LOS ANGELES -- Comcast needs to take a page from the programmers’ playbook by better promoting itself and emphasizing content, and from companies including Apple in having easier-to-use devices, CEO Brian Roberts said. Apple’s iPad is the type of device Comcast wants cable services to work with, he said, indicating there will be more to come on that subject Tuesday at the NCTA show. “The iPad looks to us to be a fabulous bridge between the TV and the computer,” he said. Speaking in a Q-and-A with ex-News Corp. President Peter Chernin at the show Monday, Roberts said cable has to do a better job promoting itself.
The departing head of FCC’s broadband work crew said the agency doesn’t need a permanent czar to ensure that the commission stays focused on high-speed Internet service even after execution of the National Broadband Plan wraps up. Blair Levin sees changes to the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation as linked and thinks they need to be done together, he said in an exit interview Friday. He remains confused why broadcasters are publicly resisting the plan’s recommendation to create a market for other uses of TV spectrum and said that, despite much speculation about what he'll do next, he himself doesn’t know.
Monthly FCC meetings are running longer, partially due to the intricacies of the National Broadband Plan, but also because of additional time spent on Haitian earthquake relief efforts earlier this year and bureau chiefs going over items also discussed in staffers’ presentations. The 10 meetings under Chairman Julius Genachowski lasted an average of 2 hours 13 minutes, our research found. That’s 33 percent longer than the last 10 meetings under Kevin Martin, though meetings now start on time. It’s also longer than the last five meetings whose video we could access under two previous chairmen. Before items were approved on circulation, meetings sometimes would last all day.
The perceived industry impact on proposed FCC reclassification of broadband transport as a common carrier service subject to six sections of the Communications Act may fall most heavily on cable operators, investor interviews and stock prices Thursday show. Cable operators largely aren’t regulated under Title II and putting their broadband services under it means the companies will be more heavily regulated, some investors and analysts said. Telcos have always had wireline operations subject to Title II, though their financial outlook is also affected by regulatory uncertainty, analysts and industry officials said.
The FCC restarted its 180-day clock on review of Comcast’s agreement to buy control of NBC Universal after the companies on Tuesday submitted economic studies requested by commission staff. In pausing the clock at 29 days elapsed last month (CD April 19 p1), the Media Bureau said it would restart after the studies, on the stated benefits of the deal and its impact on online video competition, were filed. A bureau public notice Wednesday afternoon set new deadlines for opposition to the deal and other comments.
A paucity of comments on an FCC radio rulemaking asking whether it should extend preferences for assigning stations to tribes without lands (CD Feb 4 p12) seems to underline the relative lack of controversy, several broadcast lawyers said. Three groups and a non-profit representing Native Americans and Alaska natives filed comments that were released Tuesday afternoon in docket 09-52. Other groups said they sat out the filing round. Commission action on tribal issues seems like it won’t take long, but acting on a more controversial matter raised by a 2009 rulemaking notice of whether to make it harder for stations to move into larger towns may take a while if it occurs at all, said three industry lawyers.
Cable mergers and acquisitions activity, which began picking up in late 2009, will continue and perhaps increase in volume because of private-equity and commercial financing being easier to get, executives we surveyed said. They expect more consolidation of cable systems and channels. No blockbuster deals are expected soon, with Time Warner Cable sitting out recent deals and Comcast awaiting regulatory approval for its purchase of control of NBC Universal. (See separate story in this issue.) Conditions for financing deals have improved since our last survey (CD Oct 13 p2), executives said.
The FCC is expected to hire an outsider to oversee review of Comcast’s planned buy of NBC Universal to augment existing staff efforts of what many inside and outside the commission see as a unique deal because of the combination of broadband and cable with broadcast properties, agency and industry officials said. The move would be unusual in that most major transactions before the regulator are solely reviewed by long-time officials, though not unprecedented because of this commission’s hiring of outsiders for various roles. The regulator has looked at hiring existing employees and people outside the agency for the new role, FCC and industry officials said. It decided to hire an external candidate, an agency official said. We couldn’t learn the person’s name. This commission has used outsiders to work on the National Broadband Plan, most notably Blair Levin, who led that work.
The first two DTV allotments made by the FCC in five years may attract few broadcasters willing to bid for the licensees at auction and start operations from scratch, several industry lawyers predicted. Wednesday, the Media Bureau approved the second new allotment in as many months, for channel 5 in Seaford, Del. (CD April 29 p14). Because that slot and channel 4 in Atlantic City, N.J., are in the VHF band, where digital reception problems have occurred, and the stations are far away from large cities, interest may be limited, the lawyers said. One was upbeat about Seaford’s drawing interest because of the area’s demographics.
Reclassifying broadband as a Title II service is the best way for the FCC to avoid being reversed in court on net neutrality rules while quickly providing certainty to companies and their investors, Commissioner Michael Copps said Thursday. The April 6 Comcast ruling shows that commission orders in 2002 and 2005 deeming cable modem and DSL as information services were wrong, Copps said in an interview with a Communications Daily reporter for an episode of The Communicators to air this weekend on C-SPAN. Time is of the essence in FCC action on reclassification, and Copps is optimistic two or more colleagues will agree with him, he said.