G services for takeoff adjacent to bandwidth used by aviation — the telcos agreed to delay and adjust their use of that spectrum. They were responding to airline industry and FAA concerns that 5G could cause “catastrophic” interference to avionics systems, specifically altimeters used to tell planes how close they are to the ground while taking off or landing in poor weather.

As a result, and under strong pressure from the Biden administration, the wireless broadband providers also agreed to some “exclusion zones” around those airports until the issue can be resolved, including via the adoption of new altimeter standards.

In his testimony, FAA administrator Steve Dickson said the telecom industry was cooperating and providing data, and that he was confident the issue could be resolved. He said the wireless industry and aviation were working on new flight test data that will help going forward, including retrofitting avionics to make sure they are C-band resistant.

That will likely include informal and formal methods as more 5G is rolled out and as the FCC frees up more spectrum for 5G.

Testifying for the wireless industry, among the eight airline industry witnesses, was CTIA president Meredith Attwell Baker. Baker is arguably uniquely qualified to weigh in, since she has seen the spectrum issues from the various vantages currently in the mix as former head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA).

Baker said the industry was committed to both safe flights and robust and reliable C-band 5G. But she also suggested that the rollout delays of AT&T and Verizon came despite “all available real-world evidence” that 5G and altimeters could coexist.

She also put some of the blame on the media, saying “the press tried to pit the future of wireless versus aviation,” which she said was “always a false choice.”

Baker said that millions of Americans are both getting 5G service and flying safely thanks to hard work in the past few years and weeks, with engineers working together.

Dickson had said that based on the new data from wireless companies, the FAA was now refining the exclusion zones. Baker pointed out that, as of January 28, the FCC had cleared 90% of the commercial fleet for low visibility landings in the vicinity of C-band 5G networks, proving “coexistence is attainable.” She said she was committed to being a good partner with aviation and to getting the other 10% of the fleet cleared for takeoff and landing.

But Baker's bottom line was that "[t]he wireless industry remains confident that 5G poses no risk to air traffic safety but has taken these steps to allow the FAA time to evaluate altimeter performance with C-Band 5G."

Also: Airline CEOs Say C-Band 5G Rollout Could Mean Chaos

As to providing data, she said that AT&T and Verizon last fall had provided “vast and unprecedented access to their 5G network deployment designs, radiofrequency planning, and equipment performance.”

Playing something of the peacemaker, Dickson suggested that the delay in getting the data was that there was a “lack of understanding” of what data the FAA needed because the telcos had never had to produce it for the government before.

All sides agreed that 5G would continue to roll out, that aviation needed to be protected, and that such protection would require better coordination and communication going forward. That“s something they said was happening but with still "a lot of work to do."

Asked about what lessons the industry had learned, Baker said that they had followed the FCC rules back in March 2020 and how the altimeter issue did not get resolved before the C-Band auction she did not understand. She pointed out that she had worked at NTIA and that the interagency coordination process had worked on some "hairy spectrum issues."

She said that perhaps now that the FCC and NTIA have permanent leadership — NTIA administrator Alan Davidson and FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel — they could “take a fresh look at what is working and what is not.” She said she hoped they would do that.

“NATE welcomes the leadership and testimony of Meredith Attwell Baker, President and CEO of CTIA before the House Subcommittee on Aviation," said Todd Schlekeway, president and CEO of NATE: The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association. "Ms. Baker’s testimony made clear that the wireless industry and the Federal Communications Commission followed the science and real world usage of 5G services and the impact on aviation. “NATE urges policy makers to continually work together to advance 5G services and maintain America’s global leadership in wireless telecommunications that have allowed for telework and telehealth services and many other technologies that have helped Americans cope with a global pandemic.” ■

In his speech marking the anniversary of the Capitol insurrection, President Joe Biden talked Thursday about a statue of Clio, the Greek muse of history, looking down over the door to the rotunda and recording the ransacking of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With apologies to Clio, it was in fact the cameras of broadcast and cable and C-SPAN and surveillance cameras and the video streams from cellphones that captured the attack on the Capitol and the rule of law.

Just as the cable and broadcast networks and streaming services covered speeches marking the anniversary by the president and Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday.

The president, speaking from the Capitol's Statuary Hall, made the point about the nation being witness to that troubling history when he said “[Y]ou and I and the whole world saw with our own eyes” the truth of what happened that day, which he said was rioters rampaging and trying to rip the country apart.

Also: The Capitol Siege: Images That Linger

Taking the gloves off, Biden said former President Donald Trump had rallied the mob to attack, then sat in a private dining room off the Oval Office and watched it on television. Former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham said on CNN Thursday the then-president had watched, and rewatched, the footage — even as he was being asked to quell the violence of a crowd he had earlier urged to fight to have the election overturned. As Trump watched the TV, Biden said, he “did nothing for hours and hours” as police were assaulted and the Capitol besieged by an armed insurrection.

Earlier, Harris had said, “We all saw what our nation would look like if the forces who seek to dismantle our democracy are successful.”

It was journalists who chronicled the truth of that day and in doing so helped face down the violent mob by recording its ugly face for the world to see, and at some personal risk — rioters in the crowd trashed equipment and some talked about killing the journalists covering the insurrection.

Biden included reporters in talking about all who were “living with the trauma of that day.”

From the president’s speech about a stolen election that rallied a crowd to march to the Capitol, successfully breaching the building and disrupting the counting of electoral votes, reporters — who some in the crowd openly threatened to hunt down and kill one by one — kept reporting.

The president talked about a choice between living in the “light of truth” or the “shadow of lies.” Journalists have a critical role in shining that light, and a responsibility not to join, for ratings or political purposes, those throwing shade on that truth.

In a pro forma session that lasted only a few minutes but was carried by broadcast and cable networks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called for a moment of silence in honor of the police officers who lost their lives following the attack.

According to CNN, the only Republican in the chamber for that moment of silence was Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a member of the special committee investigating the insurrection, accompanied by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. C-SPAN's cameras, though controlled by the Congress, clearly showed the Republican side virtually empty, pretty much ensuring there would be silence from that side of the chamber during the moment of remembrance. ■

Another day, another online content issue that has legislators alarmed and ready to grill Big Tech.

In this case it is an online site that provides information on how to commit suicide and support for those who are contemplating or have decided to take their own lives.

The New York Times earlier this month reported on the site and 45 people whose deaths could be linked to it. The story pointed out that web content providers continue to have immunity from liability for third-party content, the Sec. 230 issue that has been in the forefront of Washington legislator's concerns about hate speech, discrimination, political advertising manipulation and much more.

In response Monday (Dec. 20), the bipartisan leadership of the House Energy & Commerce Committee said they have called for briefings from executives with search engines, web hosting companies, content delivery networks, and social media platforms.

Also: Surgeon General: Big Tech Has Role in Youth Mental Health Challenges

"It is imperative that companies take the threat of such sites seriously and take appropriate steps to mitigate harm," they said in a joint statement.

Joining that statement were Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) and Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Health Subcommittee chair Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Ranking Member Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee chair Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Ranking Member Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), Communications Subcommittee chairman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and Ranking Member Bob Latta (R-Ohio), Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee chair Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Ranking Member Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.). ■

A new bill, the Reforming Broadband Connectivity Act, is asking the Federal Communications Commission to look beyond the customers of declining landline phone service for the subsidies it will need to power universal broadband.

Currently, the FCC‘s Universal Service Fund support for broadband in rural and lower-income areas is primarily subsidized by fees on traditional landline service, in part because it was unclear whether the regulator had the authority to such fees on broadband providers.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), co-chair of the Senate Broadband Caucus, and John Thune (R-S.D.) have teamed up on a bill that charges the FCC with opening a rulemaking to “reform the contributions system, taking into account the fairness and the relative burden any changes in fees will have on consumers and businesses, as well as the impact the proposed changes to the contribution system will have on seniors.”

Also: FCC Tops $2 Billion in Emergency Broadband Funds for Schools, Libraries

USF fees are passed along to customers on their monthly bills.

“In 2021, we should be able to bring high-speed internet to every family in America — regardless of their zip code,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “This bill will help ensure we have the resources to keep the Universal Service Fund strong so we can continue to expand access to broadband."

Added Thune: “It is crucial that rural communities across South Dakota have access to reliable broadband services.” 

The senators pointed out that relying on landline subsidies for USF, which supports rural health care, service to low-income households and school and library broadband access, even as landline use declines in favor of wireless and VoIP, "places a disproportionate impact on seniors, who are significantly more likely to use a landline than younger adults."

The Biden administration is hardly relying on the USF alone to close the divide. In fact, it has been arguing that the $65 billion it has allocated for broadband buildout and adoption in the new infrastructure package that passed in Congress — plus earlier, COVID-19-related, emergency broadband funding — should be enough to get the job done, though it was unclear whether that presumed continued stable USF funding.

The House has passed four communications-related bills including one that would expand the ban on suspect tech. All four passed out of the House Energy & Commerce Committee last summer by voice vote, meaning none were controversial. They all must still be passed by the Senate to make it to President Joe Biden‘s desk.

The “Secure Equipment Act of 2021” (HR 3919) — sponsored by Reps. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) — would prevent the Federal Communications Commission from approving any wireless equipment authorization for a tech company on the list of companies that pose a national security risk. That list currently includes Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE.

The FCC, under its own initiative and with the direction of Congress in the Secure and Trusted Communications Act, published a list of tech suppliers deemed national security threats and prohibited the use of federal funds for telecom networks using that tech: the highest-profile companies on that list were Huawei and ZTE. Congress also funded the removal that suspect tech from existing government-funded buildouts.

Currently, the FCC is disallowing the use of technology from Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision, and Dahua in U.S. broadband networks built out with government subsidy money. But the prohibition has not extended to networks not built with government bucks. This bill expands the ban by not allowing them to get FCC authorization for use in any U.S. network.

The degree to which keeping suspect tech out of those U.S. networks is a bipartisan priority was evident in the lopsided vote, which was 420-4.

The House also passed:

• H.R. 4067, the “Communications Security Advisory Act of 2021,” which would codify and make permanent the FCC‘s Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council and require biennial reporting to the FCC and public on how to improve communications network.

• H.R. 4032, the “Open RAN Outreach Act,” which directs NTIA to reach out and help small network providers who want to offer Open-RAN (ORAN) networks and other open architectures.

• H.R. 4028, the “Information and Communication Technology Strategy Act,” which would direct the Secretary of Commerce to report to Congress on the state of the economic competitiveness of the trusted vendors the U.S. will rely on to replace the untrusted ones being weeded out of U.S. nets and how the government can help insure their competitiveness. China has helped insure the competitiveness of untrusted nets by subsidizing their tech giants.

All four of the bills advanced out of the Energy and Commerce Committee by a voice vote during a full committee markup in July. 

The bills' passage brought bipartisan praise from the other side of the Hill. Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who introduced the Senate version of the Secure Equipment Act, applauded House passage and urged the Senate to follow suit.

“Today the House continued its work to strengthen our nation’s telecommunications infrastructure for the future by overwhelmingly passing four bipartisan bills,” the senators said in a statement. “Together, these bills will boost network reliability, protect against suspect equipment that poses a risk to our national security, support small communications network providers, and bolster the economic competitiveness of our technology supply chains. We commend the bipartisan work that went into these bills that advanced out of our committee in July and hope that the Senate will take action soon.”

Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) have teamed up to call on Big Tech to create a rating board for apps and adopt ratings comparable to those for video games, movies and music.

While there have been ratings boards for movies, music and video games for a couple of decades, the relatively newer world of apps has no such body, with ratings often provided by the app creator.

That congressional call for action comes in a just-introduced “Fix Apps Ratings” House resolution. Such resolutions don't have the force of law, but signal the sense of Congress on an issue  — and the implied threat that if action doesn't happen voluntarily, some of those House members might legislate to make it so.

The idea of the industry-run ratings board is to streamline age-appropriate ratings, as well as parental controls that are easy to use, “digital wellness features” and other tools to help kids online.

The resolution comes in the wake of a Facebook whistleblower’s revelations about internal company research finding that some teen Instagram users said using the app made them feel worse about themselves and even prompted thoughts of suicide, though Facebook counters that the majority of teens polled found instagram was helpful, not harmful.

“For too long, apps have been allowed to serve as hubs for bullying, sexually explicit material and other forms of content that jeopardize children’s safety, self-image and overall well-being,” Johnson said.

Both legislators argue that app ratings are often inaccurate, inconsistent, or not specific enough,  while parental controls are too complex or depend on ratings “self assigned” by app developers.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) gave the effort a big thumbs up.

“The technology industry must take responsibility for ensuring apps are rated accurately,” center CEO Dawn Hawkins said. “Parents are left in the dark about the kind of content their children are accessing because app ratings are misleading or inaccurate. … For instance, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are rated 12-plus, but these social media platforms and others have left children vulnerable to potential predators and harmful content. Tech platforms should focus on defaulting to safety, thereby putting the health and wellbeing of children above profit.”

In the wake of the revelations by a Facebook whistleblower and allegations about the company’s internal research about the impact of its platforms on young people, House Energy & Commerce Committee leaders have proposed a bill that targets “reckless” use of algorithms by limiting Section 230.

Former Facebook staffer Frances Haugen testified about the documents before the committee at a heated hearing that prompted legislators to suggest it was Big Tech‘s Big Tobacco moment.

Section 230 is the add-on to the 1996 Communications Decency Act that provides web platforms immunity from civil liability for what appears on their platforms.

Also Read: Rep. Eshoo Pushes for Subpoena of Facebook Documents

While there has been bipartisan criticism of Facebook, the legislators unveiling the bill are all Democrats: Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), Communications Subcommittee chairman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and Consumer Protection Subcommittee chair Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).

The bill, the Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act, would remove absolute immunity for an edge provider that “knowingly or recklessly uses an algorithm or other technology to recommend content that materially contributes to physical or severe emotional injury.”

The bill does not apply to “small” online platforms, which are defined as fewer than five million unique monthly visitors, or to algorithms or search features that aren't based on personalization, or to infrastructure like Web hosting or data transfer or storage.

The big issue with Facebook‘s internal research was that it showed that some teens said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves and even contributed to thoughts of suicide. Facebook countered that the research found that a majority of kids did not feel that way, and that the info helped them take actions to help those who did.

But Congress has not been assuaged, arguing that Facebook has not done nearly enough, while keeping that research under wraps and downplaying the negative results.

“Social media platforms like Facebook continue to actively amplify content that endangers our families, promotes conspiracy theories, and incites extremism to generate more clicks and ad dollars,” Pallone said. “These platforms are not passive bystanders — they are knowingly choosing profits over people, and our country is paying the price. The time for self-regulation is over, and this bill holds them accountable. Designing personalized algorithms that promote extremism, disinformation, and harmful content is a conscious choice, and platforms should have to answer for it.”

Added Doyle: “We finally have proof that some social media platforms pursue profit at the expense of the public good, so it’s time to change their incentives, and that’s exactly what the Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act would do. Under this bill, Section 230 would no longer fully protect social media platforms from all responsibility for the harm they do to our society. It’s my hope that by making it possible to hold social media platforms accountable for the harm they cause, we can help optimize the internet’s impact on our society.”

In advance of a high-profile Capitol Hill hearing on “Facebook and the Impact of Instagram on Youth,” Facebook said Monday it is “pausing” its plans to create a kid-targeted version of the popular Instagram photo-sharing app.

“While we stand by the need to develop this [Instagram Kids] experience, we’ve decided to pause this project,” said Instagram head Adam Mosseri. “This will give us time to work with parents, experts, policymakers and regulators, to listen to their concerns, and to demonstrate the value and importance of this project for younger teens online today.”

Also Read: Facebook Agrees to Participate in Instagram Hearing

Facebook has argued that creating the kid-friendly platform is a way to address the problem of kids under 13 misrepresenting their age online to access the adult/teen version.

”We firmly believe that it’s better for parents to have the option to give their children access to a version of Instagram that is designed for them — where parents can supervise and control their experience,“ Mosseri said.

The policymakers preparing to grill Facebook this week will certainly share their concerns with the company, and if recent hearings and statements related to the company are any indication, they will do so vigorously.

Also Read: Senator Says TikTok Needs Hill Grilling

Facebook last week agreed to send a witness to Washington for a Sept. 30 hearing this week in the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee entitled “Protecting Kids Online: Facebook, Instagram, & Mental Health Harms.”

Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), chair and ranking member, respectively, of the subcommittee are both unhappy with a Wall Street Journal report that Facebook had data showing Instagram could be harmful to young people, but downplayed it.

The Free State Foundation has a big issue with the way the House Ways & Means Committee is reconciling President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion spending plan, which includes big bucks for broadband.

Both houses of Congress have passed a general outline of the budget, but committees in both chambers are now charged with filling in matching details. 

Randolph May, president of the Potomac, Maryland-based free-market think tank, is calling ill-conceived a provision that would provide a tax break to municipal broadband buildouts.

Also Read: More Muni, More Money

The president has favored such municipal broadband in his proposals for billions of dollars in subsidies to promote universal, affordable and competitive high-speed internet service.

But May said Congress should not give a tax break for the maintenance and operation of government-owned broadband systems.

One knock on such systems historically has been that once funded, they can't cover operating expenses and have been known to fold, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill.

Also Read: Biden Broadband Plan Favoring Government-Owned Networks Lacks a Constitutional Foundation

But May said government-owned networks already get preferential treatment when it comes to “accessing public rights of way, avoiding cumbersome permitting processes, and benefitting from taxpayer-funded subsidies.”

He said the tax break would make it harder for private operators who have to invest their own risk capital to upgrade service. “Marketplace competition for broadband services would be dampened and consumers will be the losers” if the tax break for munis is granted, he said.

The House Tuesday passed a bill and a resolution aimed at achieving greater media diversity.

The votes on each were 319-105 — they were part of a block vote on a handful of communications-related bills.

H.R. 1754, the MEDIA (Measuring the Economics Driving Investments and Access) Diversity Act, was introduced by Reps. Billy Long (R-Mo.) and Marc Veasey (D-Tex.). It would require the FCC to take into account market entry barriers to market entry for “socially disadvantaged individuals.”

Also passed was a resolution committing the House to work with media entities and others to advance media diversity by developing “common ground solutions to eliminate barriers to media diversity.” Resolutions don't have the force of law but instead express the sense of the House on a subject.

National Association of Broadcasters president Gordon Smith applauded the bills for “promoting solutions that address barriers to entry into the media industry for underserved populations.”

He also put in a plug for a bill from Reps. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) that would reinstate the tax certificate program, which gave media companies tax breaks for selling TV or radio stations to minorities and women.

“We are proud of the bipartisan support these important bills received in the House today and urge swift passage in the Senate,” said House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.).

2020 taught us that a broadband connection is essential. The proposed American Jobs Plan provision of building high-speed broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas is a magnificent objective. While billions of public and private dollars have already been spent, with many more billions promised, the vision of connecting everyone in our country to broadband is a lofty goal of significant importance.

We are now seeing the determination to connect America play out in a series of bills debated in Congress, initiatives implemented at federal agencies funded through emergency relief spending bills and in the Biden Administration’s proposed American Jobs Plan.  On May 6, at a House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing on broadband access and affordability, Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said, “We all want to close the digital divide, but the only way to truly achieve this is to have solutions that will produce results.” This is exactly why before fully endorsing the entire designation of these dollars, the plan requires a careful examination and consideration regarding which policies actually get consumers to where they need to be.

Lack of Broadband Brings Challenges

During the challenges of the past year, we’ve seen how so many have faced extraordinary challenges because they didn’t have broadband.  Kids fell behind in school, parents couldn’t do their work, individuals out of work couldn’t search for new jobs, and older adults were isolated in their homes without any opportunity for social contact and unable to get groceries and medicine.  Life without an online connection is bleak indeed. 

The administration’s plan prioritizes municipal broadband providers and electric co-ops for broadband series, with the objective to open and expand opportunities for competition. The plan presents an enticing picture of low prices, new competition and the subsequent result of all consumers served. Local governments and electric co-ops may have a role to play in achieving connectivity, but while they can potentially be viable options, over the years municipalities have entered broadband markets with a history of mixed results and for the benefit of consumers and competition, careful consideration needs to be made regarding best practices.

It is also critical that consumers have the opportunity to continue to receive the benefits private-sector internet-service providers (ISPs), which have invested billions of their own dollars to build broadband networks. It is vital that any plan does not tie their hands in the marketplace.

ISPs have continued to make huge investments to build broadband networks throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and have invested in broadband networks and programs to connect low-income communities throughout 2020 and into 2021.  The efforts have helped kids connect to online classes at school and older adults get connected, reducing isolation. 

In 2021, AT&T announced $2 billion to expand affordable broadband to help close the digital divide.  In addition, this year Comcast’s Internet Essentials dedicated $1 billion to reach 50 million low-income Americans with tools they need to succeed in the digital world. In February, Charter Communications announced a $5 billion multiyear commitment to deliver high-speed broadband to more than 1 million low-income consumers. 

These commitments follow decades of investing trillions of dollars to build the most reliable networks that served most of the country during months of stay-at-home life during the pandemic. At last week’s Congressional hearing, Rodgers attributed the “critical investments made by broadband providers [as leading] to high speeds, high performance, job creation, and a drop in broadband prices.” While all this funding for low-income consumers is critical, according to a recent poll, consumers also trust these companies to give them the best at-home internet service.

Offering an open, competitive marketplace with reliable providers makes sense for most consumers. However, for low-income consumers struggling to make ends meet, a government subsidy program is still needed.  As we can see by the excitement around the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program, it is possible to develop a new approach, and to solicit a whole host of companies offering to serve those in need. 

Time for Collaboration

Now is the time to work together to determine the next step to extend this program for low-income communities, and that should be a part of any plan to connect America.  In addition to subsidizing the cost of broadband for those in greatest need, it is also important to help them with their digital learning, a particular area of need for first-time tech device users such as those in the older adult community. Digital readiness should be an added component of the plan. Chairman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) agreed, stating at the hearing, “We need to address programs that expand digital equity, programs that provide outreach and digital literacy and training skills. The opportunities and resources provided by this technology are wasted if you don't know how to use them.”

Yes, it is time to connect everyone to high-speed broadband. While some local governments may offer attractive solutions in the short term, there is no need to hinder others trying to make the investments in the broadband networks of today and tomorrow. A winning strategy does not favor one competitive interest while handcuffing another, particularly one that has earned the trust of a large majority of consumers.

Debra Berlyn is the president of Consumer Policy Solutions, a firm focused on developing progressive policies for consumers in a competitive and innovative marketplace. She is also executive director of the Project to Get Older Adults onLine (Project GOAL), whose sponsors include NCTA–The Internet & Television Association and its member cable companies. 

The bill, which is meant to address the shortage of workers to fill the 5G deployment jobs of the future, was first introduced in the last Congress a year ago this month.

A senate version was introduced last week.

Co-sponsoring the House bill were Reps. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and Yvette D. Clarke (D-N.Y.).

The bill would boost next-gen broadband buildout jobs by:

1. "Establishing an FCC-led interagency working group that, in consultation with the Department of Labor (DOL) and other federal and non-federal stakeholders, would be tasked with developing recommendations to address the workforce needs of the telecommunications industry.

RELATED: Cell Tower Training Bill Introduced

2. "Requiring the FCC, in consultation with DOL, to issue guidance on how states can address the workforce shortage in the telecommunications industry by identifying all of the federal resources currently available to them that can be used for workforce development efforts.

 3. "Directing the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study to determine the specific number of skilled telecommunications workers that will be required to build and maintain broadband infrastructure in rural areas and the 5G wireless infrastructure needed to support 5G wireless technology."

Also Read: CWA Says There Is No Workforce Shortage

“NATE believes that the provisions outlined in the bipartisan Telecommunications Skilled Workforce Act can serve as a springboard to fostering greater collaboration between the federal government, state workforce boards, higher education and private sector companies to accomplish the ultimate goal of developing a future pipeline of skilled technicians that the country sorely needs to meet its ambitious broadband and 5G deployment objectives,” said Todd Schlekeway, president of The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association (NATE).

"According to a recent study by Boston Consulting Group, the 5G Economy is poised to contribute $1.5 trillion and 4.5 million jobs to the U.S. economy in the next decade, and this legislation will help ensure that every community across the country has the workforce they need to deploy and benefit from next-generation networks," said CTIA SVP, government affairs Kelly Cole.

“CTIA thanks Representatives Walberg and Clarke for introducing the Telecommunications Skilled Workforce Act." 

The FCC under former chairman Ajit Pai, and over the objections of various local government officials, took various steps to pave the way for swifter and easier deployment of broadband buildouts with the avowed goal of closing the rural digital divide and winning the race to 5G service that will make wireless broadband a stronger competitor to wired.

After speeches by angry Democrats and somewhat chastened Republicans, a joint session of Congress finally certified Joe Biden's electoral college win at approximately 3:39.a.m. Thursday (Jan. 7), paving the way for his inauguration as the 46th President Jan. 20.

Also Read: President Won't Concede Election, Blames Media

That came following the extraordinary storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters egged on by the soon to be ex-President, a extraordinary event that reportedly left four dead--one person shot, the others dying of "medical emergencies."

The President had spoken at a rally early Wednesday (Jan. 6) to continue to say the election was rigged and had been stolen and that he would not accept this defeat and urged his supporters to go to the Capitol, where the counting was underway. 

Objections were raised to the electoral votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania, but other objections were introduced then dropped given the extraordinary events of Jan. 6 and lacking the requisite support by both a representative and a senator.

Also Read: Democrats Poised to Re-Take Senate

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) herself a former presidential candidate, announced the final vote tally and the result that Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris had won the election and Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over the counting, followed with his affirmation of that victory for his election opponents.

The President did not tweet about the proceedings because Twitter suspended his account Wednesday over tweets that violated its rules. In such cases it will not restore the account until those tweets are removed by the user.

But he did get a tweeted message out, this one coming as close as he will likely come to conceding his loss, though vowing to stay in the political ring.

“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th," the President said after the certification, according to a statement tweeted by White House advisor Dan Scavino (given that Trump's account was locked). "I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!”

Underscoring the policy uncertainty in Washington right now: there’s a dramatic drought of the usual think tank and lobbyist predictions that materialize between Election Day and the opening of the new Congress and/or Inauguration Day.  In most election years, policy wonks trot out forecasts (and/or wishful thinking) about what will fill Washington’s legislative and regulatory agenda, with telecom/media and tech prognostications often among the liveliest categories.  Their outlooks are typically mixed with policy recommendations and are frequently unveiled at hyped presentations as analysts and journalists look for a policymaking agenda for the new Administration and Congress (and nibble at the catering tables that accompany such events).   

For 2021: not so much.

Only a handful of seers and solons have offered their outlooks in recent weeks, and they have primarily been wan wonk-wise.  The predictable roster includes ideas about antitrust, copyright, privacy, cybersecurity, mending the digital divide and resolving broadband issues – depending on which side is offering solutions.  And of course, the sessions - if they existed at all - were virtual.  

The Brookings Institution kicked off the seer season with a Zoom seminar on “The Future of Tech Antitrust in the Biden Administration.” With recent lawsuits against Facebook and Google, much of the focus was on the possible breakup of those behemoths.  

Avery Gardiner, general counsel and senior fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology, contended that the Biden team would dedicate more resources to antitrust than has been done in the past 20 years. She said the goal will be to see if new laws are “flexible enough to handle the digital economy.”  Gardiner also warned that it is hard to approach antitrust “from a regulatory angle, [since] we don’t regulate it.”

“It’s an enforcement issue,” she insisted, contending that competition policy “will be incredibly important for the new administration.”

Also Read: 'Landmark' Copyright Act Reform Proposed

The role of digital platforms (notably those of Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon) quickly became part of the discussion. Matt Perault, director of the Center on Science & Technology Policy and Associate Professor at Duke University, said he expects that “antitrust [will] move beyond platforms,” expecting federal examinations to include more than those four firms.

“We should develop policies that apply to a broad set of companies,” he said, noting that the prospects for sweeping reforms such as Glass-Steagall legislation (the defunct financial separations laws) are “off the table, so specific reforms are more likely.”  Perault acknowledged that such restrictions become “more difficult as companies move into different categories.”

Nicol Turner Lee, senior fellow at Brookings and director of its Center for Technology Innovation, put the spotlight on Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, calling her a “dealmaker who will go behind the scenes” based on her background in California with some of the target companies. But Darrel West, also a Brookings senior fellow and Vice President added a political reality. He pointed out that if Biden serves only one term and Harris runs for President in 2024, “She’ll be careful about what she does to cover herself.”

In a document accompanying the seminar, Brookings cited what it expects to be the policy skirmishes for the coming year:

Recommendations Rather Than Predictions

Many of this year’s slew of visions took the shape of reports, such as the Next Century Cities’ case studies on broadband connectivity. NCC’s Executive Director, Francella Ochillo, summarized the findings as evidence of the need to use all available resources “to ensure that residents are able to get online.”  The NCC study found that communities recognize the importance of both “broadband access and adoption needs, not one or the other.”

“Addressing these persistent digital divides require meaningful investments from every level of government coupled with public and private partnerships that reflect the magnitude of the problem,” Ochillo said.

Several think tanks reverted to shopping lists, loaded with the reliable staples of policy reforms.  For example, the Technology Policy Institute, which focuses on the economics of innovation, technology and related regulation, issued “Ten Tech Principles for the Biden Administration,” half of which deal with broadband and regulatory reform. TPI’s roster calls for action to tackle the digital divide “through data-driven approaches” and employing market-based mechanisms for allocating spectrum. 

“Do not treat broadband as a public utility, as that is likely to slow investment and innovation and increase prices,” TPI urged, recommending that policymakers should “rethink positions on net neutrality, particularly with respect to paid prioritization…which may be useful for socially productive services such as telemedicine and education.”  TPI also warned that the Defense Department and other agencies should not be allowed to control spectrum policy.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation combined a video webinar with its recent “Analysis of U.S. Broadband Policy” report for its transition-season evaluation of “what has worked well and what has not.”  It found that much still remains to be done to remedy the digital divide, and that attempts at mandating facilities-sharing obligations or open-ended net neutrality rules have failed.   The ITIF webinar was also an approximate anniversary celebration (10 years for the National Broadband Plan and 25 years for the 1996 Telecommunications Act) – with nudges to reexamine and update both documents.

In particular, ITIF’s report offered the complex opinion that government has “a critical role to play in the broadband marketplace” – but it should be done carefully.  For example, it contends, “closing these digital divides does not even logically support a call for more intrusive regulation of the broadband industry. To the contrary, such regulation would, if anything, make the underlying problems worse by placing a thumb on the scale against additional broadband investment.”

Plus Gossip and Rumors

Several of the transition period reports and conversations touched on the overdue update of the 1996 Telecom Act. Even former FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, in his swan-song news conference after his final Commission meeting in mid-December, said, “a rewrite is in order,” citing that “the marketplace has changed since ’96.”

Meanwhile, President-Elect Biden has begun to fill in the Plum Book, the legendary roster of political appointees beyond the usual high-profile heads of agencies.  As we await official announcements of Attorney General (and other Justice Department jobs), chairs of the FCC, FTC and other top regulators, gossip bubbles up about other jobs. 

The names of media moguls Robert Iger (longtime Disney chief) and Jeffrey Katzenberg (of assorted credentials) might become ambassadors, possibly to the United Kingdom and China, said The Hollywood Reporter.  It also mentioned that producer Matt Walden, husband of Walt Disney Television chairman Dana Walden, could be considered as an ambassador in Europe, citing his long friendship with entertainment attorney Douglas Emhoff, husband of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

Predictably, Biden’s office had nothing to say about such speculation.

Citing CDC guidance on community actions, Maine Independent Sen. Angus King has asked six major streaming services, including Netflix and Hulu,  to make content available for free over the holidays as a public service to "encourage Americans to stay home and slow the spread of the coronavirus."

Also Read: FCC Doubles Down on OTT as Cable Competition

Letters from the senator have been sent to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney +, Apple TV+, Hulu, and HBO Max.

In them, King says those streaming services are in a unique position to provide "safe entertainment options" by allowing nonsubs to access them as a public service to raise spirits and lower infection rates.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued guidance recommending that specific community actions be taken to limit the exposure of the virus, and has additionally encouraged Americans to avoid their usual holiday travel to reduce transmission of the coronavirus…” King wrote, suggesting free streaming was one of them.

“At this time, we must find ways to incentivize people to follow guidance from the CDC, their employer, local public health officials, or school leaders. Unfortunately, some Americans are likely to choose to ignore public health advice and carry on their typical holiday traditions instead of remaining safely at home," he told them. "While your platforms would likely experience greater traffic as a consequence of extending service, we encourage you to provide temporary service at no cost to non-subscribers as a way to encourage people to make responsible choices and safely navigate this holiday season.”

Also Read: How Hulu is Helping FX Find Viewers

King pointed out that he had pressed ISPs to provide more access back in March, and they had responded. 

Getting the letters were Netflix Chairman Reed Hastings, Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Studios SVP Mike Hopkins; Rebecca Campbell, chairman of international operations and direct-to-consumer for Disney; Apple CEO Tim Cook, and WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar.