There’s a window for broadcasters to come up with their own guidelines on indecency standards amid regulatory and judicial uncertainty over FCC enforcement of the current rules for radio and TV, Commissioner Robert McDowell said Thursday. Before the courts sort out the commission’s authority, “this is an opportunity for the broadcasters to step into the breach,” he told industry executives and lawyers at the NAB radio show. “So I would call upon you to do that."
A House deal on net neutrality suffered a major setback Wednesday when House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, opposed a legislative effort by Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Waxman had been waiting for Republicans to sign off on his draft bill and didn’t introduce anything before our deadline. The House planned to adjourn Wednesday night, unless the Senate hadn’t wrapped up the continuing spending resolution, and it won’t return until after the November elections, a House leadership aide said. Committee members Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told us they don’t expect net neutrality action during the lame-duck session.
NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling declared victory Wednesday in the agency’s effort to manage the huge number of applications for grants that came in to the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and get the final awards out ahead of Thursday’s deadline. Strickling told us he regretted there wasn’t more money available for public safety networks but said the projects approved should help the government gather data for a national network. He said his agency will soon recommend the spectrum band to pair with the AWS-3 band for wireless broadband. Strickling was the keynoter at the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors annual meeting.
A New York measure by Sen. Brian Foley, D-Blue Point, would increase scrutiny of telecom mergers and “require a portion of the benefits” be “returned to the state’s ratepayers” in refunds or infrastructure investments. The bill would protect the consumers in light of service problems from telecom acquisitions, said James LaCarrubba, Foley’s chief of staff. It would cover any residential line acquisition or sale, he said. The measure is in the Senate after passing the Assembly, LaCarrubba said.
The FCC seems unlikely to soon change retransmission consent rules as it considers a request for rulemaking by many multichannel video programming distributors, unless a contractual dispute between a TV station and an MVPD leads to an outage for subscribers, an analyst and an FCC aide suggested Wednesday. No executives at a USTelecom event on retransmission predicted quick commission action on the petition by 14 cable, satellite, telco-TV and nonprofit entities. That could change if there’s another instance in which MVPD customers can’t watch broadcasts because of a contractual dispute, as with the removal for less than a day of Disney’s WABC-TV New York from Cablevision’s lineup this year (CD March 9 p2), some said.
LightSquared said it will provide satellite phone service for healthcare providers in American Indian and Alaska Native communities through a partnership with the Indian Health Service. Participants may gain access to LightSquared’s wireless network once it’s built, depending on the program’s needs, a company spokesman said. LightSquared said it will donate up to 2,000 phones and provide free service through 2020.
Talk at the FCC of Universal Service Fund reform to include broadband services has satellite companies concerned over the possibility of increased contribution rates without any subsidy in return, industry executives said. Under the current system, companies pay into the USF based on their interstate and international end-user telecom revenue and generally leave satellite companies out of the running for subsidies. If a future version of the USF includes broadband, as proposed by the FCC and tentatively named the Connect America Fund (CAF), satellite companies could be left paying for expansion of competing technologies again, executives said.
Requiring FM chips in cellphones is a “great idea,” Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., told the NAB radio show Wednesday. The retiring member of the House Commerce Committee also reemphasized his support for a commercial auction of the D-block and opposition to legislation imposing performance royalties on broadcasters. Earlier, departing Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said he doubted Congress would take up either the DISCLOSE Act or performance royalty legislation any time soon.
The NTIA awarded the last of grants under the Broadband Technologies Program, closing out awards for the program created by broad economic stimulus legislation that cleared Congress shortly after President Barack Obama took office last year. NTIA beat Thursday’s deadline to complete awards for the $4 billion program. The Rural Utilities Service will announce final awards by the same deadline for its part of the broadband stimulus program, spokesman Bart Kendrick said Tuesday. The agency was still finalizing the review of a few applications, he said.
The radio industry hasn’t reached agreement yet on whether the NAB should put its weight behind a possible deal with music labels that would cut streaming fees in exchange for the U.S.’s first terrestrial broadcast performance royalty, many industry executives and lawyers said. They said agreement among broadcasters on outlines of an accord with MusicFirst, first publicized by the NAB Aug. 6, doesn’t appear imminent. Some music and radio executives had hoped to reach a deal that included mandating FM chips on all cellphones by the time Congress returned from summer recess. With this Congress in its waning days, there may not be time to pass any legislation this year even if a deal is reached, some broadcasters said.