A rulemaking on retransmission consent deals may be put to...

the commission. Agency officials said it’s unclear whether Media Bureau staffers drafting the notice have finished the work or when they will. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment. Consumers Union and Verizon last week lobbied front-office bureau staff on retrans, said ex parte filings in docket 10-71. A retrans rulemaking should deal with program access issues, Consumers Union said it told bureau Chief Bill Lake and subordinates. The group also said it wants “reform” of the program carriage complaint process. Verizon said, “Scrap the existing regulatory regime and allow the marketplace for broadcast programming to function like a normal market, free of artificial regulatory preference.” Requiring pay-TV providers to give subscribers notice of deadlines for renewal of carriage contracts -- as some broadcasters seek -- “would not be helpful, and would cause substantial, unjustified consumer anxiety and confusion,” the telco said. “Such notice also would encourage brinkmanship tactics on the part of broadcasters.” A group seeking changes to retrans rules said over the weekend that “blackouts” continue, even with an agreement in principle between Sinclair Broadcast Group and Time Warner Cable that averted a signal cutoff. (See the separate item in this issue.) Northwest Broadcasting and DirecTV haven’t been able to reach a new deal on the DBS company’s carriage of stations in Binghamton, N.Y.; Medford, Ore.; and Yakima and Spokane, Wash., said the American Television Alliance. A DirecTV spokesman said the deadlock continues. The alliance also said Frontier Radio Management and Dish Network are at an impasse over a TV station in Macon, Ga. A Dish spokeswoman confirmed that the dispute is ongoing.