Monty Tayloe

Broadcasters deny wanting an incentive auction delay for the adoption of ATSC 3.0, but the Expanding Opportunities For Broadcasters Coalition, Public Knowledge, wireless carriers and several wireless trade organizations issued a joint statement against that possibility last week. They “strongly support" the planned first-quarter 2016 start of the incentive auction and oppose delaying the auction “in an attempt to synchronize" the post-auction repacking and the transition to ATSC 3.0,” the statement said.

Rules that will require device manufacturers to create a simple mechanism to switch between a main program audio feed to an emergency alert on the secondary audio stream are outside the authority granted to the FCC by Congress in the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, said Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly at Thursday’s agency meeting. The rule was part of a 2nd report and order requiring pay-TV carriers to pass through such screen-crawl TV alerts to tablets and smartphones streaming multichannel video programming distributors' content through the companies' apps, as expected (see 1505120027). Pai and O’Rielly voted with the rest of the FCC to approve the order and an accompanying Further NPRM, but dissented over the simple mechanism portion.

An FCC order on the agenda for next Thursday’s meeting is expected to require multichannel video programming distributors to pass through a secondary audio stream of emergency alerts which appear as an on-screen crawl on TV sets to tablets and smartphones streaming MVPD content through the companies' apps, said agency officials. It's "my hope and expectation that these new rules will enable individuals who are blind or visually impaired to more quickly respond to time-sensitive emergency situations,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in an April 30 blog post on the items.

CHICAGO -- Cable companies are now principally broadband companies, and the importance of their product means they have bigger obligations and responsibilities, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said at INTX 2015 Wednesday. The industry deserves “straight talk” about the net neutrality order, Wheeler said. "I take you at your word to protect an open Internet, but what about those that follow you?” he said in defense of his Internet conduct rules, a focus of his talk. Wheeler's speech also included a brief mention of the Comcast/Time Warner Cable transaction review and indications that the FCC might act to keep cable companies from suffering higher pole attachment rates.

CHICAGO -- The cable industry needs an image change that better reflects its importance to the era of Internet innovation, said NCTA CEO Michael Powell Tuesday at the kickoff general session of INTX 2015, the first year of NCTA's rebranded cable show. Powell said of the word "cable," "I hate the name." Innovations in online video and the IoT and nearly all new Internet technology depend on cable's infrastructure to exist, said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, who demo'd new customer service, voice control and connected home technology at the INTX session as expected (see 1505040059).

An FCC draft order that would let Pandora buy a South Dakota radio station won’t automatically lead to the streaming radio service being able to buy music rights at the same rate as terrestrial radio stations, said music rights and broadcast attorneys in interviews Thursday. FCC officials have said a draft order is on circulation that would let Pandora buy KXMZ (FM) Box Elder, South Dakota, as long as Pandora can show that it's less than 49 percent foreign-owned (see 1504280046). Pandora is expected to be able to satisfy the condition, said industry lawyers. Pandora has said it wants to buy the station to let it buy music at the lower price enjoyed by terrestrial radio stations.

The FCC is considering a draft order that would let Pandora own a broadcast station as long as the company is less than 49 percent foreign owned, said an agency official. Pandora asked the commission to sign off on its plan to buy KXMZ (FM) Box Elder, South Dakota (see 1411260042), even if it were 100 percent foreign owned, because the company has been unable to verify how foreign owned it is, said Garvey Schubert attorney Melody Virtue, who represents Pandora. “Most publicly traded companies are widely held.” She said the 49 percent threshold reportedly in the draft order would let Pandora proceed with the transaction. The order also includes a requirement that Pandora monitor its ownership going forward, said an FCC official. Pandora and FCC staff have been in contact over how the order would work, and the monitoring conditions are expected be acceptable to Pandora if the order is approved by the full commission, Virtue said. A Media Bureau spokeswoman had no comment.

The opposition that led to Comcast’s withdrawal Friday of its proposed buy of Time Warner Cable is a sign of a tough regulatory environment for transactions, yet the dissolution is likely to lead to a flurry of smaller deals, cable analysts, brokers and industry officials said in interviews. Analysts see a second Charter Communications bid for TWC as the next logical step. Despite FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s denunciation of the Comcast /TWC transaction on Friday as “an unacceptable risk to competition and innovation,” deals between lesser companies aren’t expected to arouse FCC opposition, the analysts said.

Comcast is planning Friday to pull out of its proposed buy of Time Warner Cable, an industry official involved with the transaction told us Thursday. The unraveling of the deal comes in the wake of meetings between Comcast and the FCC Wednesday that indicated an unfavorable view of the deal at the commission, several individuals familiar with the proceedings told us.

The FCC needs to better define the goal of the Downloadable Technical Advisory Committee, several DSTAC members said at Tuesday’s meeting. They echoed a letter sent by several multichannel video programming distributors to DSTAC Chairwoman Cheryl Tritt earlier this month (see 1504160051).