House FCC Oversight Hearing Postponed

The House Energy & Commerce Committee has postponed its FCC oversight and budget hearing.

The hearing, which was to have featured all five commissioners, had been slated for Friday morning, Feb. 16, but the committee put out a postponement notice saying it had been delayed.

No new date has been set, according to someone familiar with the scheduling. A committee spokesperson said the postponement was because the House will no longer be in session Friday. Originally it was to have been, but the Majority Leader's office sent out a notice that that would not be the case.

When the hearing is rescheduled, the committee is expected to press the commissioners on a host of topics, including network neutrality, Lifeline broadband subsidy reforms, the spectrum auction TV station repack, and more.

But the committee will still get its FCC fix this week, marking up an FCC reauthorization bill Wednesday (Feb. 14) that includes freezing its budget at $322 million, according to a summary of the bill.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.