A minor wave of investment in the last two years has funded social TV technology and companies that use automatic content recognition (ACR) software to handle interactive TV applications on TV sets, smartphones and tablets. Though the price tag for getting in on this nascent industry has been relatively low, few major media companies have invested in the technology. Add up all the disclosed investments in the space and the total is less than $150 million, according to data compiled by Sharp’s social TV chief Anne-Marie Roussel on her personal blog: http://xrl.us/bm3k2h. She counted more than 30 new companies in the sector. Some haven’t disclosed their funding, so the total that’s been invested in the cohort is presumably higher.

There was strong audience interest in last month’s Supreme Court oral arguments on healthcare reform law, broadcast executives told us. During the three days the case was heard and covered extensively, Fox News saw an average daytime audience of 1.2 million viewers and 213,000 in the core demographic of ages 25 to 54. Primetime drew 2.4 million viewers, among whom 613,000 were ages 25-54 on average, according to Nielsen Media Research numbers provided by Fox News. The court provided same-day audio recordings and transcripts of the arguments and didn’t allow the hearings to be aired live, something executives hope will change but aren’t optimistic will anytime soon.

The 9th U.S. Appeals Court struck down the FCC’s ban on political ads that run on public radio and TV stations. A panel of judges in the San Francisco-based court decided 2-1 Thursday that the ban on public issue and political ads is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment. The ruling could alter the dynamic and character of noncommercial stations, some noncommercial broadcasters and analysts said. The court also upheld a ban on airing on noncommercial stations ads for goods and services of commercial entities.

NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said reallocating the 1755-1850 MHz band for wireless broadband would cost “too much” and take “too long,” in an episode of C-SPAN’s the Communicators set to be shown this weekend. Meanwhile, NTIA has suspended, at least temporarily, funding for the 700 MHz waiver recipients seeking to build out early public safety networks in the 700 MHz band, government officials confirmed.

The U.S. “very much wants to push back” against efforts by some nations and some organizations such as the ITU to bring the Internet under “top-down government control through treaty organizations and such,” said NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling. “We find that quite threatening to the success of the Internet,” he said in an interview for C-SPAN’s Communicators (See related story). This is an issue that has been “emerging for some period of time but is coming to a head here over the next year or two due to some activities of other nations as well as some international conferences,” such as those by the ITU, he said. Strickling was asked about his talks with House Commerce Manufacturing Subcommittee Chairman Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., about the “U.N. and control of the Internet."

A Massachusetts legislative committee is drafting recommendations to address the issue of double poles -- utilities putting up new utility poles beside old ones and leaving the old poles in place indefinitely. Currently there are a dozen bills in the state that, in various ways, attempt to encourage utilities to remove double poles in a timely fashion.

NTIA has no interest in pushing a particular view of privacy rules for the private sector in the multistakeholder meetings it plans to convene around the Obama administration’s Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights (CD April 4 p4), NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling told a Hudson Institute gathering Wednesday. NTIA will have to “resist the impulse” to lead the discussion, even at the prompting of participants, he said: “People are going to be looking for those handholds” -- what the government thinks should happen.

Congress is more than happy to let the FCC sort out the USF mess on its own, a House Communications Subcommittee Republican aide said Wednesday. “There is no motivation currently on the Hill to delve into these issues,” said Ray Baum, aide to Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. Even if there were motivation, “there is really no consensus,” he said, pointing to a schism between free-market proponents who'd like to see the fund disappear, and some who want it to grow. To Baum, Congress’s role at the moment is to seek input from interested parties and pass it on to the FCC to come up with a workable solution. “If this issue doesn’t lend itself to agency expertise, there isn’t one that does,” he told a Catholic University conference. “We're really wishing them the best."

The apps economy has created nearly 500,000 jobs just since the introduction of the iPhone, Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute, said Wednesday, at an event sponsored by the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. Sen. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D.-N.J., and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski also spoke at the event, which focused more narrowly as well on jump starting the state’s economy.

Business and labor groups joined Obama administration officials in stressing the need for enforcing intellectual property rights as a Department of Commerce report showed that IP-intensive industries supported at least 40 million jobs and contributed more than $5 trillion to the economy in 2010, accounting for 34.8 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. “When Americans know that their ideas will be protected, they have greater incentive to pursue advances and technologies that help keep us competitive, and our businesses have the confidence they need to hire more workers,” said Commerce Secretary John Bryson.