At least two broadcasters, CBS and National Public Radio, want the FCC to start an expedited rulemaking on whether to require HD Radio in satellite radio receivers, ex partes at the agency show. As part of approving the proposed merger, the commission should guarantee a fast rulemaking, the broadcasters said. Apparently both have given up hope of the commission writing an HD Radio mandate into a merger approval order. The NAB also wants the commission “to condition any approval of the merger so that consumers would have access to radio equipment that would allow them to switch between digital satellite offerings and terrestrial digital offerings,” its ex parte said. The CBS proposal, both more sweeping and more specific, urges that the commission begin a rulemaking within 30 days after approving the merger and finish it within 180 days. CBS wants the FCC to require HD Radio in terrestrial as well as in satellite receivers “at some future date,” it said. NPR wants HD Radio required only in satellite receivers, it said. NPR sees “this proposal as an essential means of assuring the broad availability of local HD services to the public,” its filing said. The FCC considered but didn’t impose a digital radio hard transition date in a May 2007 order. “Several reasons support this decision,” the commission said then. They included the fact that, unlike TV licensees, radio stations “are under no statutory mandate to convert to a digital format” and because the “spectrum reclamation needs that exist for DTV do not exist here.” It was not clear at our deadline Friday whether the commission would agree to propose a rulemaking or a less binding notice of inquiry on an HD Radio requirement.
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
A federal judge on Monday denied promoter Justin Finocchiaro’s motion for a 60-day delay in a CEA suit claiming he infringes CES service marks by running a show called ACES 09. Finocchiarro sought the delay to have time to a lawyer to replace Teri Guttman Valdes, who dropped his case last month, citing “irreconcilable differences” with him. U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro in Miami ordered Finocchiarro to show cause in writing by Friday why she shouldn’t hold him in civil contempt for ignoring a July 2 preliminary injunction ordering him to stop using the ACES logo and other CES service marks (CED July 18 p2). Denying Finocchiarro a postponement, Ungaro also said “he must abide by” her other orders, including the injunction. The ACES logo remained on his Web site Thursday. According to Finocchiaro, Ungaro cancelled the injunction and “ordered a mediation” for February, he told us Wednesday by e-mail. He said we'd find a copy of that order on the court’s Web site, but we couldn’t.
The NTIA set a Sept. 1 cutoff for first-time makers to file notices of intent to submit coupon-eligible converter boxes for certification, the agency said Thursday. Under its rules, notices are due three months before production samples and test results. The NTIA set Sept. 1 to ensure it has time to finish certification before the program ends in summer 2009, it said. The impending analog cutoff “necessitates that NTIA redeploy some of its limited resources to other important aspects of program administration such as resolving consumer concerns and mitigating waste, fraud and abuse,” the agency said in a Federal Register notice. The deadline means “NTIA will be able to plan and anticipate resource needs to process a finite group of converters,” it said. Repeat manufacturers will have until Sept. 30 to file notices for new boxes, the notice said. That’s the date by which manufacturers that filed notices through July 18 should submit samples and test results, it said. The NTIA has nearly 100 notices on file from manufacturers that said planned to submit boxes for certification but didn’t do so, the notice said. Some notices date back “many months ago,” it said. The NTIA will close the book on new certification requests in early October, it said. The agency has certified its 150th coupon-eligible converter box, it said. Of those certified, 46 are available in stores and 63 have analog passthrough, the agency said.
Sony Electronics now backs allowing studios to use selectable output control HD movies streamed to homes via cable, satellite or IPTV before their release on Blu-ray or DVD because Hollywood won’t make them available on demand to consumers without lifting the SOC ban, Joel Wiginton, vice president of government affairs, told us in an e-mail. Sony has long backed banning SOC, but reversed itself and now supports allowing its use in “a very narrow context,” it told the FCC this week (CED July 23 p1) OR (CD July 23 p6). “The potential drawbacks of allowing SOC in this very narrow context are outweighed by bringing this exciting business model to consumers,” Wiginton told us. Sony urged the commission to adopt “safeguards” against SOC abuse, including setting up ways for consumers to complain if they don’t like SOC. Asked if Sony fears the commission will lift the SOC ban without safeguards and what the fallout might be, Wiginton acknowledged there are “always some risks with innovative new features,” he said. “But it seems unwise and shortsighted to prohibit a potentially very consumer-friendly new business model in perpetuity, because some parties might take some inappropriate actions. Moreover, given that the Commission currently has an absolute ban on SOC, we're relatively confident that the FCC will take a ‘go slow’ approach and only allow SOC in limited circumstance coupled with the type of consumer safeguards Sony Electronics suggests.”
CEA thinks the CE industry will ship about 12 million coupon-eligible converter boxes this year and another 11 million in 2009, a spokesman said Tuesday on the association’s release of its annual midyear forecast. Assuming all 23 million boxes are bought with a coupon, that’s a 69 percent redemption rate based on the 33.5 million coupons mailed through the life of the NTIA program. If 40 million coupons are mailed using funds from expired coupons that are recycled back into the program, the 23 million boxes would represent a 58 percent redemption rate. The actual redemption rate through last Tuesday stood at a steady 44.4 percent, according to NTIA data. The CEA’s forecast report doesn’t break out CECBs as a separate category, but includes them in a general classification for digital-to-analog set- tops. CEA’s Marketing Department thinks CECBs account for about 90 percent of the 13.5 million boxes shipping this year and 12 million shipping in 2009, the spokesman said. Overall CE dollar shipments are seen rising 7.3 percent this year to $173 billion, or $2 billion more than CEA projected in its January report. DTV dollar shipments represent 16 percent of the total, CEA said. Spurred by the Feb. 17, 2009, DTV transition deadline, unit sales of DTV sets are expected to climb 24 percent this year, CEA said. The full midyear report, U.S. Consumer Electronics Sales & Forecast, is available for free to CEA members, for $2,000 to nonmembers.
In a stunning reversal, Sony Electronics, once a backer of the all-or-nothing ban on selectable output control in the FCC’s one-way plug-and-play rules, now thinks SOC “could bring benefits to consumers that on balance would outweigh any potential drawbacks” in “certain, very narrow, circumstances,” the company said in comments Monday, endorsing the MPAA petition for an SOC waiver for on-demand transmissions of HD movies to the home before their packaged- media releases. In so doing, Sony broke with CEA and the Home Recording Rights Coalition, which argued for continuing the all-out SOC ban.
Declaring that the CE industry has reached “the crossroads” of the free-trade debate because polls show more Americans oppose free trade than support it, CEA President Gary Shapiro used a sidewalk news conference outside J&R’s Park Row, Manhattan, store to launch the group’s “America Wins With Trade” bus tour. CEA is sponsoring the tour to highlight the importance of trade to American companies and workers, CEA said. “It’s fitting” that the tour start in the New York financial capital, because it “represents the power of trade and free markets,” Shapiro said. The CE industry employs 291,000 workers in New York City alone, Shapiro said. The tour heads to Washington for a rally and news conference Thursday. It will cover 30 cities, including Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul for the Democratic and Republican conventions, Shapiro said. CEA has called on Congress to approve trade agreements “that expand the economy and create American jobs,” the group said. Legislation has been stalled in the House for two years, depriving American taxpayers of more $1 billion in revenue from new products and services, Shapiro told reporters. Free trade “does not rely upon walls,” Shapiro said. An “isolationist” trade policy “would be our downfall,” he said. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters that free trade legislation has stalled because “too many politicians are pandering to the insecurities” of the voters. Where Shapiro called protectionism the country’s downfall, Bloomberg went so far as to call it “mass suicide” for the number of jobs that would be lost. Of the apparent major-party presidential nominees, Sen. John McCain “has a better record on this issue than Barack Obama” because the Arizona senator “has spoken out for free trade with the only ally we have left in Latin America,” in Colombia, Bloomberg said. “I've talked to Sen. Obama about this. He assures me that in the end, he is in favor of free trade. But Bloomberg “would like to hear a lot more from him about how he thinks we could reopen NAFTA without coming out a big loser,” he said. “The fact of the matter is our trading partners in NAFTA would probably want more from us than we want from them, and I'm not so sure that’s good.” NAFTA isn’t a perfect trade agreement, Bloomberg said. “But this is certainly not the time to reopen NAFTA.” The U.S. can’t “limit free trade and at the same time have better relations with our trading partners,” Bloomberg said. “I don’t think you can limit free trade and have control of your borders at the same time.”
Tributes poured in over the weekend from CE industry veterans struck by the news that William (Bill) Boss, known as RCA’s “Mr. Color TV” for the role he played in promoting the nascent technology in the 1950s and 1960s, died of pneumonia last Wednesday in Indianapolis. He was 86.
Declaring that the CE industry has reached “the crossroads” of the free-trade debate because polls show more Americans oppose free trade than support it, CEA President Gary Shapiro used a sidewalk news conference outside J&R’s Park Row, Manhattan, store to launch the group’s “America Wins With Trade” bus tour. CEA is sponsoring the tour to highlight the importance of trade to American companies and workers, CEA said. “It’s fitting” that the tour start in the New York financial capital, because it “represents the power of trade and free markets,” Shapiro said. The CE industry employs 291,000 workers in New York City alone, Shapiro said. The tour heads to Washington for a rally and news conference Thursday. It will cover 30 cities, including Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul for the Democratic and Republican conventions, Shapiro said. CEA has called on Congress to approve trade agreements “that expand the economy and create American jobs,” the group said. Legislation has been stalled in the House for two years, depriving American taxpayers of more $1 billion in revenue from new products and services, Shapiro told reporters. Free trade “does not rely upon walls,” Shapiro said. An “isolationist” trade policy “would be our downfall,” he said. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters that free trade legislation has stalled because “too many politicians are pandering to the insecurities” of the voters. Where Shapiro called protectionism the country’s downfall, Bloomberg went so far as to call it “mass suicide” for the number of jobs that would be lost. Of the apparent major-party presidential nominees, Sen. John McCain “has a better record on this issue than Barack Obama” because the Arizona senator “has spoken out for free trade with the only ally we have left in Latin America,” in Colombia, Bloomberg said. “I've talked to Sen. Obama about this. He assures me that in the end, he is in favor of free trade. But Bloomberg “would like to hear a lot more from him about how he thinks we could reopen NAFTA without coming out a big loser,” he said. “The fact of the matter is our trading partners in NAFTA would probably want more from us than we want from them, and I'm not so sure that’s good.” NAFTA isn’t a perfect trade agreement, Bloomberg said. “But this is certainly not the time to reopen NAFTA.” The U.S. can’t “limit free trade and at the same time have better relations with our trading partners,” Bloomberg said. “I don’t think you can limit free trade and have control of your borders at the same time.”
The NTIA has ordered six million extra DTV converter-box coupons to be ready to send out when money is recycled into the program from expired coupons, Acting Administrator Meredith Baker told us Friday at a House Procurement Subcommittee field hearing in Brooklyn, N.Y.