The FCC is grouping the dozens of petitions seeking clarification of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act based on the questions they raise, said FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau attorney Kristi Lemoine at an FCBA event Monday about a rise in class-action suits spurred by the law.

APCO and the National Emergency Number Association urged the FCC to require that texts to 911 contain information allowing 911 call centers to locate the sender, as soon as practical. But both public safety groups also recognized in filings that short message service (SMS) texts are not the wave of the future and cautioned that the FCC should make allowances for the development of next-generation 911 networks.

AT&T, Comcast and Google continued to lead the pack among big lobbying spenders in the third quarter of 2014. All three companies spent several millions of dollars on lobbying, with some of the biggest items at stake in years on the table -- net neutrality, media consolidation deals and a contested reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act foremost among them. Also looming on Capitol Hill is a possible rewrite of the Communications Act, which may take off in earnest next year.

Webcasters pushed back against SoundExchange’s previously negotiated public performance royalty rates, in comments to the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) made public Friday. The comments (http://1.usa.gov/11FkBPc), due Oct. 7 (see 1410090034), are meant to influence the decision of CRB judges in setting statutory licenses for webcasting fees for Jan. 1, 2016, to Dec. 31, 2020. There's growing debate over whether public performance royalties, including pre-1972 sound recordings, should be extended to terrestrial radio (see 1410090092).

Ion, Meredith Corp. and Turner Broadcasting oppose broadcaster PMCM’s plan to occupy the same program and system information protocol (PSIP) channel as Meredith‘s WFSB Hartford, Connecticut, while using a virtual channel number that PMCM’s opponents say should be associated with WFSB (see 1409160043). WFSB uses RF Channel 33, while PMCM’s WJLP Middletown, New Jersey, uses RF 3. The stations’ signals overlap, and WJLP is broadcasting on virtual channel 3.10, while WFSB has long used channel 3.1 and its associated subchannels, Meredith said in comments on its request for a declaratory ruling in FCC docket 14-150 (http://bit.ly/ZLWbCz). Though PMCM has the New Jersey Broadcasters Association's support (http://bit.ly/1FsKa5B) and said in its own comments that it has found hundreds of situations in which overlapping stations occupy the same PSIP, Meredith said the request is without precedent. PMCM hasn’t shown any examples where the FCC “subdivided a major channel number to assign separate chunks of the channel to separately owned stations for concurrent use in the same area," Meredith said.

Municipalities should encourage the FCC to act on the petitions from the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, seeking FCC pre-emption of state municipal broadband laws, said Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke at a Next Century Cities launch event Monday. NCC is a pro-municipal broadband coalition of 32 cities that includes Chattanooga and Wilson. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a webcast speech that he welcomes municipal broadband and public-private partnerships to increase broadband deployments, and he believes broadband is now “essential infrastructure.”

The FCC scheduled a special meeting Friday afternoon on an Enforcement Bureau order, the commission said on its website. Agency officials said calling the meeting mostly just reflects divisions on the FCC 8th floor. Agency and industry officials said Monday the order is a routine enforcement action, but Chairman Tom Wheeler scheduled the special meeting because the statute of limitations was set to run out on the proposed order and the FCC’s two Republicans had declined to vote.

A move to add stand-alone services streaming content from CBS and HBO could add a new layer to FCC proceedings, including the retransmission consent and net neutrality dockets, said some cable industry professionals in interviews Monday. The announcements have raised questions about how the video market is changing and whether it's on a path to an a la carte model. The announcements are examples of programmers reacting to consumer demand, which must be kept free of more regulations, some broadcast industry professionals said. CBS is providing its CBS All Access digital subscription product (see 1410160058), and HBO plans to launch a service next year (see 1410150095).

The FCC is getting set to release another new website, Mary Ellen Seal, FCC executive director for modernization, told the agency’s Consumer Advisory Committee (CAC) Monday. The prototype is to be delivered to the FCC in late December, agency officials said. The new website is expected to be fully functioning in mid-2015, said Seal.

FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez’s leadership style has given the agency a different tone from her predecessor, Jon Leibowitz, though the commission has largely continued following his agenda, according to interviews with former FTC officials who worked with both of them. As chairman, Leibowitz was gregarious, inclusive and always searching for a catchy expression to grab the public’s attention, former officials said. Ramirez is equally inclusive, but more reticent, direct and less naturally inclined to court the public, former officials said.