Ion Media still wants to move WEPX-TV Greenville, N.C., to Channel 26 from 51, the company said. It was the only comment on the FCC’s rulemaking notice on the proposed DTV move (CD May 29 p15) in rulemaking 11662 Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bngir2). “As Licensee explained in the Petition, the channel change would allow the Station to expand service beyond that allowed on Channel 51, resulting in an increase of net total population served of over 100,000 persons,” the filing said. “The cessation of operations on Channel 51 would eliminate potential interference with wireless operations in the adjacent Lower 700 MHz A Block."
Dell Telephone Cooperative wants a waiver of three high-cost universal service rules, the FCC said in a public notice seeking comment Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bngiq7). Dell seeks a waiver on the support limit of $250 per line per month, the rule limiting reimbursable capital and operating expenses applied to High-Cost Loop Support, and the extended limits on recovery of corporate operations expenses applied to HCLS and Interstate Common Line Support. Comments in docket 10-90 are due Aug. 10, replies Aug. 27.
Inmarsat will deploy its SwiftBroadband solution on airlines in Japan and the Philippines, it said. The technology will be the satellite backbone for in-flight services on Japan’s All Nippon Airways and Cebu Pacific Air in the Philippines, Inmarsat said. Cebu Pacific passengers “will be able to access the Internet while in-flight and make calls using VoIP applications via Wi-Fi enabled devices.” The SwiftBroadband service is provided by OnAir, which will offer its Wi-Fi capability in each aircraft, Inmarsat said.
The next step in NAB v. FCC is for the agency to respond to the association’s request that the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit stay a commission requirement that some TV stations begin posting political files online by Aug. 2 (CD July 11 p14), a law firm said. That response will come in the FCC’s opposition to the emergency motion for stay pending the D.C. Circuit’s review of the rules approved 2-1 by commissioners in April, said Fletcher Heald’s blog (http://xrl.us/bngiqx). “Stays are notoriously difficult to obtain, either from the FCC or from the courts,” said the firm, which has TV and radio station clients. “A party seeking a stay must normally demonstrate, among other things, that it will suffer irreparable harm if the stay is not granted. That’s a rough showing to make. We suspect that that issue will be a focal point of back-and-forth arguments in the coming weeks.” Shortly after NAB’s petition was made, a coalition of seven groups that backed the public-file order filed an opposition at the agency to the association’s separate stay request to the FCC (http://xrl.us/bngitf). The Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition wants the D.C. Circuit to deny the stay request. “NAB has failed to show that it is likely to prevail on the merits in its Petition for Review” of April’s order and “failed to show that its members will suffer harm absent a stay,” said the coalition. Members are the Benton Foundation, the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Free Press, the New America Foundation and United Church of Christ. “To minimize any potential burdens on broadcasters, the Commission agreed to host the online files, declined to impose any new recordkeeping requirements, and, with respect to the political files, required online posting only prospectively and deferred the effective date for all stations outside of the fifty largest markets and all stations within the top fifty that are not affiliated with one of the top four networks,” they said in the opposition pleading. “The standard of review applicable to NAB’s claims is extremely narrow and deferential to the agency."
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied an FCC request to suspend a case seeking to overturn its USF/intercarrier compensation order while the commission conducts its own review. In a two-page order in Case No. 11-9900 released Wednesday, the Denver-based court denied the “Motion to Hold in Abeyance” until the commission could resolve motions for reconsideration filed at the agency. “The lack of a timetable for disposition of the pending motions to reconsider and the importance of getting the issues associated with these consolidated proceedings decided as promptly as possible make any open-ended abatement unreasonable,” the court wrote. The court asked FCC counsel to file a status report should the commission rule on any of the pending motions for reconsideration. The FCC had argued for the delay because the pending recon petitions raise issues “central to the claims that petitions intend to present to this Court,” and FCC action on reconsideration could “substantially narrow the scope of the issues before the Court” (CD June 27 p12). “We are confident in the [USF/ICC] Order and look forward to defending it in court,” an FCC spokesman said.
Arbitron introduced a one-stop tool for ratings across broadcast and cable, and said Discovery Communications is using that Promo OptimiXer service. The product helps terrestrial and pay-TV networks “evaluate the return on investment that radio and television ’tune-in’ campaigns deliver in terms of audience ratings to the programs being promoted,” Arbitron said in a news release Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bm4hei).
Public Knowledge said it opposes the “secretly drafted” Intellectual Property Attache Act being considered by the House Judiciary Committee. The group urged lawmakers to withdraw their consideration of the bill, in a letter sent to Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Ranking Member John Conyers, D-Mich., (http://xrl.us/bngiox). Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said the bill contains language that was previously written in the Stop Online Privacy Act (HR-3261) and “appears to approach intellectual property from an enforcement only approach. ... If the committee is to divert more taxpayer resources towards improving the copyright system, it should start with modernizing the registration system so that artists big and small can get paid.”
Optimal Satcom will provide its enterprise satellite capacity to Satmex. The system, Enterprise Capacity Manager, will allow Satmex personnel “to simultaneously manage their expanding satellite business from their different office locations while ensuring high performance, availability and redundancy,” the companies said. Optimal has already transitioned Satmex’s legacy systems, data and functionality to the new ECM software system, they said.
Dish Network’s decision to stop carrying AMC, WE and IFC last month is a strategic mistake, said Richard Greenfield, BTIG analyst. Although subscriber losses may have been minimal since dropping those AMC Networks channels, “we expect the pace of disconnects to increase as key original programming returns to AMC,” he wrote investors. The DBS company will likely lose VOOM HD’s lawsuit against it, he said. VOOM is a subsidiary of Cablevision, which claimed that Dish breached a contract to carry the defunct network (CD Feb 1 p7). Dish seems to be in a weak legal position, “particularly given the spoliation sanctions and lack of an expert witness to refute VOOM’s expert witness testimony related to its cost structure and damages suffered,” Greenfield said. Dish had no immediate comment. The odds appear to be heavily in the favor of Cablevision and AMC, said Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research. They appear to have a huge head start, “having already won an adverse-interference recommendation to the jury related to Dish having destroyed documents,” he said in a research note.
The Senate Privacy Subcommittee scheduled a hearing on facial recognition technologies at 2:30 p.m. July 18 in Room 226 of the Dirksen building. Scheduled to testify at the hearing are: FTC Associate Director of the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection Maneesha Mithal; FBI Deputy Assistant Director of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division Jerome Pender; Alessandro Acquisti, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University; Jennifer Lynch, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation; National Sheriffs’ Association President Larry Amerson; and Brian Martin, director of biometric research at MorphoTrust. The subcommittee said it also invited representatives from Facebook to testify at the hearing. A company spokesman wouldn’t confirm whether any representative planned to testify.