Sen. John Kerry worries about a one-sided negotiation over spectrum in the House-Senate conference working on the payroll tax cut extension, the Senate Communications Subcommittee chairman said Tuesday. The extension bill, due by month-end, is expected to include spectrum auction authorization to pay for the bill. While the House and Senate Commerce committees have developed individual spectrum bills, the conference has three members from the House Commerce Committee and zero from Senate Commerce. In a speech Tuesday at a New America Foundation event, Massachusetts Democrat Kerry said he’s particularly concerned with a provision in the House bill prohibiting the FCC from setting spectrum aside for unlicensed use.
Notable CROSS rulings
Broadcasters profit “from elections while polluting political discourse,” Free Press said in a report Thursday on TV political ads, which it said are expected to cost $3 billion this year. TV stations aren’t giving viewers enough information about who’s behind the ads, said the nonprofit, which seeks more broadcast disclosure and opposes industry mergers and acquisitions. “Instead of exposing this runaway spending and separating fact from fiction in their news reporting, television broadcasters are lining their pockets and leaving the electorate none the wiser,” it said. Free Press asked the FCC to not allow more media M&A as it reviews ownership rules and instead “curtail the trend of cross-ownership that allows one company to own several broadcast stations and a major daily newspaper in a single market.” The agency should also require broadcasters to put information on political ads online, which the FCC has proposed to do over objections of industry (CD Jan 25 p2), and require political ads “to feature a stand-alone disclaimer naming the top contributors to the organization or entity sponsoring the spot,” Free Press said (http://xrl.us/bmpvzi). Many TV stations are doing their job of informing viewers about candidates, and Hearst TV is among the broadcasters that give them free airtime, a company spokesman told us. He said Hearst TV has said (http://xrl.us/bmpv3c) it will give candidates 12 minutes of free programming every weekday in the month before primary and general elections at its 25 stations that produce news. That’s “more than double the five minutes recommended by the Gore Commission in 1999,” the spokesman said. The premise of Free Press’s report -- that there’s too little coverage of elections -- “seems shaky,” an NAB spokesman said. “Americans see and hear every day on many broadcast stations” such information, he continued. “Free Press cites discredited research as the basis for additional rules on broadcasting. This ‘research’ only counts political coverage that occurs during the narrow timeframe of weekday evening newscasts, thus ignoring campaign coverage on morning news programs, noon news, weekend public affairs shows, televised debates, State of the Union speeches and political coverage on local broadcast station websites."
Outgoing FCC Office of Strategic Policy Chief Paul de Sa is a new target of Sen. Charles Grassley’s push for insight into the FCC’s process in conditionally approving LightSquared’s terrestrial use of its frequencies. De Sa, who has said he will leave in February, is seen by many as playing a key role in making the case for LightSquared’s merits at the highest levels at the FCC. Grassley, R-Iowa, asked FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in a letter Wednesday to make de Sa available to answer questions before he leaves government.
The FCC should end a ban on cable systems and competitive LECs in the same area being commonly owned, the NCTA and member Time Warner Cable said. Or the agency should read Section 652(b) of the Communications Act to apply only to deals between cable operators and incumbent LECs. NCTA’s filing reported on the association and Time Warner Cable executives’ meeting with aides to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Wireline Bureau staffers on the group’s petition to end that ban. “Enforcing Section 652 in the context of cable-CLEC transactions impedes procompetitive transactions and can deny consumers the resulting benefits, and thereby undermines the public interest,” NCTA said. Time Warner Cable is awaiting commission approval of its $3 billion purchase of Insight Communications, a cable company that offers phone service. The combination would need a cable/LEC cross-ownership rule waiver (CD Dec 19 p4). NCTA’s filing Friday is in docket 11-82 (http://xrl.us/bmpkip).
The FCC may not deviate much in eventual draft media ownership rules from what the agency proposed last month (CD Dec 23 p1), fans and foes of broadcaster consolidation predicted. Chairman Julius Genachowski likely won’t circulate any draft quadrennial review order until late this year or early next, said industry, nonprofit group and commission officials. They said it appears Genachowski has an open mind on what final rules he'll seek, and the comment cycle on the rulemaking ends April 3. He seems inclined to stick closely to December’s rulemaking notice, which strikes a balance of sorts between what industry and nonprofits want, officials said.
Proposed new rules for cross-border payment of the EU value-added tax (VAT) emerged from the European Commission Friday. In December, the EC said it will apply a one-stop shop approach for VAT compliance across borders first to e-commerce, broadcasting and telecom services, beginning Jan. 1, 2015. Its new proposals (http://xrl.us/bmomza) cover aspects of the system such as scope, reporting obligations and records. The one-stop shop will let providers of such services declare and pay the tax in the EU member nation where they're established rather than where a particular customer resides, the EC said. The regime is currently limited to non-EU electronic services providers but is being extended to EU businesses and to broadcasting and telecom services, it said. The EC urged governments to agree to the proposal this year, saying a common approach is key to designing the information technology systems needed to exchange information among the 27 tax authorities by 2015.
The FCC issued a different extension of a deadline for five owners of daily newspapers and/or radio or TV stations to change requests for pending waivers of cross-ownership rules or seek permanent exemptions. The Media Bureau has pushed back the deadline 17 times before, with the latest having been this Friday (CD Oct 4 p20). A Thursday bureau order delayed the deadline in new ways. Bonneville International, Calvary Inc., Cox Enterprises, Morris Communications and Scranton Times LP had sought more time, because there are pending petitions seeking Supreme Court review of 2008 cross-ownership rules. The deadline is now 90 days after the high court denies the cert petitions. If, on the other hand, the court takes up a challenge, the deadline would be 90 days after final judgment is rendered and is no longer subject to further “judicial review or appeal” and pending cross-ownership rule challenges are disposed of, according to the order (http://xrl.us/bmoivs) signed by bureau Chief Bill Lake.
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell expects Universal Service Fund reform to dominate the FCC’s agenda in the early part of 2012, starting with a Lifeline cleanup order at the Jan. 31 meeting. McDowell hopes that will be followed by an order addressing USF contribution issues left unsettled by last October’s order (CD Oct 28 p1), he said during an interview last week. McDowell said he remains open minded on a 700 MHz interoperability order and stressed the importance of spectrum efficiency. McDowell also thinks more media ownership deregulation than the FCC proposed in the quadrennial review may be needed.
The FCC should move quickly to streamline foreign ownership rules, said industry reply comments to an August rulemaking notice seeking feedback on the agency’s foreign ownership practices for common carrier and aeronautical radio licensees (CD Aug 10 p11). In the initial comment round, the Satellite Industry Association asked for changes, while the Justice and Homeland Security departments jointly expressed concerns (CD Dec 6 p14).
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said he could not approve all aspects of the FCC’s proposed changes to media ownership rules, in commenting on what could be his final vote cast in office. “While I find a better level of analysis here than in previous Quadrennial Reviews, the item nevertheless provokes my dissent because it heads down a similar road that the two previous commissions travelled regarding newspaper-broadcast cross ownership,” he said in a statement Thursday (http://xrl.us/bmmosj). “Our media, and our public policy, need to head in a different direction.” He said the FCC should be further along in correcting the inequities of minority and women broadcast ownership. “While I am pleased to see the proposal for an incubator program teed up for comment in the NRPM before us, I would have preferred us to have already taken action on such proposals as ‘Overcoming Disadvantages’ and any number of other proposals submitted over the past several years to the Commission by our Diversity Advisory Committee.”