Court of International Trade activity

The FCC Enforcement Bureau proposed a $14,000 fine against Latin Broadcasting Co. for failing to exhibit red obstruction lighting on its Dallas Center, Iowa, antenna and for not telling the Federal Aviation Administration about it (http://bit.ly/WEspNt). Separately, the bureau issued a $4,000 forfeiture order against Journal Broadcasting for violating its on-air contest rules at its KJOT(FM) Boise, Idaho station.

TiVo formally launched its TiVo Mini through cable operators General Communication, RCN and Suddenlink, which are offering it for a $5.99 monthly fee on a 12-month contract. The fee is in addition to the monthly subscription charge customers pay for TiVo Premiere 4 or TiVo Premiere XL DVRs. The Mini lacks dynamic tuner allocation, meaning it uses only one of the TiVo Premiere’s four tuners, leaving three available for recording. It supports apps and music services like Pandora and Spotify. Google Picasa and Photobucket also are available through the Mini, as is the gaming app Wordsmith. The Mini allows streaming from the main DVR to TVs and other devices within a house, and uses Multimedia over Coax for home networking and multi-room applications.

The FCC appointed members to the re-chartered FCC Diversity Committee. Chairman Julius Genachowski re-chartered the committee in December “to extend the terms of the current members and to ensure that they have adequate time to continue their important work,” the commission said in a public notice (http://bit.ly/12J2mrh). The committee will continue to work on unlicensed spectrum opportunities for diverse communities and entrepreneurs, reviewing past initiatives that have positively impacted ownership diversity “and determining how these initiatives can be incorporated in the commission’s current diversity agenda” and other issues, it said. The first meeting will be April 25 at the FCC. Wiley Rein attorney and former FCC Commissioner Henry Rivera was reappointed chairman, it said. Members include Comcast Senior Director Rudy Brioche, NAB Deputy General Counsel Erin Dozier and Loris Ann Taylor, Native Public Media CEO. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn applauded the chairman for re-constituting the committee and the appointees. “Their findings and advice continue to guide my office in its decision-making and their ability to weigh in on issues that the commission is considering is invaluable to the agency,” she said in a statement.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau said it opposed a motion from Cablevision to let the cable operator and the Game Show Network submit excerpts from videotaped depositions instead of live testimony at an April 2 administrative law hearing (http://bit.ly/X0o56c). The bureau wouldn’t have the chance to cross-examine the witnesses, it said. At the very least, the bureau asked for a chance to review the videotaped testimony to determine whether it would have questions on cross-examination, it said. “If, after reviewing the testimony to be offered, the Bureau agrees with Cablevision and GSN that the proffered testimony is clear and no further cross-examination is necessary, the Bureau anticipates withdrawing any objection,” it said.

Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mark Pryor, D-Ark., outlined a series of spring telecom hearings aimed at educating members about the status of the communications industry, a news release said Monday. In March and April Pryor plans hearings on the state of the wireless and wireline communications markets, the state of the video marketplace and a hearing on rural broadband adoption and deployment, the committee said. Pryor said he’s “looking forward to facilitating a bipartisan exchange of views on key policy issues in today’s fast-changing information and communication technology industry,” according to the news release. Pryor took the subcommittee gavel in February after former Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., left Congress to become secretary of state.

Without limited access to certain confidential distribution agreements that online video distributors (OVDs) reach with other media companies, Comcast and NBCUniversal won’t be able to make a licensing offer to an OVD that’s invoking the Benchmark Condition of the FCC order approving Comcast’s purchase of NBCU. That’s what Kathryn Zachem, Comcast’s senior vice president of regulatory and state legislative affairs, told aides to all five FCC commissioners last week, an ex parte notice shows (http://bit.ly/ZBiBTf). The Media Bureau last week stayed its own order that clarified the condition to require such disclosure until the full commission can weigh in (CD March 8 p16). The condition granted OVDs access to Comcast/NBCU programming after reaching a similar deal with a peer media company. But without the bureau’s clarification, Comcast/NBCU would have to resort to “an unnecessary and costly arbitration process” to be able to “craft an offer that is economically equivalent to the price, terms and condition of an OVD’s peer deal,” the ex parte notice said. “In other words, arbitration would become the norm, rather than the exception in order to effectuate the purpose of the Benchmark Condition,” it said.

Two cable operators sought FCC findings they're exempt from municipal basic video-rate regulation because of effective pay-TV competition. Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable’s petitions to the Media Bureau, posted Friday in docket 12-1 (http://bit.ly/13PVLdQ, http://bit.ly/ZE7tTr), cited competition from both U.S. DBS companies and, in Time Warner Cable’s request, Cincinnati Bell. Time Warner Cable wants deregulation in Kentucky in unincorporated Boone and Warren counties, Fort Thomas and two other municipalities, while Bright House’s petition covers six cable franchises in the Flagler County, Fla., area.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., plans to focus on FirstNet and unveil his vision for the future of the E-rate program at Tuesday’s FCC oversight hearing, a committee spokesman told us Monday. Rockefeller plans to tell all five commissioners that they must evaluate the success of one of his key education accomplishments, the E-rate program, and address its future needs at the 2:30 p.m. hearing in 253 Russell. The last time all the commissioners faced the panel was in May, shortly after the nominations of commissioners Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel were confirmed by the Senate. Only Chairman Julius Genachowski and Republican Robert McDowell will offer opening remarks at the hearing, several industry lobbyists told us. The Telecommunications Industry Association separately asked lawmakers to urge the FCC to “promptly” implement the voluntary spectrum incentive auction, reallocate federal spectrum for commercial wireless use, reform USF and streamline FCC regulations, in a letter sent Monday.

The FCC shouldn’t set aside any spectrum from the planned incentive auction for unlicensed use, said a coalition of broadcasters seeking to maximize the auction’s benefit to participating TV stations, in reply comments filed with the agency. “While several commenters make a case for the benefits of unlicensed spectrum, the record does not justify the FCC ignoring its congressional mandate and risking the failure of the incentive auction to make this particular spectrum available for unlicensed use,” the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition said. The group consists of the owners or potential owners of more than 40 large-market TV stations. Bringing broadcasters “to the auction table” should be the FCC’s main focus, it said. As such it should not manage the process by assigning higher value to certain stations in a market based on “any metric other than the station’s impact on spectrum clearing,” it said.

CEA slammed Charter Communications’ latest filing (http://bit.ly/Y5mfnW) on the company’s request for a waiver (CD March 4 p12) of FCC rules requiring separation of cable set-top box security and navigation. The association and operator had been trading filings in docket 12-328 on the petition to begin deploying to subscribers set-tops with downloadable, software-based security and not the CableCARD hardware. Charter’s Feb. 28 filing “finally admits that its petition is based entirely on the premise that the FCC has somehow granted an advance exception from its rules, in favor of any nominally ‘downloadable’ security system,” CEA said in a filing in the docket Thursday (http://bit.ly/16mIfyb). It said “no amount of repetition and distortion, now, will change the record” that neither the FCC nor the Media Bureau gave “blanket, advance approval to a security system based on its containing a downloadable element, where that system has not been demonstrated to provide a common interface comparable to CableCARD’s.” CEA said the bureau never allowed Cablevision, which got a CableCARD grandfathered waiver and an extension, to start a “future ‘downloadable’ system."