FCC Delays Meeting Start Time

OK, there is one more change in the ever-changing world of FCC public meetings. 

The Jan. 30 meeting, which will have no agenda items due to the government shutdown and the inability to know whether the government would be open when the meeting was scheduled and which had a planned start time of 11 a.m., 90 minutes later than normal, will now start ninety minutes later than than at 12:30 p.m.

That is because of the three-hour delayed start time for federal workers, a sort of mini shutdown due to a snowstorm that didn't quite materialize.

The meeting is essentially a pro forma exercise anyway, held because the commission is required by statute to hold monthly public meetings and only featuring the kind of announcements that usually take up the final 10 minutes or so of a regular meeting.

The FCC had to move its Feb. 21 meeting to Feb. 14 because it is being funded under the continuing resolution that expires Feb. 15 and it is unclear whether there will be another shutdown. But at least that meeting will have agenda items to vote, though they will be the ones previously scheduled for Jan. 30.

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.