An FCC panel approved plans to create an equal employment opportunity compliance survey. Approval came at the Diversity Federal Advisory Committee’s meeting Wednesday. The commission would need to give $50,000 to $75,000 to the EEO subcommittee, if those funds become available, to do the survey to get information about companies’ attitudes towards compliance responsibilities and best practices, said subcommittee Chairman David Honig. The FCC will continue to work with the subcommittee towards starting that project, said Chief of Office of Communications Business Opportunities Thomas Reed. The Diversity Committee also heard reports from the Wi-Fi Technology and Channels 5 & 6 subcommittees and presentations about updates to the AT&T Aspire program to mentor kids and Comcast’s Internet Essentials broadband service for the poor.

Broadcasters will do OK in getting retransmission consent fees for their stations to be carried by multichannel video programming distributors, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes predicted Wednesday night. “I think they will be fine as long as they don’t give away their programming on the Internet,” he said in a brief interview after speaking to a dinner hosted by the Economic Club of Washington. “Because you can’t ask for retrans if you're giving it away at the same time.” Time Warner’s own initiative for its cable channels to be seen online by video subscribers who buy the company’s channels from their MVPD is going well, Bewkes said of TV Everywhere.

Draft guidelines published by the Food and Drug Administration this week could curb TV ad spending by drugmakers, a lawyer who represents some pharmaceutical marketers said. The FDA proposed a set of guidelines drugmakers should follow for submitting their ads to the agency for review before they run on TV, with five categories of direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads subject to review, including new drugs and those with serious risks relative to benefits (http://xrl.us/bmx227). Although there appears to be a limited set of circumstances that would trigger FDA review of drug ads, in practice the guidance would impose a near-blanket requirement on direct-to-consumer TV drug commercials, said John Kamp of Wiley Rein, who represents the Coalition for Healthcare Communication. That may make drugmakers think twice about buying TV spots, he said.

A deregulation bill (SB 135) in Kentucky faced sharp criticism and even got the state attorney general’s attention, though state regulators were neutral after revisions were made. Meanwhile, while the industry saw another bill (HB 209) in the state that would establish outage reporting requirements as burdensome, supporters said the measure is “modest” and necessary.

The federal government should tread carefully when it comes to using antitrust laws as way to regulate the high-tech sector, a group of antitrust attorneys said Wednesday at a Federalist Society luncheon. “Antitrust authorities ought to be very skeptical about jumping in to start cases against them,” said Ronald Cass, chairman of the Center for the Rule of Law at George Mason University and ex-U.S. International Trade Commission member. Government has “a real problem of foresight” and that’s especially so in high-tech, he said. “The more we do to try to rein in the leaders in the field, the more we discourage investment and innovation, and the more we risk taking steps that harm American consumer health."

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell is questioning whether the time frame for a voluntary incentive auction of broadcast spectrum laid out by a top FCC official last week is realistic. Amy Levine, a senior aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski, predicted an auction would occur in the next 18-24 months (CD March 7 p3). McDowell suspects it could take at least twice as long, given the complexities involved.

House Republican leaders are planning to bring at least four cybersecurity bills to the House floor sometime after the Easter/Passover recess, hill staffers told us. Republican leadership is in the process of scheduling a so-called “cyberweek” where they will bring the various cybersecurity bills to the floor and begin voting on them separately, staffers said.

The satellite industry must continue working to keep pace with voice, video, data traffic and other networking technologies, executives said Wednesday at the Satellite 2012 conference. As satellite communications expand globally, they said the industry must become more simplified and integrate with terrestrial systems. Mobile devices will help expand the global satellite industry, said Jerry Creekbaum, an IP network senior solutions architect at Verizon. Satellite needs to incorporate into the global network just like all other technologies have done, and “we think satellite needs to become a node on the network,” said Senior Vice President Brad Boston of Cisco.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said he’s “pleased” TV station blackouts on subscription-video providers seemed to have been kept in check as retransmission consent contracts expired and often were renewed at year’s end. Retrans blackouts and “very serious disruptions to consumers” were kept to “a minimum” in the cycle of agreements that expired around Dec. 31, he said Wednesday. “I know that took some work on the part of cable operators and broadcasters to get there -- so that’s good news.” Cable executives also speaking to an American Cable Association conference said FCC retrans rules need fixing, while broadcast officials said the system works.

The TV station market seems poised for a wave of M&A activity in 2012, LIN TV CEO Vincent Sadusky told analysts during the company’s Q4 earnings teleconference Wednesday. But for LIN to participate in buying stations, or bolster its digital media business with further acquisitions in that sector, the prices will have to be right, he said. “I would put the degree of difficulty at ’super high,'” Sadusky said when asked what it would take for LIN to want to put its cash to use buying new assets.