Supreme Court justices limited discussion of First Amendment issues on the government’s appeal of a lower court ruling against the FCC finding indecent a single curseword or incident of nudity on broadcast TV. Oral argument Tuesday mainly focused on how the agency’s so-called fleeting indecency policy squared with the high court’s landmark Pacifica decision, which allowed the commission to censure indecent content on terrestrial radio and TV. The 1969 Red Lion case involving spectrum scarcity didn’t come up, conforming with expectations (CD June 28 p1).

The FCC continues working on several radio rulemakings, has completed one proceeding and may finish two others later this year. The attention by staffers in the Media Bureau to radio issues is in contrast to what some see as the commission’s overall lack of attention to other media issues. The agency in December approved a tribal radio order, which industry lawyers said the bureau made quick work of. By contrast, the commission is more than a year behind schedule on its media ownership review, in which industry lawyers said radio isn’t much in play.

An FCC Media Bureau report on regional sports network access and carriage issues that the bureau was required to write under a 2006 FCC order doesn’t assess the market for RSNs. That drew criticism from some multichannel video programming distributor officials and others. Some had hoped for more from the study (CD Sept 28 p9).

Content creators and distributors would both have duties when it comes to captioning pay-TV and broadcast programming that goes online, under a draft FCC order set to be issued shortly. Video programming distributors (VPDs) like cable, DBS, telco-TV companies and TV stations, and video programming owners (VPO) like studios and other content creators, both have roles. The draft order implementing Internet Protocol captioning rules under the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act requires VPOs to deliver captioned shows to VPDs, said industry and commission officials. They said the order would give programmers and makers of consumer electronics time to come into compliance.

Low-power radio has little economic impact on full-service stations in the same market, an FCC study for Congress said. The study of all 835 “active” U.S. low-power FM stations -- which compares to 6,468 full-service commercial stations -- pointed to LPFM outlets’ low listenership figures. It also found low LPFM revenue figures and listed regulatory obstacles that limit coverage areas. Half the portion of LPFM stations have websites as do commercial full-power FM broadcasters, which are three times more likely to stream their audio online, the Media Bureau analysis said.

Broadcasters and pay TV must go beyond the Web to recruit staff, an FCC official overseeing equal employment opportunity rules said. It’s still not enough under EEO rules to recruit only online, the Media Bureau’s EEO head, Lewis Pulley, told the first-ever commission event on the regime. Broadcast lawyers said their clients would prefer to use job-search and classifieds websites over daily newspapers, who they see as competing with them for local ads. Pulley noted there’s no requirement for TV and radio stations and multichannel video programming distributors to buy ads in papers.

An auction of 119 FM frequencies may not raise much money for the U.S. Treasury. With radio stations still recovering from the Great Recession and lending for mergers and acquisitions tight, radio broadcasters may not have the financial wherewithal to bid up by much minimum payments for construction permits in FCC Auction 93, experts said. It seems unlikely to raise more money than auctions of a similar number of stations held by the commission last year and in 2009, said lawyers who represent radio stations before the agency. Last year’s auction had net winning bids of $8.54 million (CD April 28 p9), with $5.25 million (CD Sept 8/09 p7) in 2009.

A maker of consumer electronics and the NCTA traded filings over whether letting all-digital cable systems encrypt basic programming would save energy. NCTA continued to contend that allowing encryption will be energy efficient, while Hauppauge Computer Works said it won’t help the environment. The filings from the association (http://xrl.us/bmnnob) and the company (http://xrl.us/bmnnof) were posted to docket 11-169 late last week. Earlier comments on a commission rulemaking notice from many cable operators backed allowing such encryption across the board, instead of the current waiver process (CD Nov 30 p11).

The FCC is likely to approve Time Warner Cable’s $3 billion purchase of Insight Communications, agency and industry officials told us last week. They said career agency officials from the Media and Wireline bureaus are working on reviewing the deal, and seem poised to soon recommend it be approved. The forthcoming order would waive a rule barring common LEC/cable system ownership in the same franchise area, the industry and commission officials said. They said the companies, though, may not get the order approved before the end of this year (CD Dec 5 p18), as they have asked be done.

Draft FCC orders would make it a bit easier for radio stations to move to urban areas from suburban and rural communities and also ease the process for U.S. tribes to seek new allotments, agency officials said. Those draft Media Bureau orders follow up on one approved at March’s commission meeting that made such station move-ins to urban areas harder and that allowed tribes without government-recognized lands to get stations more easily (CD March 4 p10). The two current drafts are moving on two different tracks, agency officials said. The move-in order is likely to change, possibly significantly, and won’t be voted on right away. The tribal order will be approved in coming weeks, likely without significant changes.