The FCC granted a petition for reconsideration filed by Madison Bcstg. Group, former licensee of station WLVA(FM) and former owner of 5 antenna structures in Lynchburg, Va. The Commission originally had issued a $12,000 forfeiture order to the company for failing to post its antenna structure registration numbers and failing to maintain specified painting of them. The FCC concluded that cancellation of the fine was warranted since Madison had assigned the license and no longer was a Commission licensee. The antenna structures have been dismantled and the company doesn’t own any others.
Country of origin cases
The trial in the CBS-TV and Fox copyright infringement suit against EchoStar over the latter’s carriage of distant network signals is scheduled to open April 7 in U.S. Dist. Court, Miami, EchoStar said in its annual 10-K report filed with the SEC. The trial comes nearly 5 years after the initial suit was filed involving the networks, EchoStar and PrimeTime 24, which provided distant network programming for the satellite service. EchoStar since has reached settlements with ABC (April 2002) and NBC (Nov. 2002). It also settled with PrimeTime 24, which had filed a breach-of- contract suit in Sept. 1998 against the satellite service, seeking $10 million in damages. The suit has bounced between federal district and appeals courts for much of the 5 years. A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in Sept. 2000, blocking EchoStar from continuing to provide distant network signals, but that ruling was overturned by the 11th U.S. Appeals Court, Atlanta, returned it for further proceedings. Six of the original 8 plaintiffs, including CBS-TV and Fox, entered court-ordered mediation with EchoStar in late Jan. Meanwhile, the company said the EchoStar IX satellite was scheduled for May launch aboard a Boeing sea launch vehicle positioned near the equator. EchoStar IX, which has thirty-two 120-w transponders, will be located at 121 degrees W and will provide Ku-/Ka-band spot beam service. The Space Systems/Loral satellite also has a C-band payload. The bird is expected to be operational 60-90 days after launch, an EchoStar spokesman said. Still in limbo are EchoStar’s plans for VisionStar, which has a license for a Ka-band satellite at 113 degrees W. EchoStar owns 90% of VisionStar and has asked the FCC for an extension after failing to meet to construction and launch milestones. It paid $2.8 million last year to increase its stake in VisionStar to 90%. VisionStar had missed April 30 and May 31, 2001, deadlines for construction and launch of the satellite, respectively, and the FCC previously denied a request for extension.
The 5th U.S. Appeals Court, New Orleans, affirmed 2 “take-nothing” judgments by the U.S. Dist. Court, San Antonio, upholding Broadcast Satellite International (BSI) in a suit against the National Digital Television Center (NDTC), saying it found no errors by the lower court. BSI had sued NDTC charging breach of contract. NDTC had an agreement with PanAmSat through BSI to lease transponder 13 on its Galaxy VII satellite and the 2 parties had an agreement in which the former agreed to pay $35,000 a month to BSI as an assignment fee. That agreement was to extend to Dec. 2006 or whenever it was terminated, when the monthly fee no longer would be due to BSI. The lawsuit said in April 2000, NDTC stopped paying the assignment fee and BSI sued. NDTC countersued, saying that the original lease agreement had been terminated in Dec. 1998 and that BSI owed it fees for Dec. 1998-April 2000. BSI didn’t appeal the take-nothing judgment of the court under which neither party would pay the other, but questioned whether the district court judge had charged the jury too narrowly, causing it to return “improper findings": “The special interrogatory [to the jury] was: ‘Did NDTC terminate the [satellite lease] for the sole reason of avoiding its obligation under the [fee] agreement?'” BSI also questioned whether the “termination” of the lease was valid even though it wasn’t informed. The appeals court said that whether BSI knew about the termination didn’t make it invalid, even though NDTC continued to use the transponder under a new agreement with PanAmSat. As for the charge to the jury, the appeals court said it was rightfully narrow because of the wording of the fee agreement that said the lease agreement couldn’t be terminated “for the sole purpose of avoiding its obligations under this [fee] agreement.” BSI’s question, “Did NDTC fail to comply with the payment obligation” under the fee agreement, was too broad because the only violation was written into the agreement, the court said. Neither BSI nor NDTC could be reached for comment.
CBS/Viacom, Fox, NBC and Telemundo said a report issued last month by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) (CD Feb 19 p12) was “wholly unreliable and useless as a basic for policy making.” The networks released a critique of the original PEJ report they had commissioned by Economists Inc. The PEJ report examined the quality of local newscasts and said it found small station groups and network-affiliated stations tended to produce higher quality newscasts than larger companies and networks’ owned-and-operated (O&O) stations, respectively. Economists Inc. said PEJ reached its conclusions based on a subjective and arbitrary grading method. The rebuttal said the PEJ study had failed to take into account that ratings were growing more rapidly at larger group-owned stations, the quantity of local news offered by stations, market size, among other things.
MSS systems shouldn’t be treated as terrestrial systems as far as emergency and enhanced 911 (E911) services are concerned because they don’t meet all of the same service criteria, Iridium told the FCC. “The Commission cannot assume that what one [mobile satellite service (MSS)] system can do all can do,” it said. For example, using national call centers with MSS systems could “result in delays and the potential for human error,” Iridium said, and existing systems that didn’t use national centers would be required to make additional investments that changed the systems. Call centers are feasible only for a system without call- forwarding capabilities, the company said, otherwise, routing emergency calls to a number within the state where the call originated was “vastly preferable.” The deployment of E911 would be even more difficult, Iridium said, because existing MSS handsets don’t include GPS technology. The addition of new features would be costly “given the relatively low volume of users and the high investment in the user terminals,” Iridium said.
The Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) is expected to vote this spring on an enhanced VSB (E-VSB) modulation standard for DTV, nearly a year later than originally planned, Nat Ostroff, Sinclair Bcst. Group vp-new technology told our affiliate Consumer Electronics Daily at a Kagan seminar in N.Y.C., but key ATSC official said polling of full committee was unlikely before midsummer, at earliest. The committee vote would cap a 2-year process in which the field of 8 proposals for E-VSB was winnowed to 3 and ultimately one -- the version developed jointly by Zenith and NxtWave Communications, he said.
Boeing Delta IV launched a U.S. Air Force (USAF) Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS) spacecraft Mon. evening, Boeing said. The original launch date had been Feb. 7 but it was rescheduled out of respect for the victims of the Columbia shuttle disaster (CD Feb 6 p9). The launch subsequently was delayed 3 more times for “technical issues” and unfavorable weather conditions, Boeing said. The DSCS III A3 is the first satellite in the USAF evolved expendable launch vehicle program and is to provide secure voice and high rate data communications, the company said.
The FCC fined Morgan Tower $10,000 for failing to light and adequately paint an antenna structure in Cinnaminson, N.J. Morgan had said the site originally had been given no- hazard status by the FAA, so the tower wasn’t painted or lit. The FCC said Morgan had failed to provide a copy of that FAA report and noted that Morgan had said the FAA had no record of it.
The FCC plans to take up at its Thurs. agenda meeting a proposal and an order addressing rule changes for Multipoint Distribution Service (MDS) and Instructional TV Fixed Service (ITFS) licensees, which have sought modifications to help deploy next-generation systems for wireless broadband. MDS and ITFS operators urged the FCC Wireless Bureau last fall to move away from a “broadcast-style” approach to that spectrum in areas such as interference analysis. One expectation among industry lobbyists is that among the questions on which the FCC will seek feedback is whether ITFS licensees should be able to sell, not just lease, their spectrum.
The 3 largest U.S. wireless carriers have taken their challenge to the FCC’s mobile satellite service (MSS) licensing orders to the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C. In late Jan., the FCC rejected a request by AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless and Verizon Wireless that it review 8 MSS authorizations granted by the International Bureau. “The FCC engaged in unreasoned decision-making by licensing the applicants on a satellite-only basis without resolving questions about the viability of a satellite-only service, determining instead that they should ’succeed or fail in the market on their own merits,'” the wireless carriers said in a notice of appeal.