DirecTV will redeem all outstanding 7.63 percent senior notes due 2016, it said Friday. The company said it will redeem the notes May 15 “at a price of 103.80 percent of the principal amount, together with accrued interest to the redemption date.” As of Friday, $1.5 billion aggregate principal amount of notes remain outstanding, DirecTV said.
Comcast wants an end to rate regulation in part of California wine country, adding to the petitions for effective competition posted online by the FCC last week (CD April 13 p11). The cable operator said it should get deregulation in American Canyon, Calistoga, Napa, Sonoma and St. Helena because DBS providers serve those local franchise areas and the number of households buying TV in those LFAs “far exceeds” the FCC’s threshold of 15 percent. The petition is in docket 12-103 (http://xrl.us/bm3obp).
A proposed FCC equal employment opportunity fine against a cable operator shows it’s not just radio and TV stations that can’t limit job postings to websites, and must also take other endeavors under EEO rules, a broadcast attorney said Friday. Thursday’s Media Bureau notice of apparent liability shows the agency “reiterating the position that it has taken with broadcasters” that “online recruiting and recruiting through the station’s own internal sources are not enough,” David Oxenford wrote on Davis Wright’s blog (http://xrl.us/bm3oao). “Recruiting efforts need to include other sources designed to reach all of the significant groups in the system’s area.” The law firm recommends pay-TV and broadcast clients give job notices to community groups, work with schools, use employment agencies and buy ads in a “widely read local newspaper (a relic, perhaps, of 2003 when these rules were first adopted) to achieve the required broad outreach to community groups expected by the FCC,” Oxenford said.
The FCC’s proposal for forbearance as a solution to direct alien ownership limits seems cumbersome and unnecessary, a broadcast lawyer said. It seems that a number of commenters in docket 11-133 were concerned about the interplay of two Communications Act provisions regarding broadcast ownership, Donald Evans of Fletcher Heald said in a blog post (http://xrl.us/bm3oxo). Provisions in Section 310(b)(3-4) “have long been thought to define two separate classes of ownership, direct and indirect, with distinct restrictions applicable to each,” he wrote. The commission is seeking comment on the guidance in the provisions, which seemed to “treat indirect interests in licensees as being subject to the strict 20 percent prohibition of Section 310(b)(3) rather than the more liberal 25 percent provision applicable to indirect interests under Section 310(b)(4),” Evans said. The FCC proposed a forbearance process to get around the Section 310(b)(3) prohibition “if it applies to indirect interests.” The process “can apply only to telecom licensees because the forbearance process is limited to that class of regulated entities,” Evans said.
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn praised the FCC for selecting the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism to do a literature review on the information needs of communities. The commission solicited bids on the project in February (CD Feb 8 p8). Clyburn said she’s “optimistic and confident that through this study the Commission will be able to effectively meet its statutory and judicially mandated obligations."
The FCC’s USF and intercarrier compensation order will lead to lower levels of investment in broadband and telecom assets because of new uncertainties over future cash flow, representatives from an industry consulting firm told agency officials, according to an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bm3j2c). As the cost of capital grows and loan defaults continue, rural LECs will be increasingly unable to get access to the capital, Balhoff and Williams said: “Retroactive” regulatory recovery rules and a “rigorous” waiver process will contribute to an “unclear path to a viable operating model in high-cost regions."
The FCC Media Bureau proposed an $11,000 fine against Full Channel TV for alleged violations of equal employment opportunity (EEO) reporting requirements, a notice of apparent liability said (http://xrl.us/bm3jyn). The bureau’s review of Full Channel found it failed to widely recruit for three full-time vacancies it filled during 2011 and 2010, the notice said. It said Full Channel didn’t compile and maintain an EEO public file report.
Mobile Future urged Senate lawmakers to “expeditiously” pass the Wireless Tax Fairness Act (S-543) in a letter sent Wednesday to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. “We are seeing a significantly growing tax burden for wireless consumers who are increasingly relying on and benefiting from tremendous new mobile opportunities,” wrote Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter. States have fought the bill because it proposes a five-year moratorium on new state and local taxes on wireless (CD Nov 2 p8). But the provision would protect consumers and “help ensure that mobile adoption and usage is not discouraged by new, discriminatory state and local wireless taxes,” Spalter said.
Charter Communications will use FourthWall Media’s “Ad Widgets” interactive ad system in five markets with about 800,000 households, the vendor said Thursday. It said that using CableLabs-developed specifications the system will let Charter deliver ads targeted to viewer demographics and geography.
Michael Copps was honored by about a dozen former FCC members and both current regular commissioners at the NCTA Thursday, with many saying his commitment to media issues helped inform if not always influence their views. Copps’ continuing work on communications issues means “there remains a Copps on the beat,” said FCC Chief of Staff Zac Katz. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said she hopes, like Copps, “we should all disagree without being disagreeable.” Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell noted that he and Copps voted the same way on all issues during the latter’s six-month tenure as acting chairman in the first half of 2009. During that period, which overlapped with the switch from analog by all U.S. full-power TV stations, the digital transition was “seamless as it could be, for anybody,” said Jonathan Adelstein, a Democratic FCC member then who now runs the Rural Utilities Service. “We tried to change the arc of the media in this country, toward localism.” For Kathleen Abernathy, a Republican commissioner during the first four years of Copps’ tenure, he was “a worthy opponent,” she said at the event organized by the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council. “That’s a good thing -- it means that people are passionate about what they believe in.” Gloria Tristani, who left the FCC as a Democratic commissioner a few months after Copps arrived in 2001, called him “Mr. Public Interest.” Copps, who left the commission Dec. 31, said trying to reach decisions where the public interest is served means “very much to me,” and “when we disagree, we agree to disagree,” something Washington doesn’t have but needs.