Lawyers for Comcast and the NFL squared off at the start of an FCC administrative law hearing Tuesday over the league’s program carriage complaint against the cable operator. The two disagreed over how to frame the case (CD Jan 28 p6), which is likely to continue to be heard through Thursday. The case is rare because FCC administrative law judges hear few disputes of any kind, communications lawyers have said.
Tribune’s plan for a merger involving two Connecticut TV stations and a daily newspaper that it owns (CD March 31 p8) drew fire from the state’s attorney general as possibly violating FCC rules. But the commission seems to have little basis for investigating because the stations, WTIC-TV Hartford and WTTX Waterbury, have no license renewals pending, FCC and industry officials said.
Time Warner Cable lifted broadband usage limits for tests to deal with increasing bandwidth use, after criticism from a freshman member of Congress whose district will soon see a trial (CD April 10 p6). The cable operator is boosting bandwidth tier sizes, limiting what it will charge subscribers for going over the caps and giving them a grace period before charging them more for heavy use. “We realize our communication to customers about these trials has been inadequate and we apologize for any frustration we caused,” Chief Operating Officer Landel Hobbs wrote late Thursday. “We've heard the passionate feedback and we've taken action to address our customers’ concerns.”
A contracting U.S. economy and continued job losses haven’t changed how telecom services including broadband, phone and video are used by subscribers, said cable executives we surveyed. Operators have been cautious on spending and focused more on keeping existing customers (CD Feb 24 p5). But the behavior of their subscribers hasn’t changed in any discernable way this year versus last, said executives at four major operators and two significant vendors.
Some FCC members are considering if the agency should start an inquiry on Arbitron’s portable devices that measure radio audiences, agency officials told us. At Wednesday’s monthly meeting, Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said the regulator will soon start an inquiry on the Portable People Meters. No inquiry has started, though some FCC members are considering whether to begin one, and their colleagues may do so once more details are fleshed out, agency officials said.
FCC votes Wednesday were portrayed by members as ways to improve the data available about the pay-TV and broadcast industries. A notice of inquiry for two years of pay-TV subscriber and other information (CD March 27 p6) and an order enlarging the types of broadcast stations that must file an ownership form (CD March 25 p5) were approved at the meeting. The video inquiry will yield information through June 30, 2009, on cable, satellite and telco TV, commissioners and others said. Changes to the ownership form will result in more accurate figures on how many women and minorities own stations, they said. Both items help provide the FCC with up-to-date data in areas where it’s lagged, acting Chairman Michael Copps and other members said.
President Barack Obama’s nominee to run the FCC has extensive investments in Internet companies and has advised a wide array of publicly and privately held firms, according to his financial records filed last month. Julius Genachowski has had investmentsApril 7, 2009 in several dozen Web firms, said the report, a copy of which we obtained from the federal Office of Government Ethics.
The FCC withdrew a recent request that an appeals court go ahead with deciding challenges to an order loosening some restrictions on when a company can own a daily newspaper and a broadcast station in a city (CD Dec 19/07 p1). In a notice of withdrawal of opposition filed Thursday with the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appals in Philadelphia, the commission reversed the position of its previous leadership. Commissioner Robert McDowell wrote the court Friday to say he “respectfully disagreed” with last week’s filing and still supports the FCC’s January request for the case to go forward.
More ISPs in North America and abroad, including cable operators, are using network management to deal with the increased potential for congestion as they increase speeds, said the head of a major vendor of equipment for the purpose. The FCC’s finding against Comcast’s treatment of BitTorrent traffic (CD Aug 4 p1) helped thaw the market for network management gear, said Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo. “The FCC order lifted the cloud of uncertainty” over ISPs, he said in an interview Thursday at the NCTA show.
Cable operators must work with each other and outsiders, including competitors sometimes, to vastly expand ad insertion and interactive services (CD April 1 p3), executives said at the NCTA show. The industry should take a cue from eBay, Facebook and YouTube by trying to make many “connections” and not maintain a walled garden of limited user access to content, said Mitch Weinraub, Comcast Media Center executive director of products and services. Scale is the basis of those Web sites’ existence, not just their growth, he said late Wednesday: “Without their mass, without their scale, these businesses wouldn’t work.”