The FCC commissioners said they want to handle in an open way the DTV switch and the four-month postponement of the analog cutoff (CD Feb 5 p1). At the commission meeting Thursday, devoted to the transition, they said the change won’t be seamless, but the June 12 switch will benefit from preparation discussions that are public and include business and agencies such as the NTIA. The delay is prompting worry about the supply of digital converter boxes and the growing backlog of requests for coupons for them. The CEA acknowledged supplies could soon run out.
Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps’ promise to listen more to an advisory committee (CD Feb 2 p3) made several members hopeful that its recommendations will get full consideration. Copps visited the first meeting of the re- chartered Consumer Advisory Committee Friday, an action showing that the group will play an important role in the development of policy and in overhauling the commission, eight members said.
The 1,758 full-power U.S. TV stations may face up to $141 million in additional electric bills if Congress succeeds in delaying the DTV transition by four months, executives estimated. That’s the high end of an estimate from the Association for Maximum Service TV. But it excludes other personnel and operational expenses, plus the cost of leasing analog towers for longer than anticipated and replacing aging gear, executives said.
Commissioner Robert McDowell said there’s a continuing threat of a return of the Fairness Doctrine, which could be revived in legislation under a different name or perhaps in a pending FCC rulemaking. Speaking at a Media Institute lunch Wednesday, the commission’s only Republican acknowledged that legislators haven’t formally moved to reinstate the rule requiring broadcasters to cover opposing sides of some controversial issues. But he said recent remarks by members of Congress in support of the doctrine, dropped by the commission in 1987, could bear fruit and would let government stifle political views.
Reversing its Media Bureau, the FCC sent six program carriage complaints pitting independent cable channels against operators back to the judge who had been reviewing them (CD Dec 30 p2). The commissioners unanimously approved on Tuesday an order on their own motion giving back the administrative law judge’s authority over the case.
Video programming conditions on News Corp., resulting from its ownership of DirecTV from 2004 to 2008, would be dropped under a draft order on circulation at the FCC, commission officials said. With the company’s transfer last year of a controlling stake in the satellite-TV provider to Liberty Media in an $11 billion asset swap, News Corp. sought to escape the limits. That request would be granted by a order drafted by the Media Bureau that Chairman Kevin Martin’s office circulated Jan. 16, FCC officials said. Jan. 20 was Martin’s last day at the commission.
A batch of waivers circulated by Kevin Martin on his last business day as chairman of the FCC would help a chain of truck stops run a digital TV service and could become contentious among the commissioners who remain, commission officials said. Martin’s office circulated Jan. 16 -- the Friday before a four-day holiday weekend at whose end Martin left the commission -- copies of a batch of waivers that would help Flying J’s Clarity Media start a TV service for truckers, said FCC and industry officials.
The FCC has released hundreds of official actions after business hours in recent years, with substantial but unknown costs to the agency’s constituents, according to a Communications Daily study and interviews with communications lawyers and executives. The practice isn’t employed at other federal agencies we surveyed. Items released after usual hours ranged from routine orders to approvals of multibillion-dollar deals. It’s one factor among many feeding executives’ uncertainty about how the agency will regulate them, and it can reduce productivity, said broadcast, cable and telecom lawyers. However, the FCC breaks no rules in frequently releasing items after 5 p.m. and occasionally even after midnight, and some lawyers we spoke to found the practice unobjectionable.
Commissioners are poised to approve a DTV order letting full-power broadcasters transmit in analog educational information on the transition and emergency messages for 30 days after the DTV switch, several agency officials said. The so-called nightlight plan got backing in all initial comments on a rulemaking (CD Jan 7 p5) and likely will get commissioner approval, they said. The order circulated midday Tuesday, said an FCC official.
Members of the Senate Commerce Committee are said to be drafting a bill to delay the nationwide switch to digital TV from Feb. 17, according to lobbyists tracking the transition. Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is thought to be involved in the work, they said.