The Game Show Network wants a delay from Chief FCC Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel to file with him a pre-hearing conference memo on the independent cable channel’s program carriage case against Comcast, GSN said. “After conferring with Cablevision on the need for an extension, GSN proposes” that both have until July 2, and Sippel schedules a prehearing conference. The indie will give the ALJ information on issues designated for a hearing before him, “the positions of the parties, and the witnesses each party intends to present at hearing” required in a June 7 order, a filing Thursday in docket 12-122 said (http://xrl.us/bnbvm2). “Some of the material included in its Prehearing Conference Memorandum may require modification during and after discovery.” The companies failed to settle their case, so it goes to the ALJ under a Media Bureau hearing designation order (CD June 11 p11).
The World Bank board extended the Rural Telecommunications Project and credited it $5 million to expand telecom access to over 200,000 inhabitants of the rural Caribbean coast and Rio San Juan department in Nicaragua, the World Bank said. The funding will strengthen TELCOR, the sector’s regulatory body, provide technical assistance for the aided communities, help establish the Institutional Development Unit and support effective project monitoring and assessment, it said.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., wants the FCC to address “very serious allegations” leveled by DirecTV in a since-settled retransmission consent dispute with Tribune that the broadcaster’s investors overruled its management on not initially renewing the retrans deal (CD April 3 p1). “As the Tribune bankruptcy nears a resolution, the Commission must thoroughly review the public interest implications before considering a transfer of both Tribune’s media licenses and waivers to an unknown facility that Tribune’s creditors will create to hold the licenses,” Waters wrote FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The Media Bureau has “taken several steps to invite and facilitate public participation in the Tribune proceeding” and got a “broad range of petitions and public comments” and “held a number of meetings with interested parties,” he replied. “Your concerns will be considered carefully as part of the record when the Commission moves forward with its evaluation of the Tribune applications.” Genachowski’s June 5 reply to the April 17 letter from Waters, who criticized Tribune and other media companies before, was posted Thursday in docket 12-2 (http://xrl.us/bnbvkr). She said the agency should find “whether it generally serves the public interest to allow non-banking financial institutions to seamlessly acquire FCC licenses -- and cross-ownership waivers -- through private entities they create for no other purpose than to hold the licenses until such time when the facility can be sold to another firm.” Tribune had no comment.
Charter Communications followed Comcast and Time Warner Cable in seeking FCC orders relieving it of local franchise authority video-rate regulation (CD June 15 p14), in Charter’s case in Hollis, N.H. The cable operator’s petition Thursday in docket 12-1 cited DBS competition (http://xrl.us/bnbvkg). All recent Media Bureau orders on such petitions are at http://www.warren-news.com/competition.htm.
The FCC fined A Radio Co. $25,000 for not making a voluntary payment of $8,000 or living up to a consent decree involving WEGA(AM) Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Although the company showed it may not be able to afford the $8,000, it didn’t follow the deal’s terms, an Enforcement Bureau forfeiture order said Friday (http://xrl.us/bnbvi7). “The Commission expects parties to honor agreements made in consent decrees, and A Radio’s failure to do so undermines the value of consent decrees as an efficient means to resolve investigations without further expenditure of public resources. Nothing in the record in this case, including A Radio’s ability to pay claim, warrants any leniency or mitigation of the proposed forfeiture amount.” The bureau said earlier this month it won’t enforce a Puerto Rico court’s order that WEGA be attached to a bailee in a case involving A Radio (CD June 5 p13). The bureau separately said a West Palm Beach, Fla., man faces a $15,000 penalty for broadcasting on 92.5 MHz there without a license, in a notice of apparent liability to Pierre Nixon Jean (http://xrl.us/bnbvjq).
Telesat will provide capacity from its Nimiq 6 satellite to Canada-based direct-to-home provider Bell TV. Nimiq 6 will add power and capacity to Bell TV “to better serve its customers across Canada,” Telesat said. It was manufactured by Space Systems/Loral and launched last month at 91.1 degrees west, Telesat said.
The Office of Management and Budget approved for a three-year period the information collection requirements associated with the FCC’s migratory bird order on remand (http://xrl.us/bnbu3b). The requirement takes effect upon publication in The Federal Register.
FirstNet will start running next year, a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) official said, referring to the national wireless broadband network for first responders. Police and fire agencies “don’t quite understand what they're getting into” in the “huge shift” from generations of disparate communications systems that they've had to “duct tape” together, said Emil Olbrich, the lead project engineer in NIST’s Office of Law Enforcement Standards. Government interoperability testing is needed to allow public distribution of information about LTE networks, because mobile carriers share specifications information only in confidence, he said late last week at the NGMN Industry Conference in San Francisco. His office and the NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunication Sciences have branded joint efforts as Public Safety Communication Research. The NIST lab in Boulder, Colo., can do unique tests in part because of access to Table Mountain, the site of a National Radio Quiet Zone, Olbrich said. The other zone is mainly in Virginia and West Virginia.
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the FCC’s FY13 funding request as part of the financial services and general government appropriations bill on a 16-14 party line vote. The committee Thursday reported out the bill, which contains $347.8 million funding for the agency, a 2.3 percent increase from the current year. The bill includes provisions to require the commission and the FTC to study the online privacy policies that govern how companies handle consumer information sent over wireless networks. The privacy provision could negatively impact “a number of different industries that are spurring innovation and creating jobs,” said Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. “We need to be very careful when we are dealing with privacy to make sure that we find that right balance between privacy, which is very important, and innovation and economic growth.” Last week the House Appropriations Subcommittee introduced language into its FY13 spending bill that would restrict the FCC’s ability to implement a new rule that would put some TV stations’ political file contents online (CD June 7 p2).
The National Hispanic Media Coalition sent letters to two of Clear Channel’s investors, Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners, urging them to curtail what NHMC described as Clear Channel’s “hate profiteering,” particularly in the John and Ken Show, the group said (http://xrl.us/bnbsty). NHMC said it previously presented 16,000 signatures asking the radio broadcaster to fire John and Ken, as well as a letter in which NHMC described what it said was the show’s failure to adhere to Clear Channel’s conduct, ethics and diversity policies. That letter received no response, it said. The National Latino Congresó passed an advertiser boycott resolution in May, and the John and Ken Show has lost more than 30 ad deals with national companies, NHMC said. Clear Channel had no comment.