Today @FCC changes way agency has reviewed mergers for decades. No warning. Just quietly eases the way for the next transaction. Watch this. pic.twitter.com/vBPlukkGfs

— Jessica Rosenworcel (@JRosenworcel) October 30, 2017

David Shepardson at Reuters reports that the Federal Communications Commission approved a deal for telecommunications provider CenturyLink Inc to buy Level 3 Communications Inc on Oct. 30. That does not seem too controversial, as both Republicans and Democrats on the FCC approved the $24 billion merger that will allow the company to compete with AT&T and Verizon. What may be more important was that, "the FCC outlined a new standard by which the agency will review future mergers -- a shift that could make it easier for other large media and telecommunications mergers to win approval," according to Reuters. Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel voted for the merger, but vigorously disagreed with the new way the FCC approved the deal. "I believe the Commission's review has a serious flaw," she said in a statement. "Instead of using the agency's decades-old merger review standard, it arbitrarily introduces a new one. This departure from the traditional merger balancing test should properly be the subject of public notice and comment. Our failure to do so is at odds with the most basic principles of administrative law. Moreover, I worry that our capricious disregard for precedent is simply part of a larger effort to speed the way for the next billion-dollar transaction before us." The FCC is expected to allow the Sinclair Broadcast Group to buy Tribune Media this month, and let the conservative-leaning broadcast group to exceed the current limits on number of stations owned by one company.

CNN reports that roughly 126 million Americans were exposed between June 2015 and August 2017 to Facebook content created by the Russian government-linked troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency. Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch wrote to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism saying 29 million people got direct links from the Russian troll farm, and those Americans shared it with about half the U.S. voting population. The Internet Research Agency also ads seen by 11.4 million Americans between 2015 and 2017. Representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google will testify at public hearings before a Senate Judiciary subcommmittee and the Senate and House Intelligence Committees later this week about how Russia attempted to manipulate the 2016 American election. Twitter found a total of 36,746 accounts that generated automated, election-related content last year, with 288 million impressions. "Most of the ads appear to focus on divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum, touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights," Stretch wrote to the subcommittee. "A number of the ads encourage people to follow Pages on these issues, which in turn produced posts on similarly charged subjects."

Business Insider reports that Twitter announced Oct. 26 that it was banning advertisements from the Russian news agencies RT and Sputnik. "This decision was based on the retrospective work we've been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government," the company wrote on a blog post. RT, or Russia Today, responded by publishing what it called the “full,” “multi-million dollar advertising proposal” from Twitter ahead of the election last year. RT says it turned down that pitch. In September, Twitter said RT spent $274,100 on 1,823 promoted tweets that targeted the U.S. in 2016. Twitter said it would take the estimated $1.9 million that RT paid for advertising since 2011 and use it to, “support external research into the use of Twitter in civic engagement and elections, including use of malicious automation and misinformation, with an initial focus on elections and automation.” In related news, on Oct. 28, Twitter permanently banned longtime Donald Trump adviser and self-proclaimed political “agent provocateur” Roger Stone after a series of messages threatening CNN journalists the night before. Now Stone, who has been banned temporarily before for other insensitive remarks, told Politico, that he had spoken with “prominent telecommunication attorneys” and that “the battle against free speech has just begun.” Twitter has not banned others who have made malicious remarks on the social media service, including the president of the United States.

The Associated Press reports that the Federal Communications Commission will vote in November on proposals to roll back ownership rules, allowing the Sinclair Broadcast Group to buy Tribune Media, and exceed the current limits on number of stations owned by one company. The ultra-conservative Sinclair company would then reach more than 70 percent of all American households. “We need to strengthen local voices and increase viewpoint diversity, not surrender our airwaves to an ever-smaller group of giant conglomerates,” said Craig Aaron of the public advocacy group Free Press. Sinclair owns WRGB and WCWN, the CBS and CW affiliates in Albany, often airing opinion segments from former Trump administration officials, and other conservative commentators during the local news. Now Bill O'Reilly, the former Fox News anchor who has been accused of multiple incidents of sexual harassment, is negotiating with Sinclair, two sources told NBC News. Last week, The New York Times reported that O’Reilly settled a $32 million sexual harassment suit against him by a former legal analyst, Lis Wiehl. A spokesperson for Sinclair denied that the company was negotiating with O'Reilly, but we'll see if he comes to the Albany airwaves soon.

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce committee held an oversight hearing for the Federal Communications Commission Oct. 25. Representatives asked the commissioners about President Donald Trump's threats to pull licences of broadcasters he disagrees with, among other issues. Click here to hear a report about the hearing.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 on party lines Oct. 24 to eliminate the main studio rule for AM, FM, and television stations, which mandated a broadcast licensee maintain a studio in its broadcast area. Republicans argued that anyone in a broadcast area can now communicate with a broadcast outlet through e-mail or telephone. FCC Commissioner Michael O'Reilly argued it would make things better. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD. Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel had a different story. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD. The full Oct. 2017 FCC Open Meeting is available at https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/events/2017/10/october-2017-open-commission-meeting.

The Guardian reports that on Oct. 23 the deputy editor of the Ekho Moskvy radio station, Tatyana Felgenhauer, was stabbed in the neck in the station’s studios in central Moscow. Felgenhauer is expected to survive and is in a Russian hospital. The attacker was Boris Grits, a 48-year-old with dual Russian and Israeli citizenship who wrote online that the radio host was “following” him in his mind. "Russian media also showed leaked footage, apparently from the interrogation of Grits, in which he said he had never met Felgenhauer but she had made telepathic contact with him over the past five years," The Guardian reported. But Alexei Venediktov, the station’s editor-in-chief, said it might not just be the attack of a mentally ill person. “He knew things he shouldn’t have known. How did he know Tanya would still be here? By the time of the attack, she would normally have left. There are many questions,” Venediktov said. Earlier this month, Russian state television said Ekho Moskvy and Felgenhauer were working to advance foreign interests in Russia before presidential elections next March. Read the full story in The Guardian.

Reuters reports that the Federal Communications Commission is ending rules on telegraphs Nov. 20. In the United States, the final Western Union telegram was delivered in 2006, and the FCC stopped enforcing telegram rules in 2013. India's telegram service, the last in the world, shut down in 2013. The FCC said it was removing “outmoded regulations” on telegraphs to, “further our goals of reducing regulatory burdens, eliminating unnecessary rule provisions, and making the agency as efficient and effective as possible.” Next week, the FCC will vote to end a 1939 requirement that each AM, FM, and television broadcast station maintain a main studio located in or near its community of license. This will allow more computerized programming from afar, and less public access to the public airwaves. The rule was to, “ensure that stations would be accessible and responsive to their communities. However, a local main studio is no longer needed to fulfill these purposes,” the FCC now says.

The Albany Times Union reports that NASA will work with an alliance of radio-controlled drone researchers on a drone testing facility in central New York. The plans call for a 50-mile (80-kilometer) air test corridor between Syracuse and Rome. Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration has already spent $40 million on drone-related projects. Read the full story in the Albany Times Union.

The New York Times reports that on May 31 a federal judge ruled that the sound the Long Range Acoustic Devices used by New York City police against protesters emits a form of force. In effect, Judge Robert Sweet of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that the LRADs are weapons as well as communication devices. Police use them sometimes as loudspeakers, to make announcements to protesters. But at 1 a.m. on Dec. 5, 2014, the police used a 100X Long Range Acoustic Device to make a series of sharp, piercing beeps directed at the Black Lives Matter protest in Manhattan. Use of the device, “as a projector of powerfully amplified sound is no different than other tools in law enforcement’s arsenal that have the potential to be used either safely or harmfully, one example being distraction devices — items like stun grenade, flash bang, or concussion grenades,” Judge Robert Sweet of Federal District Court in Manhattan wrote, adding, “It can be plausibly inferred that the use of a high-powered sound magnifier in ‘close proximity’ to plaintiffs was not appropriate.” The judge did agree with New York City's lawyers that the use of the device did not violate First and Fourth Amendment rights. Instead the judge said the protesters had a “cognizable claim” that the excessive use of force violated their 14th Amendment rights, so their suit against the city and two members of the Police Department’s Disorder Control Unit will continue.

Radio Caroline, perhaps the world's most famous pirate radio operator, has been granted an AM license from Ofcom, the British agency that regulates the airwaves. It was 50 years ago when the British Parliament passed the 1967 Marine Broadcasting Offences Act after Radio Caroline skirted UK regulations by broadcasting from a boat. Peter Moore, who runs Radio Caroline, said the station plans to broadcast from the ship the MV Ross Revenge on the River Blackwater in Essex, with a signal covering Suffolk and northern parts of Essex. “It’s our intention to broadcast to the same people we used to when we had the ships off the Essex coast,” Moore said. “It will be the same sort of service they would have heard in the past delivered in the same way and presented in many cases by the same people as before.... It’s like a living time capsule.” Radio Caroline began to play pop music the BBC would not in 1964. The station has been immortalized in the film "Pirate Radio" with Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Radio Caroline continued to broadcast until the Ross Revenge was shipwrecked off the Kent coast in 1991, according to the Sunday Post.

When a politician attacked a journalist on election eve in Montana May 24, stations across the country played the audio recording the reporter made while he was being "body-slammed," choked, and punched. But at least one station, NBC Montana affiliate KECI, refused to play the recording. Instead, the station, with a parent company recently bought by the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group, released this statement: "NBC Montana takes pride in reporting only verifiable facts from independent reliable sources, officials and documents, regardless of what is reported by other media outlets. The only verifiable facts are what is being stated by the Gallatin County sheriff at this time." But Fox reporters in the room during the attack confirmed the journalist's account and explained the context of the audio recording. The audio recording, at that point in the story, was a verifiable fact. Tamy Wagner, KECI vice president and general manager, disagrees, telling the Huffington Post in an email that the station, “did not have specific instructions or any instruction from Sinclair,” in its handing of the story. “We do not put unverified information and audio tapes on the air in any case, political figure or not,” Wagner said.

Recode reports that as land-line phones are plagued with robo-calls from telemarketers, cell phones may soon be too. The Federal Communications Commission is considering allowing "ringless voicemail," a way for telemarketers to send voice mail messages to cell phones. Anyone getting one of these calls won't know it until checking their voicemail, which will be full of messages from telemarketers if the FCC approves the proposal. The Republican National Committee is supporting the measure, and using the First Amendment as a rallying cry for filling Americans phones with junk messages. “Political organizations like the RNC use all manner of communications to discuss political and governmental issues and to solicit donations — including direct-to-voicemail messages,” the RNC told the FCC in a public comment on the proposal. “The Commission should tread carefully so as not to burden constitutionally protected political speech without a compelling interest." A different "ringless voicemail" proposal was ignored by the FCC in 2014, but now a pro-business FCC may allow the proposal. See the proposal on the FCC website.

Inside Radio has a large, three-part series on the state of pirate radio in the United States that says little. The biggest news in the story may be how little the new Donald Trump-dominated Federal Communications Commission is doing about the scourge of illegal broadcasting on the nation's airwaves. So far field agents have issued only 20 official warnings to pirate radio operators in 2017 according to the FCC. Roughly four pirates per month, or one a week, are getting letters from the FCC since Donald Trump became president. But there is a statement from the new FCC chief Ajit Pai: “Chairman Pai has made clear that confronting pirate radio is an enforcement priority for the agency,” an FCC spokesperson said in an email to the magazine. “The chairman has asked the Bureau to review its policies related to pirate radio and work to find ways to further bolster the Commission’s capabilities on this front. The chairman and Bureau leadership have also worked closely with the FCC field office staff to reaffirm that essential part of the Commission’s enforcement mission.” Despite the lack of evidence, the broadcast industry lobby feels like the new administration is taking action. “They are definitely more interested in stopping pirate radio,” said Florida Association of Broadcasters president Pat Roberts. And in New York: “We’ve seen a real significant change in attitude at the FCC. There is now a real desire to try to eradicate this problem,” New York State Broadcasters Association president David Donovan said. “What I see is a determination by the Commission to go after this issue, which we have not seen for decades.” And, like the president, these lobbyists know how to talk both sides of the same issue. “Our estimates are there are hundreds of pirates in New York City alone and that number will increase dramatically during the summer,” Donovan said. And, writing letters to one illegal broadcaster per week should take care of that problem in no time.