FCC Update

CWA Fights for Local News Coverage

The Federal Communications Commission voted today to eliminate longstanding rules that were intended to protect local news coverage and make sure that we get a variety of local perspectives on current events. As a result, we will face a drastic loss of local news coverage – and jobs – as media companies consolidate.

The proposals seem to be tailor-made for the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair announced plans to buy Tribune Media in the spring, soon after the FCC lifted a cap on the number of stations a company can own. If the purchase is approved, it would give Sinclair access to more than 70 percent of television viewers in the United States.

Sinclair is notorious for insisting stations broadcast segments produced at its corporate headquarters, crowding out local programming.

NABET-CWA is part of the Coalition to Save Local Media, a broad and politically diverse coalition committed to stopping the harmful Sinclair-Tribune merger.

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CWA Fights against Downgrading Rural America and to Maintain Copper Retirement Notification Rules

CWA, Public Knowledge, and 20 rural, consumer, civil rights, labor, and other groups sent a letter urging FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to retain the agency's tech transitions rules that protect consumers while providers like Verizon transition from copper to fiber networks. The agency plans to roll back these consumer protections today, effectively downgrading rural America.

The groups also urged the FCC to protect the public interest by maintaining the agency's existing copper retirement notification rules.

"We've already seen the dangers that can happen when carriers don't consider how change in service impacts a community – just ask Fire Island, NY," said Debbie Goldman, Telecommunications Policy Director for CWA. "That's where Verizon replaced damaged landlines with wireless service that didn't work with health monitors, alarms, fax machines, and equipment for the hearing impaired. The FCC's radical plan opens the door to thousands of Fire Islands across America."

Read more here.