Recent efforts in Washington to reduce government spending have led to another barrier to a wide-scale use of hosting of government payloads on commercial satellites, panelists said Tuesday at the Hosted Payload Summit in Washington. While hosted payloads have long been touted as a cost-saving tool, some satellite operators have had trouble making that point because hosted payloads are considered “something separate” and extra, said Rich Pang, director of hosted payloads at SES Government Solutions. It’s common to hear from the government that there’s “no new money,” he said.

The Supreme Court is increasingly seen as likely to side with broadcasters and rule against the government by striking down the FCC’s censuring of broadcasts with fleeting expletives or brief nudity, industry lawyers specializing in the First Amendment said Tuesday. They said last term’s rulings in cases touching on violent videogames in Brown, access to data in IMS Health and allowing a funeral protest in Snyder all show a court generally inclined to side with First Amendment petitioners. Panelists spoke at an event at the MPAA that was organized by the Media Institute.

The FCC might not adopt any existing plan to revamp the Universal Service Fund in its entirety, state officials said at a webinar by the National Regulatory Research Institute Monday. Even if the commission is to adopt an order for the Oct. 27 meeting, it might not be a final order, said James Cawley, chair of the state member of the Federal/State USF Joint Board.

A House Communications Subcommittee markup of spectrum legislation appears likely to get pushed into next week, with no markup scheduled so far, public safety officials said during a press conference Monday. A markup was expected Tuesday or Wednesday (CD Sept 28 p13). The bill before the subcommittee does not allocate the 700 MHz D-block to public safety, a top goal of many public safety officials.

State regulators are taking their case against preemption in intercarrier compensation regime reform to the Hill, telecom lobbyists and a NARUC official told us Monday. The FCC is weighing reform proposals from incumbents that would preempt state rates and lower them to $0.0007 per minute -- the so-called “triple-zero” option -- within five years for price cap companies and eight years for rate-of-return companies. State officials, having endorsed the FCC’s reform process, are now meeting with legislators, hoping to stall preemption, said telecom lobbyists and NARUC Legislative Director Brian O'Hara.

CTIA said the FCC should shorten the collocation approval shot clock imposed on local communities and permit tower collocations by right. The assertion came in reply comments on the commission’s April acceleration of a broadband deployment notice of inquiry. CTIA said the FCC has plenty of authority under the Communications Act to impose additional siting rules on local governments. Major associations representing local governments disagreed.

NPR’s incoming CEO Gary Knell must work to bring it out of political turmoil and to expand the reach of its public radio network, industry executives told us. NPR needs a leader who can bring the entire organization, including its headquarters, the business arm and the network of stations, into what’s necessary for the future of public radio, said Caryn Mathes, general manager at WAMU(FM) Washington: “It’s a complex organization existing in a really challenging climate right now.” To address the “exploding technological climate,” the changing demographics of the public radio audience and efforts to defund public broadcasting, the CEO needs vision, courage and a backbone, she said.

The FCC is looking at changing some broadcast regulations, leading to less oversight of how noncommercial stations raise money and possible rules for all types of stations to make disclosures online, not just on paper. Chairman Julius Genachowski has asked the Media Bureau to work on those areas, he told an FCC hearing in Phoenix about a June report by commission staffer Steve Waldman on the future of the new and old media industry. Those were the two concrete steps the commission said it’s taking to deliver on the recommendations of the report (CD Oct 3 p6).

Touting “original, premium programming,” a reach of 100 million people in the U.S. and an “innovative” opportunity for advertisers, executives from Yahoo and ABC News entered a strategic alliance. They said Monday it brings together Yahoo’s technology and reach and the journalism of ABC News, with the goal of becoming the “premier digital media company in the world.” The future of news and information “is completely up for grabs,” said Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News.

Federal agencies must do more to fortify their cybernetworks from attacks, said Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., Ranking Member Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del. In a joint statement Monday, they cited a GAO report that said federal agencies’ cybernetworks have significant weaknesses due to their failure to implement information security programs. “There is perhaps no greater vulnerability that Congress has yet to address through legislation than the insecurity of cyberspace,” Collins said. “Today’s report points out too many serious vulnerabilities. We must fortify the government’s efforts to safeguard its own cyber networks from attack and build a public/private partnership to promote stronger national cyber-security.”