Today’s Headlines
■ Is Cable One Going to Close on Mega Broadband Deal Today?
■ Professor Daniel Lyons: FCC Needs to Learn If E-Rate Harms Student Achievement
■ PE Giants Sue Billionaire Patrick Drahi over Optimum Debt
■ ITIF’s Joe Kane: Stop Underestimating Starlink, Especially after V3 Deployment
■ AT&T Signs $3 Billion Fiber Deal with Corning
■ Handful of Senators Presses NTIA on BEAD Non-Deployment Money
■ Verizon Responds to FCC’s Decision to Pause Copper Shutdown
■ Does Capito’s Energy Permitting Deal Include Broadband?
■ McDonald’s Has the Fastest Wi-Fi Among Major Fast-Food Chains: Ookla
■ Baldwin Punts on Challenge to NFL Deals with Streamers
■ People: Charles Phillips Elected to Verizon’s Board of Directors
Must Carry: The FCC ruled that a Georgia television station cannot claim satellite carriage rights throughout two media markets at once, setting aside a 2024 precedent established under Democratic FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. In a decision released Sept. 29, the three voting FCC Commissioners granted DISH Network’s appeal and reversed an earlier Media Bureau order involving WGBP‑TV. The station is licensed to Opelika, Ala., which is located inside the Columbus, Ga., Designated Market Area (DMA). The Nielsen Company later assigned WGBP to the Atlanta DMA following WGBP’s conversion to a distributed transmission system. The FCC said the law defines a station’s “local market” as a single Nielsen‑determined DMA plus the county where the station is licensed, which may be in a different DMA. “There is nothing in the statute that suggests that a station may demand carriage throughout more than one DMA simultaneously,” the order said. (More after paywall)
