Mauna Kea Broadcasting opposed Time Warner Cable’s (TWC) petitions for reconsideration of a Media Bureau order that TWC carry KLEI-TV Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on its Honolulu systems. “Neither petition provides any reason for the Bureau to reconsider its well-reasoned decision,” the opposition said (http://xrl.us/bn675o). The commission correctly applied its must-carry rules when denying TWC’s petitions to modify the station’s market to exclude Honolulu, the broadcaster said. “The Order properly determined that KLEI’s market included the entire state of Hawaii.” Time Warner Cable separately sought a delay until Jan. 14 to oppose a FCC must-carry complaint from Central Ohio Association of Christian Broadcasters over WOCD Marion, Ohio. That broadcaster doesn’t object to the delay, the operator said in a consent motion for extension of time posted Wednesday to docket 12-366 (http://xrl.us/bn68d2).
The FCC may not need a rulemaking proceeding so that stations need not disclose all material terms of a contest on-air and can instead post them online, an owner of radio and TV stations said. Saga Communications, like other broadcasters backing a request by Entercom for the commission to start such a rulemaking (CD Dec 18 p15), said revising a note on disclosure to a 1976 contest rule may not require a rulemaking. “There would be no change to the rule itself, merely a revision of Note 2,” Saga said in comments posted Wednesday to docket RM-11684 (http://xrl.us/bn676c). “This may be carried out without notice and comment,” but if the commission disagrees, the filing supported starting a proceeding.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said it got $500,000 in grants from Mark Cuban and game developer Markus Persson to help fund its patent work. “Silly patent lawsuits force prices to go up while competition and innovation suffer,” Cuban said. “It’s time to fix our broken system and EFF can help,” he said.
Real-time online entertainment accounts for nearly 60 percent of peak traffic on fixed North American networks, Sandvine said on its blog (http://xrl.us/bn6738). It expects that percentage to grow to more than 66 percent by 2015, it said. Netflix, which today commands about 33 percent of peak downstream traffic, should retain “at least a ten-fold lead” in traffic share over its long-form video service competitors “at least until 2015,” Sandvine said. Meanwhile, BitTorrent traffic should continue its decline to less than 10 percent of total daily traffic by 2015, Sandvine said. On the mobile side, Sandvine predicted consumers will demand service packages with 10 times the average currently monthly data quota.
Escort Inc. said its mobile DTV dongle for iOS devices will work with Mobile Content Venture’s Dyle Mobile DTV service. “In addition to ESCORT, we are looking forward to building on our relationships to introduce more consumers to the Dyle technology,” said Erik Moreno and Salil Dalvi, co-general managers of Mobile Content Venture.
Seattle asked the FCC to waive the Jan. 1 VHF/UHF narrowbanding deadline and grant Seattle a six-month extension. It has made “great progress” toward reaching the narrowbanding goal, but it still has to replace 60 mobile radios due to a mix-up, it said in a filing released Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bn679o): “When it purchased the Midland Syntech II radios, Petitioner was told they were narrowband-capable,” the city said, but during the transition “discovered that the sixty radios are incapable of narrowband operation.” It’s seeking to replace them but can’t by the first of the year, it said.
Time Warner Cable, working with the League of United Latin American Citizens, said it will provide free broadband to LULAC “community technology centers” in Lincoln, Neb.; Youngstown, Ohio; and Laredo and El Paso in Texas. It also said it will provide two more years of broadband service to those and 11 other LULAC centers, as the group and the company had been working together (http://xrl.us/bn67zb).
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., hotlined a bill Wednesday to authorize a study of the impact that violent videogames and video programming have on children (http://xrl.us/bn67vs). A “hotline” is an informal notification to Senators that they will be asked to approve a piece of legislation without debate or amendment. Rockefeller introduced the bill less than a week after the deadly elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn. “Major corporations, including the video game industry, make billions on marketing and selling violent content to children,” said Rockefeller in a news release. “They have a responsibility to protect our children. If they do not, you can count on the Congress to take a more aggressive role.” If enacted, the bill would direct the FTC and the FCC to work with the National Academy of Sciences to determine if violent programming and videogames have any harmful effects on children. The study aims to evaluate whether violent videogames and violent video programming causes children to act aggressively, has a disproportionately harmful effect on children prone to aggressive behavior, and has a direct and long-lasting impact on a child’s well-being, among other provisions. Rockefeller’s legislation would require the National Academy of Sciences to submit the findings of its report to Congress in 18 months. Rockefeller said that separately he will urge the FTC and the FCC to take a “fresh look” at the impact of violent videogames and video programming. “Recent court decisions demonstrate that some people still do not get it,” he said. “They believe that violent video games are no more dangerous to young minds than classic literature or Saturday morning cartoons. Parents, pediatricians, and psychologists know better. ... We need to do more and explore ways Congress can lay additional groundwork on this issue.” The Entertainment Software Association did not comment. The Parents Television Council separately commended some entertainment companies for altering their programming in response to the Newtown attack, and said their actions shouldn’t be temporary. “We applaud the positive actions of the entertainment industry -- but with an important caveat: act responsibly tomorrow, next week, and next year, as our nation heals from the Newtown tragedy,” said the group’s president, Tim Winter, in a press release.
The FCC Media Bureau spelled out procedures for TV stations to file anonymous comments on the agency’s proposed incentive spectrum auction rules. “We want to encourage those broadcasters interested in auction participation to raise issues of specific concern to them regarding the incentive spectrum auction process,” a public notice released Tuesday said. “At the same time, we recognize that broadcasters may have legitimate reasons for not wanting to disclose their potential interest in reverse auction participation.” Broadcasters may file anonymously as long as they have an attorney of record. “We request, however, that any broadcaster filing anonymously provide sufficient basic information to enable the Commission and the public to understand and evaluate the positions it takes in its comments,” the notice said. Information such as whether the station is network-affiliated or independent and what tier market it operates in would be useful, it said. Broadcasters who want to file anonymously without an attorney of record will need a waiver of certain FCC filing rules.
Revised guidelines for applying EU state aid rules to the broadband sector got approval from the European Commission Wednesday. The guidelines (http://xrl.us/bn67mg) will help EU countries achieve the goals of the digital agenda by reinforcing open access obligations and improving transparency rules, it said. They follow the principles of the EC’s state aid modernization initiative, which seeks to target well-designed public funding aid at market failures in order to boost growth, it said. The changes focus on several principles and priorities. They take into account technological advances and acknowledge that super-fast, next-generation access networks can be based on different technological platforms. They allow public financing of very fast connections (more than 100 Mbps) in urban areas, subject to very strict conditions aimed at protecting competition. The guidelines also protect private investors by requiring that any publicly financed infrastructure offer a substantial improvement over existing networks, the EC said. They also require that when a network is built with taxpayers’ money, consumers benefit from a truly open network where competition is ensured, it said. The provisions also contain new requirements regarding publication of documents, a centralized database for existing infrastructure and reporting obligations.