A federal appeals court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that Sunbeam TV Corp. lacked antitrust standing to sue Nielsen under the Sherman Act, an opinion filed Monday said. The broadcaster had alleged it was forced to pay higher prices for a inferior product when Nielsen replaced its paper diaries with the Local People Meter to extrapolate TV ratings. A three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said the lower court correctly determined that none of the three companies Sunbeam suggested had been excluded as potential competitors to the TV ratings market were “willing and able to enter the capital intensive television audience measurement industry and compete against Nielsen.” Therefore the lower court correctly held that Sunbeam lacked antitrust standing to pursue the litigation, the court said.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., reintroduced her Global Free Internet Act this week (http://1.usa.gov/1082MC4). The bill -- which has California Democratic Reps. Anna Eshoo, Mike Honda and Doris Matsui as original cosponsors -- would create a task force to monitor and respond to actions by foreign and domestic governments “that deny fair market access to Internet-related goods and services, or that threaten the technical operation, security, and free flow of global Internet communications,” said a Lofgren release(http://1.usa.gov/Ydifh2). The task force would be composed of leaders of executive branch agencies, as well as four people nominated by congressional leadership and four people who are not government employees and who have been “nominated by the Internet itself” and “would hold public hearings, issue reports, and coordinate the activity of the U.S. government to respond to domestic and international threats to the Internet,” the release said. In a statement, Lofgren said: “For the Internet to remain a platform for innovation and prosperity, we need to address undue restrictions on Internet commerce and the global free flow of information.” The bill would ensure that a commitment to an open Internet be prevalent in U.S. foreign and trade policies, said Public Knowledge Vice President-Government Affairs Christopher Lewis in a statement (http://bit.ly/Xoxlom). “The Global Free Internet Act can provide much-needed balance to US efforts to ensure an open internet that promotes free speech around the world,” Lewis said.
The Satellite Industry Association said its request for an additional 3 dB safety margin to protect satellite receivers from a next generation air-to-ground (ATG) service is to account for the fact that future continental U.S. (CONUS) coverage satellites “may use improved receivers with lower noise levels and/or CONUS beams which may have a slightly higher gain than those used by existing satellites,” it said in an ex parte filing in docket RM-11640 (http://bit.ly/WvhUMy). In the filing, SIA responded to the FCC’s questions on a previous SIA filing about Qualcomm’s proposed terrestrial-based, ATG operations in the Ku band. SIA also provided a list of U.S.-licensed satellites along with beam performance information requested by the commission. The filing recounts correspondence through email with SIA and International Bureau staff.
Kansas House Bill 2326 will present a path for broadband innovation, increase competition and save consumers money; increase broadband infrastructure investment and speed deployment and fix an overreach from state regulators, Voice on the Net Coalition Executive Director Glenn Richards told the Kansas Senate Commerce Committee in written testimony (http://bit.ly/YNLh6Y) for its Wednesday meeting on the bill. The bill proposes to restrict the state’s regulation of Internet Protocol-enabled services and unanimously passed the House this month. He made similar arguments to a Kansas House committee last month and has supported similar bills in other states.
USTelecom, Verizon and the Fiber-to-the-Home Council (FTTH) criticized CLEC proposals (CD March 6 p6) to make it harder for ILECs to retire copper loops, and make it easier for CLECs to get access to last-mile copper facilities. The dramatic changes to FCC policies would require “virtually all copper network plant to be left in place indefinitely,” said USTelecom, urging the commission to “summarily reject this request as fundamentally at odds with long-standing Commission policy favoring the deployment of robust, facilities-based broadband service to all Americans” (http://bit.ly/YYTFCN). Telcos need flexibility to choose the technology they will use to serve customers, and although copper is still often used, “it ultimately will not make economic sense for a given provider to retain redundant parallel network facilities in some areas,” Verizon and Verizon Wireless said (http://bit.ly/YYTY0C). The commission should encourage TelePacific and other companies that need access to ILEC copper loops “to engage constructively with wireline carriers to develop feasible wholesale solutions” or “take this opportunity to invest in their own network facilities,” Verizon said. FTTH said the proposal would unnecessarily slow the process ILECs use to retire copper plant (http://bit.ly/YYUNq9). Chairman Julius Genachowski’s vision for gigabit networks in each community (CD Jan 22 p1) will be harder to achieve if ILECs face the financial difficulty of maintaining their existing copper plant, FTTH said. “Any request to amend the current rules to impose greater burdens on retiring copper facilities would be contrary to the public interest and should be rejected,” it said. But CLECs and communications equipment makers supported the proposal. Trade association TexAlTel argued copper continues to be an important piece of the “ever evolving” national telecom infrastructure (http://bit.ly/YYVDmA). Protecting copper from premature retirement will actually promote affordable broadband, said the Midwest Association of Competitive Communications, as it would lead to more providers and would promote competition in the telecom market (http://bit.ly/YYW3JM). Ethernet over copper is a “significant, widely deployed and growing next generation technology that is critical to the Commission’s National Broadband Plan and the migration from legacy to Ethernet/IP services,” said Ethernet manufacturer Overture Networks (http://bit.ly/YYXisr). Ethernet over copper “is a means to deliver IP, and not a legacy TDM technology,” it said. Copper loop technology has “advanced greatly since the initial implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996,” said communications equipment manufacturer Adtran (http://bit.ly/YYWxzB). “Copper is far from obsolete."
Comcast and its NBCUniversal unit, having hired 1,000 veterans in a U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation-organized campaign two years sooner than planned, now plan to add 1,000 more by 2015, said a news release (http://bit.ly/XTpw9R).
Significant growth for DirecTV will likely happen in 2014, said Patrick Doyle, DirecTV chief financial officer. DirecTV is investing an additional $200 million in customer services, he said Wednesday during a webcast of a presentation at the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet and Telecom Conference. The investment is targeted to certain types of customers and certain activities, he said. “It’s a certain quality of customer that’s proven that we really need to invest in them,” such as customers who have been on the platform for five years but aren’t getting a service, like the Genie whole-home DVR feature, he said. The company also is assessing customers’ upgrade tendencies and churn propensities, he said. “We view 2013 as a high water mark,” Doyle said. Half of the $200 million of additional spending is capital expenditure, he said. Capital expenditure for 2014 should look like it did in 2012, he said. Commercial services and movies produced double-digit growth in 2012, he said. “We think we can grow commercial in double digits” for 2013, he said. Doyle said he doesn’t expect significant growth in ad sales this year, “but maybe 2014 and beyond.” To improve U.S. revenue growth, DirecTV will focus on ancillary revenue streams, Doyle said. With programming costs increasing, the industry has been prudent with its customer pricing, he said. DirecTV’s implementation of a surcharge tied to carrying sports channels in some markets has been met with mild reaction from subscribers, Doyle said. “We tested putting in an RSN [regional sports network] for existing customers in those territories,” he said. “We've seen very little reaction from those price increases. … We're starting to see competitors go down that same route.” Internally “we spend time looking at economics,” he said. DirecTV has a dialogue with NFL, and the company is willing to renew programming at some increase that’s reasonable, he said. “If it goes up, we may go non-exclusive or decide not to carry it.” The DBS company is watching closely how its market in Venezuela is affected by the death Tuesday of President Hugo Chavez. Venezuela is profitable and “one of our best businesses,” he said. “We don’t put anymore U.S. dollars in there,” he said, referring to the devaluation of Venezuela’s currency. “With the death of Chavez, we'll see how that market turns out.” Doyle also said he expects to see growth in the Brazil market: “We've seen high desire for Brazil customers to move into upgraded products. They want the HD product, the DVR product and they're interested in multi-room viewing products.”
Clear Channel will share digital and terrestrial radio revenue with Entertainment One (eOne), a U.S. indie music company, they said Wednesday. EOne Music’s artist library includes DJ Drama, Faith Evans, Black Label Society and others, and the company said it has charted more than 100 albums on Billboard’s Independent Chart, the most of any U.S. indie label. EOne and Clear Channel believe partnerships like this demonstrate “the willingness to knock down barriers” in the industry, eOne CEO Michael Koch said. It’s Clear Channel’s seventh revenue-sharing agreement with a record label, it said. Terms weren’t disclosed.
WBAI(FM), New York, a Pacifica Radio station, launched an emergency campaign to raise $500,000 to avoid shutting down its operations and losing its transmitter on top of the Empire State Building. The money is needed “to bring current the transmitter tower rent, which fell drastically behind in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy,” it said in a press release (http://bit.ly/6rYhDe). “If sufficient funds are not raised in time, the station will lose its transmitter and may never go back on the air in New York City again.”
Oppositions to petitions for the FCC to redo rules affecting low-power FM stations are due March 21 in docket 99-25, replies April 1, said an agency notice in Wednesday’s Federal Register. Among those having filed the five pending petitions for reconsideration are LET CITIES IN!!, LifeTalk Radio and Prometheus Radio Project, the notice said (http://1.usa.gov/13Hgxwu). Though such a comment cycle and its “consequent opportunity for a pleading war” is “often a harbinger of delay,” it appears that won’t happen in this instance, said the blog of the Fletcher Heald broadcast law firm (http://bit.ly/XTonyX). It said “the Media Bureau is doing its darnedest to tee the next LPFM application window up as quickly as possible,” and it’s “unlikely that a handful of recons will distract the Bureau from that mission.” December’s order was meant to spur the licensing of new LPFM stations while also clearing out a backlog of requests for FM translators (CD Dec 3 p1).