FCC members and Media Bureau staff are considering seeking comment on waivers of media ownership rules for foreign investments in broadcast companies and for those who've overcome economic and other types of non-racial or gender disadvantages, agency and industry officials told us this week. They expressed varying degrees of hope whether incorporating such proposals into separate rulemaking proceedings might be part of a wider-ranging compromise among commissioners to resolve a deadlock. The officials said it will be hard to end a split (CD Jan 28 p7) between the two Republicans who support broadcast/daily newspaper cross ownership and the two regular Democratic members who don’t generally support such deregulation without first studying barriers to entry faced by minorities and women.

Hurricane Sandy began pounding the East Coast with high winds and rain this week, causing several governors to declare states of emergency and triggering widespread concern of outages. State commissions began watching as telcos, 911 centers, county officials and cable operators braced for the impact. The storm was expected to continue Tuesday, and the Office of Personnel Management said federal offices in the Washington area would for a second day be closed to the public (http://xrl.us/bnwozb).

Disney, Dish Network, NBCUniversal and NCTA weighed in for the first time on the FCC’s media ownership rulemaking, with replies reaching different conclusions. Disney questioned the very need for the review given the “realities of today’s market” that include the availability of new media. Dish, among those seeking changes to retransmission consent rules, wants the forthcoming order to bar separately owned stations in the same market from jointly negotiating retrans deals. Comcast’s NBCUniversal said local news sharing agreements shouldn’t be attributable under ownership rules. If required, that could bar LNS deals in some circumstances. The NCTA said a question in December’s rulemaking notice (CD Dec 23 p1) about extending carriage rights to a type of low-power TV station that must meet the same rules as regular broadcasters raised its concern.

The spectrum provisions in the payroll tax extension will only get the Obama administration part of the way toward finding 500 MHz for wireless broadband. The legislation won’t free up nearly as much spectrum as expected, industry and government officials said. The FCC National Broadband Plan projected that voluntary incentive auctions of broadcast spectrum would yield 120 MHz for broadband. That figure appears now to be down to 60-80 MHz, with a big chunk of the 120 MHz lost in part because of language sought by the NAB protecting TV station signals along the Canadian and Mexican borders, industry and government officials said.

More consumer electronics are subject to new FCC requirements to display online captions from content originally broadcast on TV or seen on cable, DBS or telco-TV than industry executives expected. They said the order (CD Jan 17 p3) requiring TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors to caption video they put online appears to go beyond what’s required by 2010 disabilities legislation. The order said the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act didn’t say in great detail what type of CE equipment must be covered by Internet Protocol captioning rules.

More consumer electronics are subject to new FCC requirements to display online captions from content originally broadcast on TV or seen on cable, DBS or telco-TV than industry executives expected. They said the order (WID Jan 17 p3) requiring TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors to caption video they put online appears to go beyond what’s required by 2010 disabilities legislation. The order said the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act didn’t say in great detail what type of CE equipment must be covered by Internet Protocol captioning rules.

More consumer electronics are subject to new FCC requirements to display online captions from content originally broadcast on TV or seen on cable, DBS or telco-TV than industry executives expected. They said the order requiring TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors to caption video they put online (CED Jan 17 p5) appears to go beyond what’s required by 2010 disabilities legislation. The order said the 21st Century Communications and Video Accesibility Act didn’t say in great detail what type of CE equipment must be covered by Internet Protocol captioning rules.

NAB warned that the test of a TV white spaces database by Spectrum Bridge found numerous problems that still must be addressed. NAB said the overall results of the tests can only be described as “mixed.” The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology sought comment earlier this month on the recently completed 45-day public trial of Spectrum Bridge’s prototype white spaces database. Comments were due Tuesday. “It appears that during the initial testing period users encountered a high number of problems relative to the number of trial registrations entered into the database,” NAB said in comments filed at the FCC (http://xrl.us/bmjr8z). NAB said Spectrum Bridge received 65 “tickets” containing “comments, concerns, and issues related to the trial” among only 551 who registered to use the database, “a rate of nearly 12 percent.” NAB said these “tickets” likely do not fully account for all of the problems encountered by users. “NAB staff experienced numerous problems with attempting to register protected entities that occurred prior to the user reaching the screen where a ticket could be initiated; thus, they were unable to report these incidents through the system,” the association said. “Accordingly, the actual problem rate encountered by users was probably higher than reported.” Spectrum Bridge maintains that none of the problems encountered could be considered “critical,” NAB said. “Some, in fact, concerned very important issues, such as the inability to register certain operations for protection.” The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association countered that the test shows the database is ready to go live. WISPA said it agrees with a Spectrum Bridge report that none of the problems encountered were critical. “Further, it appears that [Spectrum Bridge] addressed questions from the public and made minor changes during the trial period in an expeditious and satisfactory manner,” the group said (http://xrl.us/bmjr9h). Spectrum Bridge also “made voluntary database changes to improve public comprehension of the database and thereby increase its utility,” WISPA said. Key Bridge Global, which plans to compete with Spectrum Bridge with a rival white spaces database, questioned whether the test offered a complete evaluation of a channel availability calculator, the cable headend and broadcast auxiliary temporary registration utilities and a wireless microphone registration utility critical to any database. “Some clarity should be provided as to exactly what functionality was demonstrated and independently validated and verified and what follow-up steps are required prior to Spectrum Bridge’s further designation as a white space administrator,” Key Bridge said (http://xrl.us/bmjsan). The Land Mobile Communications Council said work remains on guaranteeing that public communications systems using the 470-512 MHz band are protected, especially those authorized by FCC waiver in urban areas including Los Angeles. Such “operations are at least as essential to the public as is enhanced wireless broadband access,” the group said (http://xrl.us/bmjsbo).

NAB warned that the test of a TV white spaces database by Spectrum Bridge found numerous problems that still must be addressed. NAB said the overall results of the tests can only be described as “mixed.” The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology sought comment earlier this month on the recently completed 45-day public trial of Spectrum Bridge’s prototype white spaces database (CD Nov 15 p 13). Comments were due Tuesday.

A second cable operator may get an FCC waiver to encrypt all channels. RCN now wants (CD Aug 16 p13) to follow Cablevision’s lead and be able to turn on and off service remotely, cutting down on signal theft and the expense and pollution of sending out technicians. Commission approval of RCN’s new request seems likely, and there will probably be less opposition to the move expressed than Cablevision faced in 2009, industry lawyers and an analyst said in interviews Tuesday. They said the regulator seems unlikely to start a rulemaking to examine whether it’s worth keeping a ban on operators encrypting channels in the basic tier. RCN wants out of that ban in Chicago and New York, where it’s gone all-digital.