Category: Public News

Local Television Prepares For Total Solar Eclipse Coverage

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An expected crush of cell traffic may strain wireless networks, but stations are prepared

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Reruns are nothing new to television, but not so much when Mother Nature typically waits a few hundred years to put on a repeat performance.

Next week’s total solar eclipse, however, is a notable exception. Many of the reporters, news photogs and newsroom personnel covering the Great American Eclipse in August 2017 are still alive and likely working the April 8 redux.

Not only will these broadcasters have the benefit of experience from the 2017 solar eclipse, but also those assigned to cover what Scientific American has dubbed “The Great American Total Solar Eclipse of 2024” will have a few tech, organizational and distribution improvements to enhance their coverage and reach viewers.

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Baltimore Bridge Collapse Reinforces The Essential Need For Local Coverage

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Like so many of us, I awoke on Tuesday to the horrific news of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge that acted as a major artery across Baltimore Harbor.

My first instinct was to turn to a national cable channel so that I could better understand the alerts humming across my phone. But as the morning wore on, I found myself turning to the local stations in Baltimore and watching and reading their superb coverage on their websites.

Not only do they have the local knowledge and self-interest that elevates their coverage well beyond anything a national network or cable news channel might provide, but they are able to go deeper on everything from the heroic search and rescue operations; the victims and their impacted families and colleagues; the presumed cause (likely a tragic accident caused by a powerless and thus rudderless cargo ship); efforts to stop the flow of traffic and keep a number of cars off the bridge before the tragedy; complete coverage of the official press conferences; the helicopter footage supplied to all of the major cable channels and alternative routes for those individuals for whom this bridge was their daily commute.

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FCC Requests 14.8% Increase in Regulatory Fee Authority

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The fiscal 2024 budget request asks for $448,075,000 in budget authority from regulatory fee offsetting collections

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The FCC has released a budgetary request for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 that asks for $448,075,000 in budget authority from regulatory fee offsetting collections. This request represents an increase of $57,883,000 or 14.8 percent from the FY 2024 Annualized Continuing Appropriations Act level of $390,192,000.

If enacted by Congress, that could lead to higher fees for broadcasters, though the FCC has not explained how it would achieve the regulatory fee increases.

The FCC also requests $139,000,000 in budget authority for the Spectrum Auctions program. Last year Congress allowed the FCC’s authority to conduct auctions to expire and the FCC is currently pushing Congress to renew the authority.  As of December 31, 2023 the Commission’s spectrum auctions program has generated over $233.5 billion for government use; at the same time, the total cost of the spectrum auctions program has been less than $2.5 billion or 1.1 percent of the total auctions’ revenue, the FCC said.

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Experts: Social media outages unlikely to affect voting

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Election officials in multiple jurisdictions told PolitiFact the March 5 Meta outages outages did not affect voting.

It’s Election Day in November 2024. Across the U.S., voters are heading to the polls. And major social media platforms are not working.

The scenario could alarm voters and draw news organizations’ attention. But would it affect voting?

A similar incident played out March 5, when Meta platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Threads stopped working worldwide for about two hours. The outages happened on Super Tuesday, when voters in 16 states and one territory were casting their ballots in the presidential primary.

DownDetector, a website that tracks outages using methods including user-submitted reports, said that more than 500,000 Facebook outages and 79,000 Instagram outages were reported around 10:30 a.m Eastern Time.

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How Streamer NBC News Now Is Being Positioned as the Future of the Network’s News

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“We’re using the same studios, control rooms, and are treating it like one big production,” says EVP of Programming Janelle Rodriguez

Super Tuesday at 30 Rock in New York City was a bustling affair. The halls were buzzing with activity as producers, anchors and crew all across NBC readied their wall-to-wall coverage of a predictable yet important event. When all was said and done, a rematch of Donald Trump and Joe Biden was largely assured for the forthcoming presidential election. And if NBC News NOW’s approach to Super Tuesday — as the streaming home of NBC News — was any indication, they’re more than ready for the monumental election ahead.

NBC News NOW — which is a free streaming service distributed across more than 20 platforms — serves as a seamless extension of NBC’s linear programming, and that linear-to-streaming symbiosis is believed to be the key to NBC News’ future.

“The tradition of providing high-quality, free content is in the DNA of NBC and so it’s the future and the past, merged together,” executive vice president of programming Janelle Rodriguez told TheWrap.

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AM Act Gets 218th Voting Sponsor In US House, Ensuring Majority

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The AM For Every Vehicle Act has hit the magic number of voting co-sponsors needed to pass the legislation through the US House of Representatives. The House version of the bill, led by New Jersey Representative Josh Gottheimer, announced its 218th voting supporter.

The surge of four new co-sponsors came the same day that the NAB joined state broadcast associations to lobby for AM radio and other pressing broadcast policy issues – a huge victory for those who made the trip to Capitol Hill. The total number of sponsors now sits at 224, with four non-voting members of Congress among the ranks.

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Let The Lobbying Begin: Broadcasters Descend On Capitol Hill.

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More than 550 radio and television broadcasters from across the country are in Washington, DC today for the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual State Leadership Conference. The conference began Tuesday at Washington Nationals Park, minutes away from NAB headquarters, with remarks from policymakers, panel discussions, and briefings to prep attendees to fan out across Capitol Hill today (March 6) for meetings with legislators.

In his remarks to attendees, NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt highlighted the grassroots power of local broadcasters. He underscored the critical role local stations play in delivering reliable and trusted information to their communities, according to NAB press materials. LeGeyt also addressed key issues for broadcasters and pushed for passage of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) (S. 1094), which would create a limited safe harbor from antitrust laws in order to allow news publishers and broadcast news operations to collectively bargain with a covered platform over the terms and conditions of the tech platform’s access to digital news content. He also talked up the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, which has received overwhelming bipartisan support.

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Nielsen: Radio Is The Answer To Political Campaign Reach

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In findings that could reshape how the modern political campaign is run, a new Nielsen study shows the substantial impact of radio on elections. The study, in partnership with Cumulus Media, iHeartMedia, and Audacy, reveals that early deployment of AM/FM ads significantly enhances reach, particularly among undecided voters.

The study found that AM/FM outperforms both television and connected TV in reaching voters across all segments, notably among independent and unaffiliated voters. This challenges the conventional use of radio for targeting narrow segments or last-minute “get out the vote” efforts, suggesting its effectiveness as a broad-scale media strategy akin to TV.

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FCC Moves to Simplify Sending Multilingual Emergency Alerts

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The FCC plans Feb. vote on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to make it easier to send multilingual alerts over TV and radio

WASHINGTON, D.C.—As part of its tentative agenda for the February Open Commission Meeting, Federal Communications Commission has announced that it will vote on a proposal to increase the accessibility of the Emergency Alert System by making it easier for TV, radio and other outlets to send multilingual emergency alerts.

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Fact-checking journalism is evolving, not stagnating

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“Misinformation is not like plumbing, a problem you fix. It is a social condition, like crime, that you must constantly monitor and adjust to.”

“Fake news” loves a crisis. It’s clear now that false information has played a role in recent events around the world from divisive elections to the COVID pandemic to the conflict roiling Israel and Gaza.

It is important to counter false claims and false narratives. And research now shows a lot more clarity about how to do this.

In a rather downbeat article in September 2023, The New York Times reported that “the momentum behind organizations that aim to combat online falsehoods has started to taper off.” It reported that the number of fact-checking operations around the world had “stagnated,” after rising from 11 in 2008 to 424 in 2022 and dropping slightly to 417 today.

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