Public broadcasting lost more than $202 million in state funding since 2008, including $85 million in 2010 alone, a Free Press study said. The loss could restrict stations’ ability to produce local content and force some rural stations to close, Free Press said. In 24 states, funding was reduced each year over the past four years, it said. “Each year the cuts are compounded because they're against a brand new baseline and that baseline keeps dropping,” said Josh Stearns, associate program director. The key message conveyed through the report is “as anyone considers federal funding cuts, they have to be clear with what’s happening with state funding because so many broadcasters are doing more with less."
The FCC may eventually revisit a four-decade-old-rule barring multichannel video programming distributors from carrying games that are blacked out by sports leagues on TV stations in markets where the games haven’t sold out. The commission doesn’t seem poised to act right away on a Friday petition from several nonprofit entities and some groups saying they represent fans. Because the petition is styled as a way to cut outdated mandates out of FCC regulations, the commission may eventually start a proceeding on sports blackout rules. MVPDs and TV stations haven’t backed the petition yet, in part because they're scared of the leverage the leagues have over them in giving them rights to carry the games, said members of a coalition of five groups that filed the petition (http://xrl.us/bmimyk).
With the Thanksgiving deadline fast approaching for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, observers are growing skeptical that the super committee will meet its goal of finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction. Democrats and Republicans on the special committee seem to agree spectrum auctions should be included, but they continue to disagree on larger, unrelated issues, Hill and industry officials said. Auctions could still make the cut in a smaller package to mitigate an automatic, across-the-board budget cut in January 2013 known as a sequester, telecom industry lobbyists said.
The facts underpinning the Supreme Court’s rationale for allowing regulation of broadcast speech have withered in the 33 years since the court’s landmark FCC v. Pacifica Foundation ruling, a coalition of public interest groups said in a brief filed with the court last week. The Center for Democracy and Technology, Cato Institute, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and Tech Freedom were among several parties to file amicus briefs arguing the court should uphold a lower court’s ruling in Fox v. FCC that tossed out the commission’s indecency rules.
GENEVA -- A new chairman of the World Meteorological Organization steering group on radio spectrum coordination, plus improved funding, have not quelled concerns after the secretariat suggested substantive redactions to a January meeting report and the introduction of a username and password system that significantly reduces transparency in the U.N. agency. A group of about 30 countries raised concerns about the secretariat’s decision-making to boost the organization’s role in the international radio frequency process (CD May 23 p8).
The FCC asks about deals among multiple TV stations under separate ownership in the same market, in a draft rulemaking notice. The Media Bureau draft NPRM that circulated Nov. 4 (CD Nov 7 p19) asks about shared services agreements and local marketing agreements. Such deals let multiple stations share news and other resources without having the commission consider them commonly owned, which would be barred in many instances. The NPRM asks about the impact of SSAs, LMAs and similar deals on the touchstone of FCC policy goals: Promoting localism, competition and diversity, according to agency officials.
ST. LOUIS -- State members of the USF Federal/State Joint Board, the Federal/State Jurisdictional Separation Joint Board and the Federal/State Joint Conference on Advanced Services were schedule to meet with the FCC officials attending the NARUC meeting in here late Monday, after our deadline, John Burke, chair of the NARUC telecom committee told us. The FCC attendees, including Commissioners Michael Copps, Mignon Clyburn, Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett and Deputy Bureau Chief Carol Mattey, were expected to talk about the timing of the release of the full universal service fund/intercarrier compensation order and an overview of what is in the order, Burke said.
The FCC began an inquiry on what TV stations should report to the agency on the types of local programming they air each quarter. A Media Bureau notice of inquiry on coming up with a replacement to the never-used Form 355 was approved 4-0 and released Monday afternoon. Commissioner Robert McDowell concurred, though saying his proposed changes to the draft NOI that were “substantive” in nature weren’t incorporated into the item. The agency’s approval of the NOI was expected (CD Oct 28 p7). McDowell dissented in 2007 when Form 355 was approved by the agency, and he approved with all other FCC members an order last month that permanently junked the form. “While we have vacated the 2007 Report and Order, we continue to believe that the creation and implementation of a standardized form is beneficial and worthy of pursuing,” the notice said.
SILICON VALLEY -- A regional forerunner to the national public safety network is making headway recruiting public institutions to join but meeting more resistance than it thinks it should, an official said. The BayRICS effort in the San Francisco Bay area includes a 700 MHz LTE network called BayWEB, financed with a $51 million NTIA stimulus grant to cover just more than half the cost. The effort is attracting interest from universities “and we're working on” the two holdout cities in Alameda County to join, said Chief Information Officer Clancy Priest of the city of Hayward, which is in the county. “It’s like if you build it they will come.” The initials stand for Regional Interoperable Communication System and for Wireless Enhanced Broadband.
The legislative campaign against the FCC net neutrality order crumbled Thursday on Capitol Hill, as Senate Democrats rejected Republicans’ Congressional Review Act joint resolution of disapproval. The Senate voted 46-52 on a motion to proceed to SJ Res 6, with no Democrats voting for the joint resolution of disapproval. That means a vote won’t be held on SJ Res 6 itself. The FCC order takes effect Nov. 20. “The only thing [Republicans] can do at this point is allow the courts to handle” the issue, a House aide said.