Senate Commerce Committee members of both parties said there’s a battle coming as they consider how to rewrite or possibly purge some of the 1992 Cable Act. There was a general accord Tuesday during a committee hearing that consumers need more choice and control of the video they receive, but members disagreed over how to achieve that. Retransmission consent disputes were of particular concern for members, who said they had received calls from their constituents about the recent retrans blackouts.
Notable CROSS rulings
News Corp. attorneys met with FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and an aide to urge the commission against changing retransmission consent rules, an ex parte notice shows. “We explained the marketplace works well and that nearly all negotiations are resolved amicably, without any disruption to consumers,” it said (http://xrl.us/bnh3at). Answering a question from Pai, the lawyers said it’s time for the commission to repeal its ban on cross-ownership of a newspaper and broadcast license in the same market.
Two decades of change in the video market warrant a fresh look at the Cable Act, House and Senate Republicans said ahead of Tuesday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the 1992 legislation. Retransmission consent, program carriage, compulsory copyright licenses and program access rules are likely subjects for consideration, said a minority memo that circulated ahead of the hearing. Cable groups will press the committee to rewrite the 20-year-old rules that govern broadcast signal fee contracts in a way that reflects the current video market.
The FCC’s consistently said for 42 years that radio has a “limited role” in “original newsgathering and dissemination, particularly with respect to local news,” said representatives of companies seeking an end to newspaper/radio cross-ownership limits. “A number of commenters in addition to Bonneville/Scranton also have submitted serious, analytical arguments for lifting the newspaper/radio rule,” those two companies said in docket 09-182. “Those who apparently oppose any changes to the regulation have provided no specific discussion concerning newspaper/radio combinations.” There'd be “factual inconsistencies that would plague any effort to establish a ’top 20 market’ threshold for granting newspaper/radio regulatory relief,” lawyers for Bonneville International and Scranton Times LP reported telling Commissioner Ajit Pai (http://xrl.us/bndbh3). A rulemaking notice proposed ending limits on how many radio and TV stations can be jointly owned within a market, while allowing cross-ownership of daily papers and broadcasters in top markets under certain scenarios (CD Jan 20 p4).
News Corp.’s decision to pursue a separation of its publishing businesses probably won’t change the way companies and public interest groups are advocating for and against the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership (NBCO) ban, industry and public interest officials we interviewed said. News Corp. announced Thursday that its board had approved a plan to pursue a separation of its publishing businesses from its entertainment assets. Public interest advocates who want the commission to retain the ban said the move represents further evidence that combining broadcast and newspaper assets doesn’t work for businesses.
Cox Enterprises wants the FCC to fully repeal the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule, as the NBCO rule is “more than 37 years old” and “the modern media market has fundamentally changed,” an executive of the owner of daily newspapers and radio and TV stations told Chief Bill Lake and others in the Media Bureau. “The unprecedented economic challenges facing newspapers and broadcast stations present a solid justification for the Commission to provide local media properties with the flexibility to compete with new competition from multichannel entertainment providers and the Internet,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 09-182 (http://xrl.us/bnc3sx). “Even if the Commission is not prepared to repeal the NBCO Rule, changed circumstances justify liberalizing the rule to reflect local media market conditions that exist today. ... Permitting radio/newspaper combinations could lead to improved local news."
Two years into its digital agenda program the EU has reached about a third of its goals, but progress remains mixed and regulatory divergences wide, the European Commission said Monday. There’s too much complacency, said Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Europeans are hungry for digital technologies, but they're being held back by EU governments and industry, she said. There have been positive developments, such as nearly ubiquitous broadband across Europe, and booming mobile broadband take-up, the EC said. But the results so far spark worries that Europe won’t meet its 2015 goals and will fall behind competitors, Constantijn van Oranje, a member of Kroes’ cabinet, said at a press briefing.
STOCKHOLM -- “The multi-stakeholder self-regulating system of Internet governance … has served the system and the world exceedingly well,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt Friday at the European Dialogue (EuroDIG) conference. Bildt pointed to the success of the Internet and the parts that organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) played.
A group of broadcast executives representing the NBC TV affiliates met with FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and an aide to discuss retransmission consent, broadcast spectrum, media ownership and the online public file rule, an ex parte notice said (http://xrl.us/bnbvyd). The executives talked about the importance of retrans and local exclusivity rules and their desire to work with the commission on the incentive spectrum auction and TV band repacking. They also talked up the benefits of shared services agreement among TV stations and the need for duopolies and cross-ownership of newspaper assets. They also discussed a proposal to put certain political file information online without disclosing station’s ad rates.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack thinks the new FCC rules on high-cost loop support make the USF less predictable, and that the Wireline Bureau’s waiver process uses the wrong standard, he told FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski last week. The commission has received several petitions for review of the Wireline Bureau’s HCLS Benchmarks Order setting out a regression methodology for determining reimbursable support on capital expenditures. Six companies have filed waiver requests of the various rules adopted in last fall’s USF/intercarrier compensation order, an FCC spokesman said.