Sprint Nextel said Friday it plans to retire $2.28 billion in debt from its 2014 and 2015 Nextel maturities notes. That includes $1.17 billion from the 2014 debt maturities and $1.11 billion from the 2015 maturities, the carrier said. The notes will be redeemed at par, plus accrued and unpaid interest through the planned payment date of Nov. 19, Sprint Nextel said. After the payment, “no 2014 or 2015 Nextel Notes will remain outstanding,” the carrier said (http://xrl.us/bnyuon).
California Oregon Broadcasting, licensee of the Class A TV station K19GH-D Eugene, Ore., will get to keep its Class A status but may have to pay a $13,000 fine for apparent violations of FCC children’s TV reporting rules, a notice of apparent liability released Friday said (http://xrl.us/bnyuog). The broadcaster has 30 days to file a written response seeking a reduction or cancellation of the proposed fine, the notice said.
National Religious Broadcasters asked the FCC to let noncommercial educational stations help raise funds for nonprofit organizations at times other than during emergency relief efforts. NRB praised the FCC for saying it would give waivers to stations to raise funds on-air to support efforts to clean up after so-called superstorm Sandy, the group said in a news release. Waiving broadcast rules for these efforts is one more reminder “why the FCC rule change advocated by NRB, and now before the commission, is so critical,” the association said. The FCC said last week that it is accepting requests from NCE stations for waivers (CD Nov 8 p23). The commission earlier this year proposed to change the NCE fundraising rules to do away with the waiver process (CD April 27 p8).
Q3 sales at the E.W. Scripps Co. increased 31 percent from a year earlier to $220 million, it said. Part of the increase came from the acquisition of the former McGraw-Hill TV station group, which it completed in December. Factoring out revenue from those stations, its sales would have increased 15 percent to $193 million. Net income was $12 million, a 1.8 percent increase from a year earlier.
The FCC should clarify that CLECs have the right under Section 251(c)(2) of the Telecom Act to “direct, IP-to-IP interconnection at any technically feasible location on an incumbent LEC’s network for the exchange of voice traffic that is not transmitted over the public Internet,” tw telecom told an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnyuih). The issue has “nothing to do with the Internet” since the voice traffic at issue “does not traverse the Internet,” tw telecom said.
The FCC Wireline Bureau wants comment on an Emery Telcom petition for a waiver to let it include, within its base period revenue, amounts received after March 3 (http://xrl.us/bnyuhr). Emery seeks the waiver as a result of a “billing system configuration error” that artificially lowered its reported FY2011 revenue, limiting its intercarrier compensation recovery, the public notice said. Comments in docket 03-109 are due Dec. 10, replies Dec. 26.
The Alaska Rural Coalition (ARC) is concerned about the uncertainty of funding mechanisms facing rate-of-return companies in Alaska, ARC representatives told the FCC Wireline Bureau and an aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski Wednesday, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnyugs). ARC is concerned that sustainable funding be established for Alaskan eligible telecom carriers, and thinks the commission shouldn’t rely on a regression analysis to determine support levels, it said. The ARC also expressed concern that the CostQuest Associates Broadband Analysis Tool model not be expanded to rate-of-return carriers, “given that it was designed by Price Cap Carriers for Price Cap Carriers."
The FCC Wireline Bureau is seeking comment on Sigecom’s Section 214 application to discontinue domestic telecom services in three Indiana municipalities. Sigecom, which does business as Wow Internet, Cable and Phone, wants to phase out its circuit switched local exchange and domestic and international long distances services over the next several months because “the technology used to provide these services is now obsolete,” according to the public notice (http://xrl.us/bnyubr). Customers can migrate to its interconnected VoIP service for the same price, Sigecom said. Comments in docket 12-310 are due Nov. 26.
New Jersey-based Global Connect, which delivers bulk emergency voice calls, functioned throughout Hurricane Sandy earlier this month, the company said. Its notification system “performed at the highest level imaginable, making more than 50 million telephone calls between October 26 and October 31, and making more than 11.4 million calls in a single day (October 30),” Global Connect said Friday (http://xrl.us/bnyuhp). There were no service interruptions, even when the system handled 1.5 million calls an hour during prime time hours, it added. Global Connect handled requests from schools and communities that needed the system during the disaster. The company cited its customized mapping capability, instant callback, remote access and deployment and real-time reporting as valuable features during the hurricane.
The audience for online streaming music from companies such as Pandora grew sharply in the last year, enough to displace the audience for CDs as the second-largest among American music listeners, the NPD Group said, based on data collected from 14,000 survey panelists. Still, terrestrial radio remains the top source of music for Americans, it said. “We expect this pattern to continue as consumers become more comfortable with ownership as defined as a playlist, rather than a physical CD or digital file,” said Russ Crupnick, senior vice president-industry analysis. By Pandora’s own count, it claimed a 6.55 percent share of all U.S. radio listening in October, up from 4.27 percent a year earlier. It said it had 59.2 million active listeners by Nov. 1. Add in services such as Spotify, Mog, Rdio and the music videos viewed on YouTube and Vevo, and the total audience for online streaming music increased 18 percent from last year to about 96 million people, NPD said. That’s half of all U.S. Internet users, it said. Though AM and FM radio are still America’s “favorite choice” for listening to music, the percentage of Internet radio listeners who also use terrestrial radio has dropped in recent years, NPD found. Among Pandora listeners, the percentage of people who listen to terrestrial radio has dropped 10 points since 2009, and the percentage who listen to CDs 21 points, it said. The increasing ubiquity of smartphones and Internet-enabled cars has contributed to this shift in listening, it said. About 34 percent of Pandora users are listening in cars either through their phones or an in-car connection, it said. These new services are increasingly filling terrestrial radio’s traditional role of introducing new music to listeners, NPD said. “Pandora and other music services are an increasingly important part of the music-discovery process,” Crupnick said. Such growth has not come without its critics. The Songwriters Guild of America, Songwriters Association of Canada, Music Creators of North America and European Composer and Songwriter Alliance criticized Pandora for seeking in Congress and in courts to lower the rates it pays composers to license their music (CD Nov 7 p11). “For the founders of a billion dollar business that is built completely on the backs of music creators to suggest that paying those creators four percent of their revenue is still too much should be an embarrassment,” said Rick Carnes, Music Creators of North America co-chair and president of the guild.