Former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley said current rulemaking procedures have to speed up to address the many regulatory challenges facing the commission. The new FCC chairman “has to make decisions; the commission has to set deadlines,” said Wiley at an American University law school symposium on broadcast regulation. “The commission has to move to a more effective manner of getting things done,” said Wiley.
A week after CBS and Fox talked about moving to a subscription model if retransmission-consent fees are threatened by a victory in court for online-TV service Aereo, some in the industry are divided over whether such a huge shift could really happen. “We're going to use all of our legal options to protect this business model that has sustained our industry,” said an NAB spokesman, echoing Fox Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey, who raised the specter of a move to subscription at the NAB Show last week (WID April 9 p5). Several industry observers said Carey’s comments were posturing aimed at influencing legislators or investors, because removing content from broadcast would be very disruptive to network affiliates.
A week after CBS and Fox talked about moving to a subscription model if retransmission-consent fees are threatened by a victory in court for online-TV service Aereo, some in the industry are divided over whether such a huge shift could really happen. “We're going to use all of our legal options to protect this business model that has sustained our industry,” said an NAB spokesman, echoing Fox Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey, who raised the spectre of a move to subscription at the NAB Show last week (CD April 9 p14). Several industry observers said Carey’s comments were posturing aimed at influencing legislators or investors, because removing content from broadcast would be very disruptive to network affiliates.
CEA recognizes the “substantial efforts” the Department of Energy and its contractors have made to develop a federal test procedure to measure power consumption of set-top boxes, “but we firmly believe that these resources are wasted and the efforts are misguided,” CEA said in rulemaking comments filed Monday at the DOE (CED Jan 23 p7). “CEA opposes the adoption of a federal test procedure and federal energy standards which are the only credible and legal rationale for a federal test procedure,” it said.
The FCC issued an order Tuesday mandating video description of emergency video crawls but leaving open the question of waivers for small cable systems and with requirements for small media players, and tablets and smart phones to be addressed in a further notice of rulemaking (http://bit.ly/17pi9uK). In large part the order echoes what industry insiders said they were expecting. It requires broadcasters, multichannel video programming distributors [MVPDs], and “any other distributor of video programming for residential reception that delivers such programming directly to the home and is subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission” to put an aural description on a secondary audio stream of any emergency information that is available visually. There’s a two year deadline for compliance with the new order. According to the FNPR, the Commission will also continue to look into whether MVPDs are covered by the new rule when their subscribers can “access linear video programming that contains emergency information via tablets, laptops, personal computers, smartphones, or similar devices.” In his statement Commission Ajit Pai said he was “pleased” by this and that “any... tentative conclusions would have been premature.”
"Under the NTTAA, DOE, as a federal department, is required to use technical standards that are developed or adopted by voluntary consensus standard bodies unless these standards are inconsistent with applicable law,” wrote Doug Johnson, CEA vice president-technology policy. DOE has acknowledged that their proposed rules are based largely on the CEA-2043 VA, the test standard used in the industry consensus, but CEA and other industry commenters said the DOE should have to show that the VA is impractical under the law before developing it’s own standards. “U.S. law and good public policy favors simply relying on the standard rather than borrowing from, modifying or reinventing it,” wrote Johnson.
The recent back and forth in FCC filings between Charter Communications and CEA over acceptable conditions for granting the cable operator’s application for a waiver of CableCARD rules could indicate a decision on the matter is upcoming, several industry observers said. The sides have been trading opposing filings on the company’s request for a CableCARD waiver (CD March 26 p13) so it can deploy downloadable security to set-top boxes. With Julius Genachowski planning to leave as FCC chairman, he may want to grant the waiver before he departs, said some industry officials.
The FCC is failing to do enough to encourage diversity in media ownership, said former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and others at the National Conference for Media Reform Friday, as the FCC released a letter from members of Congress opposing changes to cross-ownership rules. “Minorities own 2.2 percent of full-power TV stations in this country,” said Copps: “How’s that for representing America?”
In a letter filed with the Media Bureau Friday, Charter CEO Thomas Rutledge laid out “additional assurances” (http://bit.ly/YY2Cyl). The letter came four days after an ex parte filing Monday from CEA attorney Robert Schwartz (http://bit.ly/XiheYW) and an industry official said it appeared to be a response to it. Schwartz’s filing came in turn after an ex parte filing by Charter in late March (http://bit.ly/13YnXfW).
Rulings and pending cases involving rebroadcasting TV over the Internet have huge implications for the TV industry and copyright law, and could be headed for the Supreme Court, said several communications attorneys at an FCBA event Wednesday night. On Monday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision denying broadcasters a preliminary injunction against Aereo, which lets customers watch New York City-area TV broadcasts online by leasing them personal DVRs and antennas (CD April 2 p8). However, in December, a similar injunction against a competing Internet TV company called Aereokiller was upheld in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.