FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said in a speech Tuesday that she has kept a commitment she made at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials annual meeting last summer, to visit one public safety answering point per month. Rosenworcel spoke at an APCO dinner where she won an award. “I have since been to at least one public safety operation a month, including in California, Alaska, Minnesota, Vermont, Nevada, New Jersey and Maryland,” she said (http://bit.ly/18LHJL7). “In every visit I am struck by the same thing. The everyday grace of those who staff our public safety answering points. Their calm when calls roll in and crises mount. Their deep, unassailable commitment to public safety.”
CEA condemned NAB President Gordon Smith’s “repeated and spurious attacks” on Aereo and Dish during Tuesday’s Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing on the state of the video market. “We encourage broadcasters to move aggressively to meet consumer needs and embrace new TV technologies, rather than litigate or threaten to pull programming off-the-air,” said Michael Petricone, CEA senior vice president-government and regulatory affairs, in a news release. Smith told lawmakers at the hearing that Dish’s AutoHop technology “gets rid of broadcast ads” and said networks need to be “paid for the value of what we provide” (CD May 15 p8). CBS, ABC, Fox and NBC have sued Dish in federal court seeking injunctions that would bar the AutoHop feature based on their claims that it amounts to contributory copyright infringement (CD Dec 5 p19). Smith also told lawmakers Tuesday that online-TV startup Aereo, which streams broadcast-TV signals to consumers via the Web, is committing “piracy.” Petricone said CEA “share[s] the concerns” of Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who noted the recent comments from executives at several networks who threatened to take their programming off the air to thwart Aereo’s business model. Warner told Smith that if broadcasters have public spectrum “and are threatening to withdraw content because of these other challenges, it really raises for me the question of whether you ought to be able to keep that spectrum for free.”
The Senate Commerce Committee scheduled a hearing to consider the nomination of Penny Pritzker for Commerce secretary on May 23 at 11 a.m. in 253 Russell.
The House Commerce Committee scheduled a pair of cybersecurity hearings for Tuesday at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. in 2123 Rayburn. The full-committee hearing, titled: “Cyber Threats and Security Solutions,” will focus on the implementation of President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity executive order and other ways the public and private sectors are working to secure the U.S.’s critical infrastructure, a committee news release said. The second hearing, held by the House Communications Subcommittee, will examine the security of the U.S. communications supply chain, the news release said. Witnesses for neither hearing was disclosed.
ABC is entering the first-ever Nielsen trial to measure ad campaigns in mobile apps (CD May 1 p15), it said in a Tuesday news release. The trial will work to expand Nielsen’s Online Campaign Ratings ad tracking measurement to include ads within mobile apps, it said. “ABC will be able to measure audience demographics and understand the reach and frequency of online campaigns across ABC content on the web and in mobile apps” through the program, it said. The pilot program runs through the summer, ABC said.
The FTC sent letters to more than 90 businesses that may be affected by changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act rule, it said in a Wednesday release (http://1.usa.gov/10yIiAn). The letters on COPPA went to companies in the U.S. and abroad “whose online services, including mobile applications, appear to collect personal information from children under 13,” including photos, videos and audio recordings consistent with the new rule, it said. A similar letter was sent to companies that may be collecting persistent identifiers from children, it said. The letters don’t reflect an official evaluation of the companies’ practices by the FTC, the commission said. The FTC declined to comment on which companies it sent the letters to “since they were educational and not warning letters,” an agency spokesman said. The COPPA rule takes effect July 1, a date commissioners voted earlier this month to keep as-is after industry asked for a six-month delay (CD May 7 p8).
All 41 of the TV stations owned by Gray Television will be carried on the Internet TV platform Syncbak, Gray said in a Wednesday news release (http://bit.ly/12uYA1g). Syncbak allows TV stations to stream their content to viewers over the Web. Gray said it’s one of 40 broadcast groups testing the platform. CEA, NAB and as of recently CBS (CD April 23 p9) are investors in Syncbak.
Recent data from McKinsey & Co. show TV “outpaces all other media” as a source for news consumption, said a release from TVB Wednesday. The data show 41 percent of news consumption is spent watching TV, “significantly exceeding consumer time spent with non-television affiliated digital news sources,” said TVB President Steve Lanzano. TVB also cited other studies that back up McKinsey’s findings, including a Knowledge Networks study saying 19.7 percent of adults consider local broadcast TV their primary source of news. Lanzano said that amount is “nearly twice that of cable news and outpacing all other news outlets.” TVB also mentioned data from Frank N. Magid Associates, which said 61 percent of adults consider local TV news the most important information source in their community. “While it’s tempting to accept the immediacy of raw, unproven digital news sources, research confirms that consumers know they can trust their local professional television broadcasters,” said Lanzano.
AT&T and T-Mobile filed a report at the FCC (http://bit.ly/13xiNEY) by 7Layers AG looking at whether the use of the H block (the 1915-1920 MHz and 1995-2000 MHz bands) for commercial services poses an interference threat to handsets using the PCS band (1850-1915 MHz). “T-Mobile is particularly concerned about this risk because it is the licensee of PCS A Block spectrum covering approximately 100 million people, of which approximately 50 million are served by the ‘bottom’ 5 megahertz of the A Block -- the spectrum that is closest to the H Block and would be most susceptible to interference from H Block out-of-band emissions,” T-Mobile said (http://bit.ly/10OWxa0).
The European Commission decided “in principle” to launch an own-initiative (ex officio) anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation concerning imports of mobile telecom networks and essential elements such as radio access networks and mobile network cores from China, said Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht Wednesday. The decision won’t be activated right now to “allow for negotiations towards an amicable solution with the Chinese authorities,” he said in a statement (http://bit.ly/100W67W). China exports telecom network equipment to the EU market valued at just over 1 billion euros ($1.29 billion) per year, the EC said. An ex officio trade defense action is one undertaken without an official complaint from the EU industry, the EC said. It offers a “shield” when the risk of retaliation against European companies asking for trade defense instruments is high, it said. The EC has been gathering evidence for over a year, said De Gucht spokesman John Clancy at a press briefing. If an investigation is ultimately begun, however, further evidence would have to be collected, he said. Asked about a timeline for activating the case, Clancy said, “The clock is ticking.” The EU has had an open-door policy with its Chinese partners for a year, and now hopes authorities will step forward and discuss this situation in a serious manner, he said. The EU wants “rapid engagement” from China, he said. Clancy declined to say what evidence the EC has so far.