Two high-profile pay-TV carriage disputes ended late last week. Time Warner Cable and Hearst Television agreed to a retransmission consent contract Thursday night and DirecTV and Viacom announced a carriage agreement early Friday. The FCC stayed uninvolved during both terrestrial programming blackouts, which the agency can have authority over if it finds there’s not good faith during negotiations (CD July 13 p2), industry and agency officials said. That’s in keeping with standard practice under Chairman Julius Genachowski. The Media Bureau continued getting updates from Hearst and Time Warner Cable during their retrans contract impasse, an industry official said. A bureau spokesman had no comment.

Two high-profile pay-TV carriage disputes ended late last week. Time Warner Cable and Hearst Television agreed to a retransmission consent contract Thursday night and DirecTV and Viacom announced a carriage agreement early Friday. The FCC stayed uninvolved during both terrestrial programming blackouts, which the agency can have authority over if it finds there’s not good faith during negotiations, industry and agency officials said. That’s in keeping with standard practice under Chairman Julius Genachowski. The Media Bureau continued getting updates from Hearst and Time Warner Cable during their retrans contract impasse, an industry official said. A bureau spokesman had no comment.

Municipalities whose federal grants for public safety networks were suspended say they remain frustrated that, more than two months after the NTIA suspended seven municipal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grants, there’s no timetable to save them. Public safety advocates and NTIA encourage patience and wise tax spending, while leaders of some of the 700 MHz projects worry about what suspending the projects has done to safety and tax dollars, they said in interviews. A prominent former Seattle official is urging the FirstNet board, once established in August, to re-engage with the BTOP grantees and kickstart their projects as a potential answer to the limbo and sense of frustration.

More than 650 telecom providers signed a letter to commissioners “to ensure” the FCC and Congress “have clear and unambiguous notice of our collective concerns with the ‘regression analysis'-based caps” on USF support (http://xrl.us/bngrm9). A NTCA spokeswoman said the letter was an industry-wide effort in which several national and state associations, other groups and individual members “all reached out collectively to raise the visibility of this issue among policy makers in Washington.” The commission has received eight waiver petitions dealing with support reductions, of which one has been granted interim relief, a spokesman said. The commission also got two expedited waiver petitions dealing with boundary data, which it granted.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC in a challenge from competitive carriers, who argued that the FCC “put the cart before the horse” when it ordered that relinquished USF monies shouldn’t be redistributed among a state’s eligible telecom carriers. Instead, the FCC set aside the money to be used later to pay for broadband. The Rural Cellular Association, joined by the Universal Service for America Coalition, argued that the January 2010 order violated the Communications Act and FCC regulations and was arbitrary and capricious in that it fell short of explaining how it ensures the “sufficient” level of support for CETCs required by the act.

A federal appeals court denied a petition for a writ of mandamus that would have forced the FCC to act on a pending program access complaint by Sky Angel against Discovery Communications. Sky Angel, which now does business as FAVE TV (Family and Values Entertainment), sells a package of linear pay-TV programming delivered over the Internet to proprietary set-top boxes. It complained to the commission in March 2010 that Discovery improperly withdrew its programming networks from Sky Angel’s service in violation of program access rules. Sky Angel sought the mandamus petition earlier this year to force the commission to act on the complaint.

A federal appeals court denied a petition for a writ of mandamus that would have forced the FCC to act on a pending program access complaint by Sky Angel against Discovery Communications. Sky Angel, which now does business as FAVE TV (Family and Values Entertainment), sells a package of linear pay-TV programming delivered over the Internet to proprietary set-top boxes. It complained to the commission in March 2010 that Discovery improperly withdrew its programming networks from Sky Angel’s service in violation of program access rules. Sky Angel sought the mandamus petition earlier this year to force the commission to act on the complaint.

Failure to reauthorize the U.S. SAFE WEB Act of 2006 would have severe, negative implications for Internet commerce, Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., warned Thursday during a hearing of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, which she chairs. Mack said she will introduce legislation this week reauthorizing the act for another seven years. Without action, the act is set to expire Dec. 22, 2013. An FTC official also urged Congress to reauthorize the law.

Failure to reauthorize the U.S. SAFE WEB Act of 2006 would have severe, negative implications for Internet commerce, Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., warned Thursday during a hearing of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, which she chairs. Mack said she will introduce legislation this week reauthorizing the act for another seven years. Without action, the act is set to expire Dec. 22, 2013. An FTC official also urged Congress to reauthorize the law.

Failure to reauthorize the U.S. SAFE WEB Act of 2006 would have severe, negative implications for Internet commerce, Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., warned Thursday during a hearing of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, which she chairs. Mack said she will introduce legislation this week reauthorizing the act for another seven years. Without action, the act is set to expire Dec. 22, 2013. An FTC official also urged Congress to reauthorize the law.