Block Communications and Time Warner Cable are in a carriage blackout in Louisville, Ky., over the broadcaster’s WDRB (Fox) and WMYO (MyNetworkTV) in the market. When the companies couldn’t reach a new retransmission consent deal before a contract expired early Friday morning, the station was blacked out, a Time Warner Cable spokeswoman said. “We share your disappointment at this broadcaster blackout, and will continue to negotiate,” the cable company said on its website (http://xrl.us/bm93wo). “Despite the fact that we have offered to pay the same price that Block charges Insight Communications (which Time Warner Cable purchased earlier this year), Block has refused to allow us to continue carrying their stations. We think that’s unfair.” WDRB and WMYO “tried hard to reach an agreement,” the first station said (http://xrl.us/bm93wu). “After much negotiating, Time Warner has decided to reject our repeated offers.” The American Television Alliance of pay-TV companies including Time Warner Cable, which is seeking retrans rule changes, said the FCC or Congress needs to act. Until then, “no community is immune from losing their local stations to broadcaster greed,” the coalition said. Broadcasters say retrans works.
Univision and Verizon renewed for multiple years a carriage deal, they said Friday. The telco will keep carrying the Spanish-language broadcast network’s TV stations and VOD programming, cable channel Galavision and the programmer’s new sports, soap opera and news channels. The deal “includes plans for multiplatform authentication rights for UVideos, Univision’s new video platform where viewers can interact” with programs, Univision said.
Mitchell Lazarus, a lawyer at Fletcher Heald, asked why the FCC turned down a request by Starkey Labs to use to use a narrower bandwidth than FCC rules require. The decision relates to Section 25.247 of its rules, covering a vast array of unlicensed devices. “Owing to technical limitations in hearing aids, Starkey wanted to use signals that occupy only 100 kHz. But it offered to reduce the power proportionately, to comply with the 6.3 milliwatts per 3 kHz limit,” Lazarus wrote on the firm’s blog (http://xrl.us/bm93pr). “Procedurally, it asked for either a waiver or a rulemaking. The FCC said no. The rulemaking Starkey requested ‘plainly does not warrant consideration,’ it said, and to grant a waiver would ‘undermine the underlying purpose of the rules.’ Usually we agree with the FCC’s technical decisions. But this one frankly baffles us.” Lazarus said the decision (http://xrl.us/bm93pi) by the Office of Engineering and Technology was based on several factors. “That Starkey failed to demonstrate its device would not increase the potential for interference to licensed services, and would not disrupt the ‘ecosystem’ of multiple unlicensed devices in the same bands; and that a waiver would undo the FCC’s goal of barring narrow-band systems from using the relatively high power limits under Section 15.247,” he said. “But wait a minute. If Starkey had offered a one-watt device occupying 500 kHz, the FCC would have approved it without a second thought. Get out the calculator: that permissible one-watt device, if it uses spectrum uniformly, puts the same 6.3 milliwatts into each 3 kHz of bandwidth. … Starkey wanted to use a permissible level of power-per-spectrum, just over less spectrum than a compliant device. That creates less potential for interference, not more. And it does nothing to violate the prohibition on narrow-band devices using high power: Starkey would have to stay under 0.2 watts, rather than the full watt allowed to 500 kHz devices.” Lazarus said he’s not involved in the Starkey proceeding but does a lot of work with unlicensed devices.
Windstream plans to cut up to 400 management positions in Q3, the operator said. It’s critical that “our management structure be as simple and as responsive to customers as possible,” CEO Jeff Gardner said. The restructuring would save the company up to $40 million, Windstream said.
The FCC Wireline Bureau is seeking comment on the National Exchange Carrier Association’s proposed formula to modify the average schedule universal service high-cost loop support formula (http://xrl.us/bm93pk). If approved, the formula would take effect July 1 and remain in effect through Dec. 31. Comments are due June 15 in docket 10-90.
Instead of selling its rural lines, AT&T seeks to use a new broadband technology to upgrade the lines, CEO Randall Stephenson said during the Sanford Bernstein investor conference Friday. He said the company is looking into the possibility of deploying IP-DSLAM, a technology that extracts Internet traffic from a DSL line so it can join the provider’s network. Meanwhile, the U.S. wireless industry is likely to have more consolidations, with carriers buying up each other’s spectrum, he said. Though it would be hard for companies like AT&T to have another big acquisition, small wireless mergers and acquisitions are inevitable, he said. The industry is “really stressed” due to the lack of spectrum, he said. Federal regulators need to evaluate ways in which spectrum can be more easily transferred and put to the most efficient use, he said.
The FCC International Bureau denied Spectrum Five’s petition for reconsideration of the order granting DirecTV authority to construct, launch and operate a 17/24 GHz broadcasting satellite service at 102.825 degrees west. The bureau also denied Spectrum Five’s request to access the U.S. market from a space station in the Netherlands, it said in an order (http://xrl.us/bm93my). Spectrum Five’s proposed station can’t provide U.S. service “without causing harmful interference to the previously licensed DirecTV RB-2 space station located less than one-half degree away,” it said. Spectrum claimed that the bureau inappropriately licensed DirecTV to operate an over-powered space station, the bureau said. It also claimed that the grant gives DirecTV “an unfair competitive advantage over other licensees by allowing it to operate at power higher than the limits in the commission’s rules.” The company’s assertion is based on an erroneous reading of the rules and the DirecTV RB-2 order, the bureau said.
The House Communications Subcommittee is planning an FCC oversight hearing with all five FCC commissioners, a committee spokeswoman confirmed Friday. The Subcommittee hasn’t formally announced the hearing and the spokeswoman could not confirm its timing or location.
Microsoft’s announcement it will enable a do-not-track setting by default in the coming Internet Explorer 10 drew applause from privacy backers, but it only whetted the appetite of Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a Congressional Privacy Caucus co-chair. Markey called the browser default an “important first step” for more privacy protections for consumers, but said he hoped Microsoft and others would go a step further, “so that Do Not Track also means ‘Do Not Collect,’ giving consumers the ability to say no to both targeted advertising and collection of their personal data.” Consumers Union noted Microsoft was the first major browser maker to enable the setting by default. “Traditionally, consumers have been left with all the responsibility when it comes to protecting personal data online” but Microsoft has taken “one of the first steps in shifting that balance,” so consumers don’t have to “navigate confusing or difficult privacy settings across multiple platforms,” said Ioana Rusu, regulatory counsel. Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer Brendon Lynch laid out the reasons for Microsoft’s decision in a blog post (http://xrl.us/bm929m) late Thursday. “We've made today’s decision because we believe in putting people first,” though Microsoft hopes that “many consumers will see this value and make a conscious choice to share information in order to receive more personalized ad content,” he said. “For us, that is the key distinction.” Microsoft can only go so far on its own, though, because websites don’t yet have a common understanding of how to respond to the do-not-track “signal” the browser sends, Lynch said. The company is committed to using its position in the “relevant industry, government and standards bodies to push for a clear action” for ad networks to respect such browser signals and opt out users from behavioral ads, he said. As a growing ad network itself, Microsoft has a “unique perspective into this discussion,” and Microsoft Advertising plans to treat the browser signal as a behavioral opt-out under the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) self-regulatory program, Lynch said: Microsoft’s ad division is “actively working” with other ad industry leaders on what a do-not-track implementation plan might look like, and hopes to announce more details “in the coming months.” The ad industry backlash to Microsoft was quick, with Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) President Randall Rothenberg calling the browser default “a step backwards in consumer choice, and we fear it will harm many of the businesses, particularly publishers, that fuel so much of the rich content on the internet” (http://xrl.us/bm93ar). IAB, a founding member of the DAA, believes “the only workable policy is to educate consumers and allow them to control how data is collected for certain purposes, including interest-based advertising,” Rothenberg said: “A default setting that automatically blocks content violates the consumer’s right to choose.” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz told the Senate Commerce Committee at a hearing last month he expected the commission’s work with the DAA would result in a “meaningful” do-not-track mechanism by the end of the year (CD May 10 p9).
Communications Workers of America warned the FCC that approving Verizon Wireless’s buys of AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox, without conditions, could hurt deployment of FiOS in a number of major cities. “As discussed in the meeting and reflected in the attached documents, Verizon has not deployed its FiOS network in a number of large- and medium-sized cities in its footprint, including Boston, Baltimore, Albany, Buffalo, and Syracuse among others,” the union said (http://xrl.us/bm926n). “A demographic analysis comparing the population in these non-FiOS cities with the population in the suburbs ringing these cities where Verizon has deployed FiOS demonstrates that people of color and lesser economic means are disproportionately impacted by Verizon’s decision not to deploy FiOS in these areas.” CWA said the commission should prohibit as a condition of the deal Verizon and the cable companies from cross-marketing in the telco’s landline footprint, require Verizon to build out FiOS to 95 percent of households it passes in existing markets and increase build out in rural and low-income areas.