NEW YORK -- The changing video landscape is affecting the media industry’s reliance on satellite capacity and resulting in shorter commitments, media executives said Wednesday at SATCON. Many of the factors that drove TV networks and distributors to use satellites are changing, said Robert Zitter, former HBO chief technology officer. About 60 percent of the global transponder capacity is used by TV, he said. “What happens in the satellite industry relates a lot to what’s happening with television.” The growth of cable networks and newer distribution methods led media companies to make long-term commitments with satellite companies for capacity a few years before the satellite is manufactured, he said. “All of that is changing.”

President Barack Obama's net neutrality statement Monday prompted reaction from some European stakeholders closely following the parallel debate in Europe. Obama's call for rules prohibiting blocking, throttling and paid prioritization, and for increased transparency among ISPs, their customers and the rest of the Internet, led to industry calls for a light-touch approach, while one consumer group demanded tougher net neutrality safeguards. The Council of the European Union working party on telecom and information society is scheduled to discuss net neutrality at its Nov. 14 meeting, its provisional agenda said. Telecom ministers are expected to debate the topic Nov. 27 as part of their wider discussion on the European Commission-proposed telecom single market (or connected continent) package, said an EU diplomatic official.

The New York Public Service Commission (PSC) said Wednesday that it’s delaying a decision on its review of the Comcast/Time Warner Cable (TWC) deal to allow “additional time to analyze and digest” issues related to the deal. The commission had been set to vote Thursday on Comcast/TWC and the associated Charter license swap, with the focus remaining on what public interest concessions the PSC might attach to its expected approval of the deal. The PSC said it had accepted a staff request to delay a final vote on the review “given the depth and breadth of the public record and the importance of the issues presented.” Parties in the New York PSC review have been engaged in an ongoing dispute over document confidentiality that had also been an issue at the FCC and with the California Public Utilities Commission (see 1410230045), though a PSC spokesman had previously expressed confidence the commission would move ahead with a vote.

NAB filed comments Wednesday in support of various petitions for reconsideration by broadcasters urging the agency to make sure broadcasters don’t pay a price if they're forcibly relocated if they don’t sell their licenses in the TV incentive auction. Some 31 parties filed recon petitions on the order in September (see 1409170044). CTIA also filed comments Wednesday, opposing some petitions for reconsideration while supporting others.

A court-ordered emergency stay preventing the FCC from releasing confidential programming and retransmission consent contract information to participants in the AT&T/DirecTV and Comcast/Time Warner transaction proceedings is likely to be granted by Monday, several communications attorneys involved in the proceedings told us. In an order issued Nov. 10 rejecting two applications for review and two emergency stay requests (see 1411070048) from a group of content companies that includes 21st Century Fox, CBS, Viacom and Disney, the FCC established Monday, Nov. 17 as the day it would release the video programming confidential information (VPCI) to outside counsel who have filed for confidential access.

Discussions with Canada and Mexico to coordinate spectrum use in advance of the incentive auction could lead to a regionally harmonized “band plan for the Americas” similar to what was tried with the 700 MHz band plan, said Incentive Auction Task Force Chairman Gary Epstein on a panel at the Americas Spectrum Management Conference Wednesday. Though wireless industry officials at the discussion endorsed a regional or global 600 MHz band plan as a positive, NAB Executive Vice President-Strategic Planning Rick Kaplan said it would be unlikely to succeed because the FCC's proposed variable band plan would be unattractive internationally. Because the plan involves “broadcast and wireless sharing the same yard,” it will be a hard sell outside the U.S., he said. “It's a bad plan.”

The news coverage and barrage of reactions to President Barack Obama's net neutrality statement Monday has focused on the divide between him and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler over to what extent to base rules on Communications Act Title II. But public interest advocates said the statement also highlighted another potential division between the White House and the agency over an issue Columbia University law professor Timothy Wu believes is more important than reclassification: whether the commission will bar paid prioritization or create a rebuttable presumption against it.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., dismissed the idea of seniority in endorsing Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., to be top Democrat on the Commerce Committee in a Dear Colleague letter issued Tuesday, the third such letter sent this year. Pelosi first endorsed Eshoo, now ranking member for the Communications Subcommittee, for that position months ago. The committee leadership race is heating up as Congress returned for the lame-duck session Wednesday.

Senior congressional Republicans upped the heat on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Wednesday about net neutrality. Lobbyists and observers have suggested the issue will grow more hotly partisan since President Barack Obama entered the fray with recommendations for full Title II reclassification of consumer broadband (see 1411100033).

President Barack Obama’s statement Monday in favor of reclassifying broadband as a Title II Communications Act service (see 1411100033) sent the FCC scrambling to rewrite an order that had been expected to get a vote at the commission’s Dec. 11 meeting, said industry and agency officials. Even before the delays for reworking the rules, the FCC likely faced a long road as it partially reclassifies broadband. It remains unclear when an order will take effect and whether the Obama administration will be in office to promulgate new rules if the next version is also overturned in federal court, said agency and FCC officials.