The FCC should refrain from adopting specific numeric captioning quality standards, said NAB in an ex parte filing Thursday (http://bit.ly/HDfjda). Because broadcasters have to rely on a small pool of caption providers, it’s an “unavoidable truth” that captions for live and recorded programming will have errors caused by human mistakes and transmission delays, NAB said. “Defining uniform metrics for quality and timing (including technical and non-technical standards) raises significant challenges,” said the filing. The FCC should also continue to allow the use of Electronic Newsroom Technique “particularly in smaller markets,” the NAB said.
Twitter closed its first trading day on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday at $44.90 per share, up 73 percent from its initial public offering starting price of $26.
The White House formally withdrew its nomination to the Senate for Tom Wheeler to join the FCC Thursday. The White House first nominated Wheeler on May 9, and the Senate approved Wheeler’s nomination by unanimous consent last week. He was confirmed as FCC chairman Monday. An FCC spokesman explained the move as a technicality, in which Wheeler was nominated for former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s term, and when that term expired, he was nominated for a term of his own. The White House thus withdrew its initial nomination for the unexpired part of Genachowski’s term after Wheeler was confirmed for his own term, the spokesman said.
A declaratory ruling that could lead to a loosening of restrictions against foreign ownership of U.S. broadcast stations could in turn lead to less restrictions against U.S. broadcast companies in foreign markets, said NBCUniversal in an ex parte letter Thursday (http://bit.ly/1auozGM). The proposed declaratory ruling is on the agenda for the commission’s Nov. 14 open meeting (CD Nov. 4 p7). The FCC should include a statement in the ruling “expressing the commission’s hope that this action will spur foreign governments to open their own media markets to greater investment by U.S. companies,” said NBCU. The company also said it “supports initiatives that will increase the flow of capital to U.S. companies."
Despite advancements and improvements in satellite technology, satellite services “will still face significant, service-affecting technical challenges in terms of latency, jitter, capacity and speed, especially when compared with modern fixed wireline technologies,” NTCA said in a press release (http://bit.ly/16KdgNw). NTCA submitted a report as an ex parte filing in dockets 10-90 and 05-337 on high-cost universal service support (http://bit.ly/1c2QsbE). The report’s key findings highlight challenges like latency and capacity limitations, it said. Frequencies used by satellite communications “are susceptible to outages caused by weather disruptions during heavy rain, ice, snow and sun interference,” NTCA said. “While recent advances have increased satellite capacity, the capacity available on an entire satellite is much smaller than that available on a single strand of fiber.” Many impairments can’t be overcome “because they are simply the result of the satellite’s distance from the earth, the laws of physics and other factors outside the control of the satellite operator,” the report said. The study was done by Vantage Point Solutions.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation said National Security Agency phone surveillance has hurt advocacy groups’ work and freedom of association. It filed the motion in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco Wednesday as part of First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA. The filing included testimony from 22 organizations alleging such problems with surveillance. The motion could be argued as early as February, EFF said in its news release (http://bit.ly/1bdEkEL). The motion asks the federal court to rule that the tracking surveillance is unconstitutional and not authorized under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. “This is exactly the type of chilling effect on the freedom of association that the First Amendment forbids,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney David Greene said in a statement.
Music downloading is a “transition technology” to streaming, Axel Dauchez, CEO of Deezer, the French music streaming service, said Wednesday in London at the launch of new Deezer music search and recommendation features. “People may have had pride in owning vinyl or CDs, but no one feels file ownership means anything any more,” Dauchez said. “There’s no pride in owning a file. We are moving to a streaming world.” Deezer now claims its streaming service is among the world’s “biggest,” with 30 million tracks, and an average of 27,000 new tracks from all genres and countries added every day. The number of paid subscribers has doubled in the past year -- to 5 million across more than 180 countries, the company said. Tracks are available at 128 kbps in MP3 (the default) with an option for 320 kbps, it said. Dauchez says Deezer has for the past six months been putting Free Audio Lossless Codec versions on its servers but is not yet offering them for streaming because 75 percent of all Deezer’s subscribers are using mobile devices with limited and expensive mobile connections.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau ordered a $25,000 forfeiture against Estevan Gutierrez for “willfully and maliciously” broadcasting obscenities and threats against police officers in Las Vegas, N.M., over the Las Vegas Police Department’s main dispatch channel, interfering with police transmissions, said a forfeiture order (http://bit.ly/1936VcJ). In February 2011, a San Diego Enforcement Bureau agent used an FCC Mobile Direction Finding vehicle to help LVPD officers track the transmissions to a hand-held radio operated by Gutierrez and tuned to the LVPD’s main dispatch channel of 159.150 MHz, said a notice of apparent liability issued in 2011 (http://fcc.us/16KiY1K). Though Gutierrez asked the commission to reduce the fine because of his inability to pay, the bureau said he produced no evidence demonstrating a lack of funds, and adjusted the fine upwards because of the severity of the offense. “There is nothing on the record in this case that warrants any leniency or mitigation of the proposed forfeiture amount, given the undisputed evidence that Mr. Gutierrez willfully and maliciously interfered with the public safety radio operations of the LVPD for multiple days, and only stopped after he was apprehended and arrested,” said the order.
Meredith Local Media Group and Post-Newsweek Stations joined Accelerated Media to take advantage of the company’s advertising app platform, said Accelerated Media in a news release Thursday (http://yhoo.it/1hQprgf). Through its Connected Ad Network, the company provides a television ad platform that inserts local and national advertising into the digital apps of broadcasters and cable networks, said Accelerated Media. The platform provides broadcasters increased ad inventory while creating additional advertising opportunities within the applications, said the company. Accelerated Media builds ad-enabled apps for smart TV and over-the-top devices.
A new MyTVChoice ad-skipping device automatically switches live TV to another channel of the viewer’s choice when a commercial comes on, and switches back when ads are over, said MyTVChoice in a press release Thursday. The device is intended to allow viewers to enjoy live TV without giving up the ad-skipping advantage that comes with watching time-shifted content, said a MyTVChoice spokeswoman. “There’s already plenty of ways to skip commercials on shows that don’t need to be watched live,” the spokeswoman said, The MyTVChoice service only operates during national sporting events like the NFL’s Sunday Night Football or during popular awards and reality shows such as The Academy Awards, The Voice or American Idol. “It will be available for the Olympics,” said the spokeswoman. The service is also available for regional sports broadcasts in the Boston area. The device plugs into a wall socket and works in conjunction with a mobile app to set up two viewer-chosen alternate channels to switch to during commercials, said the release. The service could be especially useful to parents with concerns about the kinds of commercials that air during sporting events watched by children, said the spokeswoman. “People have different reasons for disliking ads, but most people don’t want to watch them,” said company founder Rich Theriault in the release. The MyTVChoice service is completely unrelated to the My TV Choice channel package once offered by Comcast, the spokeswoman said. The similarity in their names is a coincidence, she said.