Tribune Q2 consolidated operating revenue fell 10 percent to $730 million from the year-ago quarter, said the owner of daily newspapers and radio and TV stations after regular U.S. stock markets closed Thursday (http://bit.ly/15EZniH). It said broadcasting sales fell about 20 percent to $260 million primarily on a $41 million decrease in copyright royalty revenue due to one-time royalties received last year. WPIX-TV New York and WGN-TV Chicago were primarily responsible for a decrease in the value of bartered programming and lower ad revenue, and those stations had other issues, said Tribune. Consolidated operating profit fell about 28 percent to $90 million.

Senate Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee Chairman Tom Udall, D-N.M., wants to address broader FCC oversight issues at his Sept. 11 hearing, his spokeswoman told us. The subcommittee is holding a hearing on the White House’s FCC funding request and budget justification for FY 2014, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. in Room SD-138 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building (CD Aug 30 p10). The three FCC commissioners are the only witnesses, the spokeswoman said. But Udall wants to go beyond the budget emphasis slated for the hearing and discuss rural broadband issues and public safety, with a particular emphasis on the latter, she added.

Verizon Wireless executives questioned the logic of placing restrictions on bidding by any carrier in the incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum in a meeting with FCC staff, including Gary Epstein, head of the Incentive Auction Task Force (http://bit.ly/1dXfQCq). “We noted that proposals to restrict Verizon’s and AT&T’s ability to participate in the Incentive Auction lack a factual foundation,” the carrier said in the ex parte filing. “For example, firms advocating bidding restrictions for Verizon and AT&T provide no evidence that they would be unable to acquire 600 MHz spectrum in the auction in the absence of such restrictions. Nor do they assert that they have been unable to acquire the spectrum they need in other auctions or in the secondary market.” Restrictions would also “artificially constrain demand,” the Verizon representatives said. “This, in turn, would prevent prices from rising to the levels they would under real demand conditions in an open bidding process.”

Giving telecom regulators better guidance and allowing operators to experiment with fees they charge rivals to access next-generation networks should spur investment in high-speed broadband networks, said the European Commission on Friday. It’s readying a legislative proposal to help regulators end the current situation in which companies and users face different outcomes depending on where they live and operate, it said. The measure will formalize “a tighter set of the principles for encouraging investment,” said Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes. The EC has reached agreement with national authorities, and “we are determined to deliver stable copper prices and fibre regulation that reflects market reality,” she said in a news release. The legislation aims to lift price regulation of high-speed networks where it’s not needed to give investors in fiber the possibility of testing different access charges, the EC said.

The FCC Media Bureau shouldn’t terminate the licenses of Encino Broadcasting’s three Texas AM stations over missed renewal deadlines because of their owner’s serious illness, said Encino in a petition for reconsideration filed Wednesday. Because of his illness, owner Jose Garcia “has been forced to rely on others who, in this case, failed him” and didn’t file renewal applications for DKELG(AM) in Manor, DKOKE(AM) in Pflugerville and DKTXZ(AM) in West Lake Hills in time, said the filing. The “D” in front of the stations’ call letters is how the FCC designates a station that has had its license terminated, said a Media Bureau spokeswoman. Garcia has never before failed to file timely renewal applications in his previous 30 years as a broadcaster, the filing said. The bureau ordered the stations terminated July 30, but Encino has since filed renewal applications for all three, as well as a request for special temporary authority to operate them, said the filing.

General Electric has been removed as a party to the conditions of Comcast’s settlement with the Department of Justice over the Comcast/NBCUniversal transaction, said a modified judgment issued in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (http://1.usa.gov/1cl7a7g). Comcast bought out GE’s interest in Comcast/NBCU in March, according to an unopposed motion filed by General Electric, Comcast and NBCU to remove GE from the merger consent decree.

Financial companies and retailers are using Verizon Terremark’s cloud services to connect with customers globally, Verizon Terremark Chief Technology Officer John Considine told us Thursday. As businesses are moving their data to the cloud, they want business continuity services and “dedicated connectivity to mission critical data and applications,” the company said in a report released Thursday (http://bit.ly/16UhjWe). Between January 2012 and June 2013, cloud-based storage increased by 90 percent, and cloud-based memory increased by 100 percent, according to Verizon Terremark. “As people move from test and development to doing more important things on the cloud, they are building bigger things and using more memory and more storage,” said Considine. “It’s one of those background parameters that allows us to make a statement that enterprises are doing more in cloud then they were two years ago or even a year ago.” The growing number of virtual machines (35 percent since January 2012) shows how “enterprises are moving more workloads to the cloud,” the report said. Cloud services are also changing traditional in-house information technology because the cloud infrastructure offers “increased agility that the lines of business want” and gives in-house IT “teams the framework they need to meet these demands through official channels,” the report said.

The FCC plans to delay collection of fixed broadband measurement data by three weeks, said Office of Engineering and Technology attorney-advisor James Miller Thursday. The delay is to “conclude ongoing sample topoff and review of some tiers,” he said. The measurement month will officially begin Sept. 20, and end Oct. 18, officials said at a Thursday meeting. SamKnows will collect and analyze data starting Sept. 1 but expects not to use data for the report until samples are adequately sized, it said. Nearly 3,000 end-user license agreements have been sent out, and 527 whiteboxes used for testing were dispatched in August, it said. The commission is still working through some technical considerations, such as how legacy equipment might be affecting test results, said a slide presentation. Another meeting on the fixed measurement program will be announced in the next few weeks, Miller said. The FCC’s broadband measurement group of industry and academic stakeholders also discussed potentially examining and reviewing its Code of Conduct -- Miller wants to tend toward an annual process, he said. The commission is “very close” to launching its mobile measurement effort, which should see “more continuous” collection of data than in the fixed context, he said.

All three FCC commissioners are scheduled as witnesses before the Senate Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee for a Sept. 11 hearing on the White House’s FCC funding request and budget justification for FY 2014. The hearing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. in Room SD-138 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The Senate Commerce Committee is also expected to hold a hearing on Michael O'Rielly’s FCC nomination in September, with Sept. 16 suggested as one possible date but nothing confirmed, a communications industry source told us. Multiple Republican sources also pointed to mid-September as a likely time for O'Rielly’s hearing, mentioning Sept. 16. A spokesman for the Senate Commerce Committee did not comment. President Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate O'Rielly for the FCC just before Congress entered recess this August.

Bright House Networks petitioned to be excluded from municipal rate-setting for basic video and some other prices for five communities in Florida and nine in Alabama, said filings posted in FCC docket 12-1. The petitions cited video competition from DirecTV and Dish Network. The proposed deregulation would affect just under 99,000 households in Florida, including the communities of Chattahoochee (http://bit.ly/16UdtMP), Escambia County (http://bit.ly/1dU85x3) and Calhoun County (http://bit.ly/193pCz8). In Alabama the proposed deregulation would affect around 15,000 households, including the communities of Clio (http://bit.ly/12QgqgB), Butler County (http://bit.ly/14bTDcS) and Helena (http://bit.ly/12QgLju).