FCC nominees may have moved one step closer to Senate confirmation after the House Commerce Committee on Friday shared the FCC’s LightSquared documents with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Grassley was blocking votes on Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai until he got the documents, but the senator’s hold “stands pending document review,” a Grassley spokeswoman said: The senator “appreciates receiving the documents, and he and his staff look forward to reviewing them.” Grassley and the committee “are continuing to work together, and we will have additional updates to share as we assess the information that has been delivered and what additional documents are needed for our investigations,” a House Commerce spokeswoman said. The committee isn’t yet publicly releasing the LightSquared documents, which amount to more than 13,000 pages (CD March 29 p1), she said. It’s up to House Commerce when to release the documents, the Grassley spokeswoman said. The documents comprise communications among the FCC, White House and LightSquared investor Harbinger.
Me-TV said it signed affiliation agreements with two TV stations owned by Morgan Murphy Media. The stations KLXY-TV Spokane and KAPP-TV Yakima will carry Me-TV programming on a digital subchannel. Terms weren’t disclosed.
The FCC shouldn’t let New Testament Church (NTC) out of closed captioning rules, advocates for the deaf and hard of hearing told the FCC. NTC’s petition for exemption from the rules failed to present a compelling case that the requirements would impose an undue economic burden, said a letter from a coalition of groups including Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Inc., the National Association of the Deaf, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network, the Association of Late-Deafened Adults, and the Cerebral Palsy and Deaf Organization (http://xrl.us/bm2xue). “It is essential that the Commission grant petitions for exemptions from captioning rules only in the rare case that a petition conclusively demonstrates that captioning its programming would impose a truly untenable economic burden,” the groups said. Though NTC has provided quotes from captioning companies of annual costs up to $4,524, “NTC has not demonstrated it has insufficient funds to pay for captioning,” they said. And though NTC has said providing captioning for their program would nearly double its budget, the commission must account for NTC’s overall financial resources, not just the resources available for a specific program, they said.
Parts of the FCC’s January Lifeline reform order impose costs that violate the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), CTIA said in a filing at the Office of Management and Budget. Comments were due Friday on the costs of the requirements relative to the PRA. CTIA objected to a rule requiring verification of Lifeline customers’ temporary addresses every three months, the biennial outside audit requirement for larger Lifeline recipients, and extensive disclosures required for all Lifeline marketing materials, regardless of medium. “Many of the new rules in the Order will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Lifeline program, and CTIA strongly supports them,” CTIA said (http://xrl.us/bm2xt4). “However, certain discrete new rules are both unreasonably burdensome and unlikely to achieve the Commission’s goals.” As one example, CTIA said the FCC significantly underestimates the cost of complying with the outside auditing requirement for carriers that receive $5 million or more annually in Lifeline support. “The Commission’s estimate is based on 25 hours per audit at $40 per hour,” the group said. “By comparison, ... 2010 data suggests that financial audits of public companies require over 12,500 hours, and private companies over 3,000 hours, and auditors’ fees range from $185 to $218 per hour."
The sponsors of FCC reform legislation in the House all have received large campaign contributions from PACs and people associated with industry groups who praised the bill (HR-3309), MapLight said last week. “Eight of the bill’s 10 sponsors have at least one, if not several, FCC-regulated companies among their top 10 contributing organizations,” said MapLight, a nonprofit that cross-references political contributions to legislation, citing data from the Center for Responsive Politics. “The contributions listed are from employees of the companies listed as wells as PACs connected to the companies listed,” a MapLight research director said. Comcast made the top 10 list of five sponsors, while the [NCTA] made four top 10 lists.” In the period from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2011, lead sponsor Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., received from PACs and employees $30,500 from Comcast, $25,500 from CenturyLink, $13,500 from AT&T, $13,000 from NAB and $11,800 from Clear Channel. The complete report is available at http://xrl.us/bm2xah. Walden’s office didn’t comment.
The FCC should let viewability rules sunset when they expire June 12, NCTA executives told front-office staff in the Media Bureau, which issued a rulemaking notice on the requirement that TV stations guaranteed cable carriage must be in analog and digital formats in systems not all-digital. “All of the factors that the Commission had specifically identified as relevant to its review of the continuing need for the rule weigh heavily in favor of allowing the rule to sunset,” the association said. It said distributing such stations in analog or digital should be sufficient. An exemption for small cable systems from having to carry those broadcasters in both formats should continue, the NCTA said. “The number of systems that qualify for the exemption represent a small and diminishing number of subscribers, with the total universe of eligible cable systems representing approximately 2.4 million subscribers, or 4.1 percent of basic cable subscribers.” NCTA’s ex parte filing Thursday is in docket 98-120 (http://xrl.us/bm2xf3).
FCC Auction 93 ended Thursday, with 22 percent of FM construction permits left unsold and the other 93 going for $3.83 million net (http://xrl.us/bm2xcd). That’s less than half the $8.54 million raised in the last auction of FM stations in 2011, though Auction 91 also had unsold permits (http://xrl.us/big4gt). “That slump is consistent with an eight-year trend,” auction lawyer Raymond Quianzon of Fletcher Heald wrote on the law firm’s blog (http://xrl.us/bm2xht). “The considerable downturn in proceeds may be attributable to any number of factors, including the rough economic times and the fact that a number of the permits this year were re-treads that had already gone unsold (or, in some cases, sold but unbuilt) in previous auctions.” Almost a third of the permits in Auction 93 were sold for the lowest possible bid, “and we can look for more re-tread opportunities in future auctions, since more than two dozen permits had no bidders at all,” Quianzon wrote. Others hadn’t expected this auction to raise much (CD Jan 4 p4).
Comments on changing low-power FM rules so LPFMs can operate at higher power and be licensed to tribes are due May 7, replies May 21, said an FCC notice (http://xrl.us/bm2xaw) in Friday’s Federal Register. Commissioners approved the rulemaking proposal March 19, and an order also implementing parts of the 2010 Local Community Radio Act appeared in Thursday’s Federal Register (CD April 6 p12).
The FCC must consider the trust relationship between the U.S. government and federally recognized tribes as it enacts policies impacting tribally owned telecom companies, the Mescalero Apache Tribe told officials from the FCC Wireline Bureau and the Office of Native Affairs and Policy, said an ex parte letter (http://xrl.us/bm2w6b). The USF/intercarrier compensation order “does not sufficiently incentivize broadband development on Tribal lands,” it said. Representatives from Mescalero Apache Telecom expressed concern about the use of regression analysis to limit reimbursable capital and operating expenses to determine high-cost loop support (HCLS), and suggested the regression methodology include inputs on climate, soil-type, terrain, density, percentage of Lifeline customers and amount of unemployment. They also requested a cap of 95 percent on HCLS benchmarks rather than the proposed 90 percent.
Purple Communications doesn’t offer recruiting or placement services for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, it told the FCC in an ex parte last week (http://xrl.us/bm2w3k). The letter responded to a Sorenson meeting with Wireline Bureau officials to address “Purple’s practice of placing deaf individuals at call centers for employers such as Allstate,” which it said violated the commission’s rules barring the use of incentives by video relay service providers (http://xrl.us/bm2w3p). According to Purple, Sorenson’s ex parte “intentionally misstates facts and makes false and baseless allegations.” Although Purple does offer Allstate “its expertise” regarding employing the deaf and hard of hearing, Allstate employs the deaf “of its own volition,” Purple said. “Sorenson is attempting to mislead the Commission and the public by drawing conclusions and making careless allegations based upon practices that do not exist.” “Sorenson looks forward to the Commission’s decision in this matter and is confident that if such programs are deemed compensable from the Interstate TRS fund that Sorenson will significantly grow its volume of” VRS minutes, the company said in an email response.