Correction: Total USTelecom PAC spending for the 2011-2012 cycle through April 20 was $123,500, with $71,000 to Republicans and $52,500 to Democrats (CD May 4 p2).
Cumulus Q1 sales fell 3.5 percent to $245 million from a year earlier, the radio broadcaster said. It swung to a $12.1 million net loss from a $16.1 million profit as a result of higher interest expense associated with the money it borrowed to combine Cumulus Media Partners and Citadel, it said.
ABC News and Univision agreed to start a joint venture to develop a new TV news network targeting U.S. Hispanics. The companies expect to introduce the English-language, 24/7 network next year, they said. Meanwhile, they'll begin publishing online, mobile and social media content this summer, they said. The terms weren’t disclosed.
LIN Media said it agreed to buy New Vision TV’s 13 TV stations and provide some services to five other TV stations that New Vision already serves under sharing arrangements with another broadcaster. LIN agreed to pay $330.4 million and take on $12 million in New Vision’s debt. “We've been evaluating the M&A landscape for quite some time and selectively pursued New Vision Television as it adds geographical diversity, particularly in the South and Western U.S.,” said LIN CEO Vince Sadusky. The stations are in Portland, Ore.; Birmingham, Ala.; Topeka and Wichita, Kan.; Savannah, Ga.; Youngstown, Ohio; Mason City, Iowa; and Honolulu. The company said it will provide more details about the deal when it reports earnings Wednesday.
Frontier Communications’ Q1 profit fell 51 percent year-over-year to $26.8 million as it continued to lose residential and business customers. However, the operator grew its total high-speed Internet base to 1.776 million customers in the quarter. It added 4,400 video subscribers, including the net addition of 9,200 satellite TV customers and a net loss of 4,800 FiOS TV customers. Frontier had around 3 million residential customers and 302,142 business customers at the end of March, both down 9 percent year-over-year.
Seattle shut down its municipal wireless network, which has served the city’s university district and Columbia City neighborhoods and four downtown parks for free since 2005. There’s no business model for a free municipal network, and Wi-Fi hotspots have become increasingly available in the city, said Bill Schrier, who recently retired as Seattle’s chief technology officer. The city had considered letting private carriers take over the network, but no one stepped up, he told us. The network had been used to illegally download video content, he noted.
NAB attorneys pushed for extending the so-called DTV viewability rules in separate meetings with advisers to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, and Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Robert McDowell last week, an ex parte notice said (http://xrl.us/bm6jzx). “We observed that many stations that elect must carry serve niche audiences with unique and diverse programming ... and distributed copies of ex parte communications filed by affected broadcasters.” Additionally, lawyers representing 46 state broadcasters’ associations wrote the FCC to argue for extending the rule, which is set to expire next month. “All of the State Associations’ member television stations compete aggressively with numerous other media outlets for advertising revenue,” they wrote (http://xrl.us/bm6j4h). “Any reduction in the cable subscribers’ ability to access television signals will adversely affect the ability of television stations to secure advertising dollars and remain on the air
Sigecom, d/b/a Wow Internet, Cable and Phone, plans to discontinue its circuit switched local exchange and domestic and international long distance to customers receiving service via the Nortel Cornerstone platform in Evansville, Ind., and surrounding areas, it told the FCC Wireline Bureau, according to a Section 63.71 application released Monday (http://xrl.us/bm6jwb).
Dish Network urged the FCC to adopt final rules in a proceeding that it said would allow the company to advance its wireless initiatives. The company is “generally supportive of the technical proposals” in the notice of proposed rulemaking, it said in an ex parte filing about a meeting with members of the Wireless and International bureaus and other FCC staff (http://xrl.us/bm6jwd). The filing in docket 12-70 raised some questions about whether the rulemaking notice’s proposed buildout schedule for Dish’s spectrum “is reasonable and attainable given the substantial amount of planning and development work needed to launch Dish’s planned network."
Several state public utility commissions sought waivers of the June 1 effective date of a section of the FCC Lifeline order that establishes uniform eligibility criteria. The Montana Public Service Commission, Public Utilities Commission of Oregon and Colorado PUC requested a temporary waiver of the deadline to implement the uniform eligibility criteria, arguing their state legislatures “need time to enact legislation to harmonize the eligibility criteria for Lifeline and similar state programs,” according to an FCC public notice released late Friday by the Wireline Bureau (http://xrl.us/bm6i4z). The Montana PSC wants the effective date for the implementation of uniform eligibility criteria extended a year, to June 1, 2013, and Oregon and Colorado want the date pushed back to July 1, 2013. The California PUC seeks a permanent waiver from certification form requirements, a 12-month waiver to comply with certain re-certification requirements and a seven-month waiver to comply with data collection requirements and temporary address requirements (http://xrl.us/bm6i5d). Comments are due May 15 in docket 11-42.