The plethora of municipality and state plaintiffs that have challenged the FCC’s cable TV local franchise authority order in court XXXXX points to how problematic so many of them see that order, localities, lawyers and allies tell us. While no more suits are coming, some foresee multiple intervenors filing on the plaintiffs’ behalf in next couple weeks.
Matt Daneman
Matt Daneman, Senior Editor, covers pay TV, cable broadband, satellite, and video issues and the Federal Communications Commission for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications in 2015 after more than 15 years at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, where he covered business among other issues. He also was a correspondent for USA Today. You can follow Daneman on Twitter: @mdaneman
Data breaches made privacy a mainstream issue and industry's willing to go pretty far in terms of regulatory obligations, giving Congress unprecedented opportunity to pass legislation Brookings Institution's Cameron Kerry told the Multimedia Telecom and Internet Council. FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks thinks the Expanding Broadcast Opportunities Act (HR-3957) sponsored by Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., could get bipartisan support, and a similar approach might make sense for other industries such as tech. Butterfield talked up the bill Thursday.
Amazon's proposed Kuiper satellite mega constellation (see 1904040034) is facing pushback from satellite operators that took part in the 2017 non-geostationary orbit processing round, with arguments that it be considered part of a new non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) processing round. The FCC is considered unlikely to act quickly on Kuiper's application. Satellite experts told us other U.S. mega constellation applications, such as by tech companies, aren't likely in the wings.
Democratic FCC members joined the majority Friday, begrudgingly approving Charter Communications’ effective competition petition based on the existence of vMVPD AT&T TV Now (formerly DirecTV Now). Both they and the Republican majority said the Cable Act clearly justifies grant of Charter’s petition. Democrats concurred in their votes, citing the near-certitude customers in parts of Massachusetts and Hawaii will face big jumps in the cost of basic cable.
The Senate Investigations Subcommittee gave guidance to federal regulatory agencies on how much they should consider the volume of comments on a proposed rule and said the agencies should develop limits on duplicative comments, in recommendations Thursday. The FCC was flagged in the report. Government transparency advocates said some agencies are considered likely to act on the recommendations.
Comcast's Peacock streaming service launching in April won't try to replicate Netflix and other subscription VOD services, but instead will focus on advertising support and a mix of nonexclusive content, originals and acquired exclusives like The Office, NBCUniversal CEO Stephen Burke said Thursday on a Q3 call. He said Universal will continue to sell its motion pictures to premium networks like HBO. Q3 revenue was $26.8 billion, flat year over year on pro forma basis, with Comcast having added Sky in Q4 2018. Comcast ended the quarter with 26 million residential broadband subscribers, up 1.2 million; 20.4 million residential video customers, down 560,000; and 9.95 million residential voice customers, down 220,000. Mobile subscribers numbered 1.8 million, up 800,000. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said monthly data usage of its broadband subscribers has more than doubled over the past three years. He said NBC topped prime time ratings for adults ages 18 to 49 for the sixth consecutive 52-week season. He said its NBCUniversal and Sky are starting work on joint production of content and are creating a global news channel. Asked about Comcast interest in the citizens band radio service auction or C-band or millimeter-wave spectrum for its mobile business, Roberts said it "will always be opportunistic" when looking at means of offloading wireless traffic from its Verizon mobile virtual network operator to its own network. Asked when cord-cutting trends might level off, analysts were told the operator's focus is on video profitability and that might mean customers receiving lower-end or promotional video packages could be moved to broadband-only packages instead.
Technology neutrality and convincing regulators about spectrum needs are among challenges the commercial satellite communications industry faces, satcom regulatory officials said at a University of Nebraska space law conference Friday. Lack of regulatory certainty for new space ventures was bemoaned.
Broadcasters aren't expected to have to make sweeping changes to how they maintain political files after an FCC order made clearer what information needs to be in them. The clarification could make it easier to get compliance from advertising agencies that sometimes provide incomplete information. That order and a related one were ostensibly released Wednesday afternoon but not available online that night. The agency said at a little past noon Thursday that the links were working.
Lack of generally accepted metrics for judging quality of closed-captioned live events means imposing such metrics -- as some consumer groups petitioned the FCC (see 1908140037) -- is a mistake, cable and broadcast interests said in RM-11848 comments posted this week. Captioning interests urged FCC action. NCTA said it backs the goal of good captioning for live programming, but rules already "are ensuring the presence of quality captions" and the petitioners haven't shown evidence warranting reconsideration. It said using caption quality metrics on live programming could be unfair given the challenges of captioning in real time, and perfect synchronicity is "nearly impossible." It said since petitioners are in the midst of a multiyear study of caption quality metrics, it could be years before they can propose specific metrics. NAB said the petition didn't show why the FCC should change its approach to caption quality standards and best practices: "The Commission's approach is working," and caption quality metrics are unnecessary and premature. The association said an automatic speech recognition declaratory ruling is premature given how young the technology is, but if there's a look at ASR and best practices, that should be done by the Disability Advisory Committee rather than through a rulemaking. Meredith, which also owns Dynamic Captioning, said the proposed rules overlook human elements. Because mistakes happen, "a punitive 'big Brother' monitoring and enforcement mechanism" will discourage creating accessible content. ASR technology company AppTek said live captioning is rife with quality problems and the FCC should encourage ASR use, as it often is better than live captioning by humans. It said the agency should appoint ASR providers to the DAC. The 21st Century Captioning Disability and Rehabilitation Research Project submitted a survey on local news captioning by the Hearing Loss Association of America, and said consumer perceptions of caption providers, stations and broadcasters were generally negative. It said future caption quality standards and metrics might need to account for punctuation, with experimental results showing human captions with punctuation scored highest, but ASR captions with punctuation were preferred over ASR or human captions without punctuation. Closed captioner Ai-Media said the FCC should consider adopting the "number, edition, recognition" method -- which some states and numerous countries use for assessing captioning quality -- as its captioning quality metric.
Some see FCC consideration of a declaration of effective competition due to the AT&T TV Now's vMVPD service in the last few spots where there's local cable TV basic rate regulation as potentially resurrecting questions of agency regulation of over-the-top services that were central in the dormant OTT-as-MVPD proceeding. An official said it's not clear whether commissioner will be unanimous on the draft opinion and order on next week's meeting agenda since it raises questions about OTT as effective competition to MVPDs and how that might lead to regulation of OTT. Local governments lawyer Tim Lay of Spiegel & McDiarmid agreed being an MVPD creates obligations, and it's not clear if the draft order would mean AT&T TV Now is an MVPD service that must comply with MVPD rules.