The Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet will hold informational hearings on online behavioral advertising, Do Not Track, mobile privacy and online privacy for teenagers “over the next couple of weeks,” subcommittee Chairman Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said Tuesday during a conference hosted by the Association of National Advertisers. Pryor encouraged members of the advertising industry to engage with his office. “This is your industry; you guys know this better than anyone in the country,” he said. “I have an open door. I want to hear from you."
Taggle Systems, which develops long-range, low-power radio equipment for remote sensing and location, saw its operations compromised by early roll out of Progeny’s network in the San Francisco area, said a filing Monday at the FCC. Taggle began a trial deployment in the Los Altos Hills, Calif., area, starting Feb. 15, the company said. “After installing the Taggle receiver at a high point in the trial area Taggle staff immediately discovered that the device range was severely restricted,” the filing said (http://bit.ly/XX9bS3). “A test of the receiver sensitivity showed that it was more than 20 dB worse than expected. Taggle staff used a spectrum analyser and drove from San Francisco to San Jose, discovering that the whole Bay Area was receiving constant Electromagnetic Interference in two x 2 MHz bands that are in the middle of the 10 MHz band used by Taggle’s equipment.” Taggle staff traced the interference to Progeny equipment, the filing said. Bruce Olcott, lawyer for Progeny, noted that the Taggle tests were done using equipment that was just certified by the FCC. “We do concur that that is the level of noise in the environment in the ... area with our network off,” he said. “It is a high noise area as are a lot of communities in the U.S."
The 17 largest cable and telephone providers in the U.S. added a net 2.7 million broadband subscribers in 2012, for a total of 81.4 million subscribers on the top broadband services, Leichtman Research Group said Tuesday. Cable companies continued to have the most broadband subscribers at 46.8 million; Comcast alone added a net 1.2 million broadband subscribers over the course of 2012, representing 45 percent of the total net adds among the top providers, Leichtman said. Telephone companies had 34.6 million broadband subscribers at the end of the year (http://bit.ly/11fAnOF).
Cablevision can’t include videotaped depositions of CEO James Dolan and an ex-Game Show Network executive in an FCC hearing on GSN’s program carriage complaint against the operator, the administrative law judge overseeing the case ruled. The ALJ said that’s even though the two companies and the Enforcement Bureau, which had opposed the request (CD March 12 p14), worked out an arrangement. “This Motion has wider implications than simply determining the medium through which the content of a deposition will be presented,” given Cablevision said the videotapes eliminate the need for Dolan and ex-GSN Senior Vice President-Distribution Dennis Gillespie to testify, wrote Chief FCC ALJ Richard Sippel. “Cablevision has failed to demonstrate the existence of any circumstances that cause” either man to be unable to testify, “let alone circumstances that rise to the level” of FCC rules letting depositions be used at a hearing when the witness is dead, outside the U.S., in prison or subject to several other exemptions, he wrote: “While it may save time and resources at hearing to have fewer witnesses testify, this efficiency is outweighed by the need for a complete and accurate transcript diligently established through traditional live testimony.” Dolan and Gillespie “appear to be important witnesses,” the ALJ continued in the March 15 order posted Tuesday in docket 12-122 (http://bit.ly/15YCaqk). The hearing on GSN’s complaint alleging Cablevision favored its own networks over the independent channel, which the operator has denied, had been scheduled to start April 2.
KTVO Kirksville, Mo., got an FCC waiver to enforce exclusivity rights against Iowa stations KCCI-TV(CBS) Des Moines and KCRG-TV(ABC) and KGAN(CBS), both in Cedar Rapids, said a Media Bureau order (http://bit.ly/XXdkoU). It said KTVO, affiliated with the ABC network on its primary stream and with CBS on its multicast channel, can enforce exclusivity in Fairfield and Bloomfield. Citizens Mutual Telephone Cooperative and Local Internet Service Co. had objected to the May petition. The order doesn’t “take a position on whether Citizens or LISCO will have to delete the programming of” KCCI, KCRG and KGAN “upon KTVO’s assertion of its network nonduplication and syndicated exclusivity rights,” said the document signed by Policy Division Deputy Chief Steven Broeckaert. “We would expect the parties to resolve whether Citizens and LISCO are cable systems and, if so, whether the cable systems at issue have sufficiently few subscribers to qualify for the exemption” from such enforcement for systems under 1,000 subscribers, he continued. “If the parties are unable to reach an agreement, they may raise the issue at the Commission through the normal complaint process.” KTVO is owned by Barrington Broadcasting, said that company’s website (http://bit.ly/15n9s05).
Marking a reach of 276 million TV homes worldwide, 85 million of them in Europe, satellite operator SES will use next month’s MIPTV conference in Cannes, France, to announce its plans to test Ultra HD channels, Norbert Hoelzle, SES senior vice president, said Tuesday at a seminar in London. SES views Ultra HD 4K TV as the “next big thing,” Hoelzle said, predicting that Ultra HD growth will be more “linear and faster than the uptake of HD.” SES thinks the CE industry will drive Ultra HD growth, and the SES “fleet” of satellites will be “ready” for the explosion, he said. “Sports events like soccer in London are already being shot in Ultra HD. So the broadcasters already have Ultra HD on their tapes, though they don’t publicize it. We want to help and enable the smaller broadcasters, by providing access to specific channels for testing this year. We will announce details at MIPTV and I don’t want to give the details ahead of then. But there will be some help on costings.” Hoelzle predicts the start of 4K Ultra HD services next year, with World Cup soccer in Brazil and Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Russia as the main drivers, followed by the Rugby World Cup in 2015. “Ultra HD TVs are already available,” he said. Encoding and modulation is developing, with H.265, he said. Set-top boxes will be easy to do, and game consoles need to differentiate against IP-based services by offering Ultra HD, he said. “The big advantage of Ultra HD for consumers is that they can sit anywhere in the room. Big screens look good even in small rooms. People can sit close which is very attractive for small living rooms. So Ultra HD will be driven by manufacturers and by consumers, which is why it will come much faster than HD.”
Comments are due April 8, replies April 18, on TiVo’s request (CD Feb 7 p17) to be let out of FCC rules requiring analog tuners in cable-ready consumer electronics, said a Media Bureau public notice on docket 11-105 (http://bit.ly/138NVNn). The company sought last month to sell all-digital Premiere set-tops without the tuners. “TiVo claims that these requirements as applied to its set-top boxes hinder innovation, increase costs to customers and serve as an unnecessary barrier to the market for” DVRs, the notice said. It said “TiVo commits, as it did in its 2011 waiver request” which was granted to the company for Premiere Elite set-tops, “to educate consumers about the functions of its set-top boxes to ensure that consumers are not confused about the boxes’ capabilities."
Sony Pictures Television will tap new comScore tracking tools in what the companies call the first “all-platform audience measurement deal” for Sony’s Crackle entertainment network. The initiative will provide “unduplicated audience size and demographics” across “all screens and platforms,” the companies said, including online, mobile devices, connected TV and game consoles. Crackle is the first network in the industry to use comScore’s methodology to provide advertisers with comScore video audience measurement for all of its devices and 20-plus apps, the companies said. Data will be available during Q2. ComScore said its proprietary methods leverage census-level media measurement tools that produce “millions” of audience samples “far surpassing traditional TV audience counting methods.” In addition, comScore’s method provides enough common touchpoints between platforms to adjust for cross-platform overlap, it said. Prior to comScore’s technique, “there had been no audience measurement of connected TV and game consoles, so publishers and networks could not provide an unduplicated audience number,” said Eric Berger, general manager of Crackle and executive vice president-digital networks for Sony Pictures Television. Sony can now provide advertisers with measurement data that include the audience size and demographics across all of Crackle, Berger said. ComScore said it “cracked the code for determining a single unified audience number across platforms,” and the system can scale to the growing number of media channels available today. The deal is not exclusive, said Victor Silva, director-comScore marketing solutions, who said comScore is “continually enhancing its measurement capabilities across all platforms.” The work with Crackle “is just one example,” he said. The measurement tool is another weapon in streaming services’ battle with broadcasters for ad dollars, but Silva said “comScore is simply providing audience measurement for platforms that were previously lacking. As new platforms emerge, comScore will continue to pave the way for the future of video audience measurement.”
Dish Network backs the FCC’s proposed band plan for spectrum after the voluntary incentive auction of TV stations’ frequencies, following criticism of the plan by other auction stakeholders, said a company executive. NAB’s auction pointman said Monday that Dish is the only company to support the plan to put carriers’ uplink and downlink operations in different parts of the band around TV channels (CD March 19 p3). That plan “will create opportunities for competitive carriers and new entrants,” said Dish Deputy General Counsel Jeff Blum, by email. “The Commission’s band plan maximizes the amount of usable broadband spectrum, avoids excessive guard bands, appears to increase the potential for low-band paired spectrum, and leaves open the possibilities for future expansion and harmonization of the 600 MHz band."
CompTel supports the “strong and important role for state commissions” laid out in the NARUC Telecom Task Force principles, it told state regulators in comments posted this week (http://bit.ly/Ym7ey9). Most of the comments, posted last week, revealed a split between concerned industry representatives and supportive consumer and rural advocates (CD March 18 p3). The carrier association emphasized the NARUC statements on interconnection above all, echoing points its members made at the February NARUC meeting. “It is imperative that state commissions continue to arbitrate interconnection agreements and resolve disputes as specified in the Act, regardless of whether the interconnection involves TDM or IP facilities,” CompTel said. “The future of competition depends on competitors’ ability to interconnect with incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) on an IP-IP basis.” CompTel was especially drawn to NARUC principles protecting competition and said it likes NARUC’s “commitment to technological neutrality” and focus on evidence-based decision-making. ILECs must submit to any state requirements before retiring copper loops, it said, pointing to the role of these loops in bringing broadband to customers.