Efforts to educate Americans who still don’t know what to do to get digital TV broadcasts won’t be hindered by the White House transition, federal officials said. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that their agencies will keep their focus on DTV education during the shift. Each said he has no immediate plans to leave his job, but both were guarded about how long they'll stay and what they'll do afterward.

The FCC chairman’s dinner is the latest industry event to fall victim to the contracting economy, its organizer told us. Ticket sales in recent weeks were off 10 percent to 20 percent from the 2007 event, communications lawyers said. The economy seems to be the biggest factor behind sales of fewer tables and single- guest tickets, but the government transition also plays a role, said a half-dozen attendees. Though many are going to the Nov. 18 event, others are sitting on sidelines, seeing limited benefit in drinking cocktails and dining with a lame-duck chairman and his aides and bureau chiefs, they said. “The bad economy is undoubtedly part of the shortfall,” a communications lawyer said. On the other hand, a change in presidential administration means some will show up to network with potential new employers, a communications lawyer said. Attendance at the dinner will be down from last year, when slightly more than 1,300 went, said Stanley Zenor, executive director of the Federal Communications Bar Association, the organizer.

A dozen pay-TV companies of all sizes got letters of inquiry from the Enforcement Bureau as the FCC examines whether cable operators shortchanged subscribers when moving channels to digital packages (CD Nov 4 p5). Recipients range from Bend Cable, with about 20,000 video subscribers, to Comcast, with over 24 million. Responses are due Nov. 13. Submissions must cover the period from Nov. 1, 2006, to the present, said an Oct. 30 letter of inquiry to Comcast provided to us by the commission.

Expanded congressional Democratic majorities doesn’t have large implications for the DTV transition because lawmakers seem unlikely to delay the nationwide cutoff, lobbyists and others said Wednesday. But Democratic gains in the House and Senate may add to momentum for smaller changes associated with the analog cutoff, they said. Most likely to get Hill attention is the idea of letting TV stations use analog signals for a brief time after Feb. 17 to run analog slate messages telling viewers they need to buy converter boxes or take other action (CD Oct 17 p4), they said.

Questions on FCC indecency policy by conservative and liberal Supreme Court Justices in oral argument Tuesday focused on the case’s procedural aspects, touching little on constitutional issues. Justices asked U.S. Solicitor General Gregory Garre, arguing for the FCC, and Carter Phillips, the Fox network’s attorney, whether the FCC had given broadcasters enough notice that it could find indecent a show with a single curse. Asked by Justice Anthony Kennedy if the “fleeting” indecency policy marked a departure from FCC precedent, Garre replied that it had, but said the FCC justified the change.

FCC probes into many major cable operators’ efforts to save bandwidth by moving channels and only distributing those channels that subscribers actively watch may give the agency a way to study a la carte, agency and industry officials said. Recent letters of inquiry from the Enforcement Bureau to cable operators on use of switched digital video and moving channels from analog to digital packages (CD Nov 3 p6) may yield information on wholesale programming deals, they said. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who championed a rulemaking notice on such deals, is thought to remain keen to make it easier for subscribers to buy channels piecemeal, though no order on the subject is circulating, they said.

Chairman Kevin Martin has held off voting on some draft FCC rulemaking notices he has circulated for approval by all commissioners. That breaks patterns seen with other chairmen, current and former FCC officials said. Not voting lets Martin exert more control over the timing of items’ public release, and offers him other benefits.

Cable operators face more scrutiny by the FCC, which is looking into channel lineup changes (CD Oct 31 p17) and has widened an inquiry into switched-digital deployments, commission and industry officials said. In recent days the Enforcement Bureau sent some companies letters of inquiry that demanded unusually quick replies, they said. Cable officials said the inquiries leave them perplexed about whether FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants the industry to go all-digital, since both investigations involve operators’ efforts to reclaim analog bandwidth and move to digital operations. In approving cable operators’ waivers of CableCARD rules, the FCC endorsed all-digital operations.

The FCC should have given notice of a rare closed-door meeting of commissioners, even if not required to do so, said administrative law professors and media activists. The Oct. 10 meeting on digital TV outreach (CD Oct 15 p1) seems to have obeyed the Sunshine Act, said those people, as did former commissioners and former aides in the agency general counsel’s office. Members discussed no pending regulatory items, so as far as the law is concerned the event wasn’t an open meeting, all agreed. Views differ on whether the FCC should have given public notice of the meeting.

An FCC investigation into alleged payola at Spanish- language radio stations (CD Oct 27 p8) expanded last week, said two industry lawyers familiar with the probe. Additional licensees or station personnel got letters of inquiry from the Enforcement Bureau dated Oct. 20, said the lawyers, who have seen copies of the documents. The tally of stations, program directors and other employees getting letters is unknown, but is thought to be nearing 50, they said. That’s the number of stations cited in a 2006 suit as allegedly taking money from a Univision Music employee for playing certain top-40 tunes.