Peter Tannenwald and Davina Sashkin, attorneys at Fletcher, Heald, and Hildreth in Washington, D.C., discussed some of the new FCC rulings on ATBA’s Wednesday Webinar held April 15, 2020.
The FCC has released a new ruling enforcing fines for those who improperly use EAS signals. “The FCC is fed up, they have said over and over that this is very serious and they will continue to take it seriously because they are concerned that if people hear it as a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation, if you hear EAS tones all the time and not in an emergency situation then you’re more likely to tune them out,” said Sashkin.
Recently, the FCC has decided to waive the rules concerning religious programming and the preemption of children’s television programming. Some programs can lead to fatal accidents and one would then have to rope in Tampa law firm for personal injury cases to handle the situation.
“To be able to preempt without having to substitute time, you have to be preempting for a locally produced, COVID-19 message by a government agency, a health agency, or a religious organization,” said Tannenwald.
“The drive for this was because a lot of churches were wanting to broadcast their services for Holy Week, so the FCC said, ‘This is a public interest use and it is promoting social distancing, so we will allow this,’” said Sashkin. “They have only given that waiver through the end of the month, but they may extend it, but right now, the waiver is just until the end of April.” In case of road rash accidents the DUI lawyer from Tampa area can help with the legalities.
Tannenwald closed out the meeting by giving some advice for sponsorship waivers. “In this time of distress, there are some advertisers who are still willing to spend some money on advertising, but don’t want to be pushing products that they don’t have in stock. They’re willing to donate their time for PSA’s related to COVID-19 and if you do that, and you do have a spot that’s related to COVID-19, and it does not promote any commercial product or service, you have a choice of saying who paid for it or not. There is now a temporary waiver that you do not have to identify them as the person who paid for it.”
The ATBA webinars are on Wednesdays at 3pm CT. To access this meeting join the ATBA email list or check the Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance site for updates.
