The FCC rescinded a ban on text-to-speech emergency alert system warnings four days before new EAS rules take effect (CD March 23 p4). A new format of emergency alert system messages that all pay-TV providers and broadcasters must implement by June 30 couldn’t have included text-to-speech warnings, under a January order on equipment certification for the Common Alerting Protocol format. An order approved by commissioners Thursday -- nine days after circulating for a vote (http://xrl.us/bmxdnu) -- reversed that ban and left consideration of part of the issue for another day.

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.

News Corp.’s unprecedented step to suspend some shareholders’ voting rights puts it again beneath FCC ownership limits that were exceeded when the company’s foreign-investor base expanded in recent years. The company said Wednesday it immediately put on hold the rights to vote on matters for half of the portion of a class of stock that’s held by non-U.S. citizens and carry more votes than regular shares. The move means foreigners will no longer exceed the commission’s 25 percent threshold on the portion of voting power foreigners can exercise in the broadcaster, the owner of 27 Fox and MyNetworkTV stations (http://xrl.us/bm4ebg) said.

The FCC ought to move on several proceedings that have been pending for years on limiting the amount of commercials children see on cable and broadcast TV, and curbing interactive ads televised to them, children’s advocates told us. Two groups last week asked FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to act on rulemakings and inquiries started as early as 2008, and also act on requests made in 2004 to deny license renewals to TV stations that broke children’s ad rules.

That the FCC has made such incremental changes to media ownership rules since 1996 was a surprise to Harold Furchtgott-Roth, who became a Republican commissioner the next year. Just-departed Democratic member Michael Copps worries more mergers and acquisitions will continue.

Papers that TV stations must electronically give the FCC will go in the cloud. The public-inspection files all TV broadcasters must under a draft order soon start giving the commission, so they can be found on fcc.gov and not just in stations’ main studios, will be uploaded to a cloud system, agency and industry officials said. They said the draft Media Bureau order tentatively set for a vote at April 27’s commissioner meeting (CD April 9 p5) says such a cloud mechanism is meant to allow speedy uploading of documents during peak times, such as shortly before elections when campaign ads often sell for the lowest unit charge and must be recorded in broadcasters’ political files.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski decided to limit what information the commission will make TV stations disclose online when they put files now kept on paper in studios on fcc.gov, agency officials said Friday. They said a Media Bureau draft order to require public-inspection files go online doesn’t mandate inclusion of sponsorship identification information nor deals between multiple TV stations with separate owners in the same market, as the commission proposed in October. The political ad part of the public file, a posting regime subject of criticism from congressional Republicans and GOP Commissioner Robert McDowell, will need to go online, under the order tentatively set for a vote at the April 27 meeting, agency officials said. But there’s a phase-in period.

Class A stations are readying responses to orders to show why they shouldn’t lose FCC interference protection and face channel changes without reimbursement or go off the air for good because there will be fewer vacant frequencies, industry lawyers and executives said. Longtime attorneys from Fletcher Heald, Wiley Rein and other law firms whose clients got Media Bureau show-cause orders met last week to try to map out strategy, some said. The bureau has continued to send letters of inquiry (CD March 21 p3) to other low-power broadcasters asking them to answer why they're qualified to keep Class A status.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell sought feedback on letting TV stations lease spectrum in the rulemaking the agency’s expected to start in what he expects to be a multi-year effort to auction the frequencies of broadcasters who agree to participate (CD March 15 p1). He’s happy Chairman Julius Genachowski is “talking more and more about the need to have flexible uses of spectrum” as the commission seeks to reallocate frequencies to wireless broadband. On Internet governance, McDowell said U.S. companies and the government must step up efforts to oppose a growing number of nations’ desire to have authority he said could include charging for international over-the-top video and other traffic (http://xrl.us/bmztw6). Much of McDowell’s Q-and-A with Media Institute President Patrick Maines was devoted to Internet and spectrum matters.

TV stations’ public-inspection files won’t need to be standardized or searchable when the FCC requires they go online (CD March 19 p6), industry officials said. Media Bureau staff are continuing to work on drafting an order to make broadcasters put most of what’s now in paper files, including information on political spots, on the Internet, commission and industry officials told us. Some FCC staff appear to be targeting a forthcoming order that tracks with an October rulemaking notice in that stations won’t need to convert paperwork to an electronic format right away (http://xrl.us/bmzmqp), industry officials said. The commission may decide on searchability and standardization later, agency and industry officials said.