Program access disputes are now drawing industry attention, not FCC action, commission and industry officials said. They said some pay-TV companies are discussing carriage deals to avert further complaints to the FCC, and the commission is awaiting filings from defendants in filed cases. Cablevision and spun-off subsidiary Madison Square Garden, the subject of complaints by AT&T and Verizon, continue trading filings with the telcos on procedures for the FCC to handle the cases (CD Aug 2 p9) and don’t seem near a settlement, said communications lawyers monitoring the disputes and not involved in them. They said Comcast could reach carriage deals with direct broadcast satellite providers for its Philadelphia sports channels and so could Cox Communications for a San Diego network.

Career FCC staffers are giving renewed attention to a long-dormant program-carriage case that the Media Bureau decided in the channel’s favor and proposed that the full commission uphold, agency officials said. Bureau officials appear to be revisiting an order on Mid-Atlantic Sports Network v. Time Warner Cable that went on circulation the last business day Kevin Martin was FCC chairman, an agency official said. Representatives of MASN and Time Warner Cable likely will come to the commission to meet with staffers and perhaps FCC members in the coming weeks to discuss the case, agency officials said.

Accord is slightly closer on how wireline ISPs should handle all Internet content and manage real-time communications and streaming services that don’t work properly with latency, officials on both sides of the issue said Monday. A meeting Saturday involving FCC Chief of Staff Eddie Lazarus (CD July 30 p1) didn’t produce breakthroughs, they said. The meeting did show that supporters and opponents of net neutrality still have more common ground on the wireline issues of content nondiscrimination and managed services than on wireless, said commission and industry officials.

Career FCC staffers are updating an overdue report to Congress on hurdles minorities, small businesses and women face in the media and telecom industries which Chairman Julius Genachowski will soon seek a vote on, agency officials said. The triennial report, due last Dec. 31, is mandated by Section 257 the Telecom Act to cover the past three years of work the commission has done to improve such constituents’ access to the industries and describe barriers that are faced, agency and industry officials said. Advocates for minorities said they'll closely scrutinize the document when it’s publicized to get a sense of what steps Genachowski is taking to reduce barriers to entry.

The FCC doesn’t seem close to additional large payola settlements after the commission and Department of Justice settled a two-year investigation late Monday (CD July 27 p12) with Univision Radio and its former music label, said agency and industry officials. They said the Enforcement Bureau doesn’t appear to have other cases set to be settled after entering a consent decree with Univision Radio that included a $1 million payment to the U.S. Treasury. The broadcaster’s former music label, now owned by Universal Music Group, agreed to pay a $500,000 fine to settle a department lawsuit, court documents show.

Media ownership and retransmission consent are separate issues with different FCC dockets and shouldn’t be examined in the same proceeding, many broadcasters said in filings on the congressionally mandated 2010 quadrennial ownership review. NAB, the Fox network and companies that own TV stations affiliated with other networks, including Gray and Nexstar, rejected comments earlier this month by the likes of the American Cable Association (ACA) and Time Warner Cable linking arrangements where stations jointly negotiate carriage deals to ownership (CD July 9 p6). One mid-size broadcaster said such deals can violate ownership rules.

Univision Radio agreed to pay $1 million to settle an FCC payola probe and entered a settlement with the Justice Department, in an investigation that the agencies handled together, the commission said late Monday. The action ends a probe over allegations that the radio stations or employees accepted payment from music labels in exchange for airplay and failed to disclose the deals as required by Section 507 of the Communications Act, the FCC said. In 2008 it began a wide-ranging probe of Spanish-language stations after an executive at Univision Music alleged that he was fired for refusing to make further payola deals (CD Oct 27/08 p8) and the settlement relates in part to that investigation, a bureau spokesman said. The broadcaster agreed to train employees about payola and to take other corrective actions. The actions at Univision Media Group, sold in 2008, involved an “isolated group” of employees who acted without authorization of the parent company, a spokeswoman said, and it has “cooperated fully with law enforcement authorities throughout the investigation process.”

Career FCC staffers don’t support a wide-ranging deal between the two most active filers in a 2003 auction of translator stations to resolve a dispute between many operators of the facilities and low-power FM (LPFM) stations, said commission and industry officials. They said Media Bureau officials recently said they won’t move to codify a memorandum of understanding in an existing draft order on Auction No. 83. The agreement was submitted this month by Prometheus Radio Project, representing low-power FM stations, and Educational Media Foundation (EMF), which runs several hundred translators, with the support of two other major applicants for translators in the filing window (CD July 12 p10). Representatives of Prometheus and EMF said they will need to take another look at the agreement if the bureau doesn’t codify it.

The FCC approved a direct broadcast satellite rulemaking on what DBS providers must do to distribute TV stations to customers who live in another market, and is close to approving a second item that also starts the implementation of this year’s Satellite Television and Extension and Localism Act (CD July 22 p9), agency officials said Thursday. The items hadn’t been publicly released but that may happen soon. By a unanimous vote, commissioners approved a Media Bureau order asking what DBS companies must do, such as carrying the local broadcaster’s HD signal, when they also carry a distant broadcaster of the same network affiliation in a given market, the officials said. Also likely to get a 5-0 vote is a related Office of Engineering and Technology rulemaking that asks about signal strength tests for DBS subscribers who want to get distant stations to find whether they'd be able to receive by a terrestrial antenna the signal from the local broadcaster of the same affiliation as the far away one, the officials said. Some commissioners had voted for the item as of Thursday and the rest are expected to approve Friday, they said. A Media Bureau spokeswoman declined to comment on the pending items.

The implications for the fast-growing online video market of a planned deal for Comcast to buy control of NBC Universal were debated in new FCC filings by the two companies and opponents of their multibillion dollar transaction. As in the past, Comcast, NBC Universal and NBCU parent General Electric said their deal won’t stifle the market, because the risks to the combined company of withholding online programming from pay-TV rivals likely would exceed the profit from such a strategy. FCC staffers continue meeting with each other and outsiders to consider the deal, and much work appears to remain before the Media Bureau starts drafting a decision, commission and industry officials said.