Media lobbyists, worried about the prospect of the FCC making programmers sell channels individually to cable operators, satellite-TV providers and telecommunications companies (CD Sept 4 p5), are sharing their concerns with regulators and lawmakers, according to ex parte filings and interviews with industry officials. The lobbyists also worry the FCC will impose stricter program access rules, governing deals between cable operators and programmers, said the officials. They're visiting the offices of commissioners and lawmakers to try to ward off increased regulation by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. He has long advocated a la carte and in 2007 extended by five more years a ban on programmers striking exclusive deals for distribution of channels affiliated with cable operators.

Cable systems haven’t received requests yet for data to help the FCC decide if its so-called 70/70 test has been met, said agency and industry officials. The test tells the agency whether it can further regulate operators. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin last year removed from an FCC annual report to Congress on video competition a finding that more than 70 percent of homes passed by systems with at least 36 channels bought the service, after all other commissioners balked (CD Special Bulletin Nov 28 p1). The report was based on data from the Television and Cable Factbook (which is published by Communications Daily publisher Warren Communications News) to arrive at a figure at 71.4 percent. However, Warren said its raw data alone weren’t suited to making the calculation. The commissioners voted to ask all cable systems to report figures directly to the agency, which it hasn’t done. Martin may be in no hurry to request the material, since the data likely will show that the threshold hasn’t been exceeded, said a cable attorney. Martin said he needs several types of approval to send out the document, including Office of Management and Budget sign-off. “Whenever you have a new process to try to gather information from the industry, you have to draft a new form and it has to go through levels of approval,” he told reporters March 20. “When everything gets approved we'll end up doing that, but we do that with every form that we end up drafting that goes out to industry.”

The FCC hasn’t suspended an inquiry into complaints that Comcast blocked peer-to-peer file transfers via BitTorrent, said four agency officials. A Thursday settlement between the cable operator and the P2P content distribution Web company hasn’t prompted Chairman Kevin Martin’s office to tell other commissioners of any changes to the inquiry, said agency officials. “The complaint against Comcast is pending,” said an FCC spokesman. “We are following that complaint as we do any other.” But Commissioner Robert McDowell said the settlement “obviates the need for any further government intrusion into this matter.”

Cable operators escaped basic rate regulation in about 100 municipalities with a total of 1.5 million homes, via FCC orders released Wednesday. The orders said the companies face sufficient video competition in those locales, mostly from DirecTV and Dish Network. The nine Media Bureau orders found Bright House, Comcast, Charter, Cox, Mediacom and Time Warner Cable subject to effective competition in Detroit, St. Louis, and other cities, as well as towns and counties in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Illinois and four more states. The batch was the widest-ranging such release of orders in one day for at least three years (CD Sept 29/05 p1), gauged by number of municipalities and number of households. NCTA had asked the FCC to reduce a petition backlog that at one point reached into the hundreds, some dating back years. NCTA declined to comment, said a spokeswoman. Last week FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters that during his tenure the agency had approved 100 orders. “I've told the bureau to continue to process them and move them through,” he said March 20: “I'm sure there are still a couple hundred down there.”

The two main cable industry lobbying groups believe the FCC will exempt small systems from a requirement that they distribute the signals of certain TV stations to all customers after the digital transition (CD Sept 11 Special Bulletin p1). American Cable Association and NCTA officials told us they believe a majority of commissioners want a blanket exemption for systems with fewer than 5,000 subscribers or with capacity below 553 MHz. Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein endorsed the move, his office said. The cable exemption would let systems that aren’t all digital carry broadcasters in either analog or digital and not force them to distribute the signals in both formats after Feb. 17, 2009.

The Rural Telecommunications Group and the Rural Cellular Association Friday sharply criticized the FCC for badly designing the 700 MHz auction. The auction played into the hands of major wireless carriers to the detriment of rural carriers, they said. Verizon Wireless and AT&T emerged as dominant bidders in the auction, which ended Tuesday (CD March 21 p1). Meanwhile, sources said Friday that Dish’s acquisition of E-block spectrum seems unlikely to open the door to launch of a national wireless broadband player to challenge incumbents.

Slower U.S. economic growth, layoffs and a credit-market implosion have left cable operators and telecommunications overbuilders largely unscathed and broadcasters still attract large audiences, company executives said in interviews. But there’s more at play than the economy’s strength, they said, predicting that media and telecommunications companies seeking financing probably will have a hard time due to the credit crisis, whose latest institutional victim was Bear Stearns (CD March 18 p2). But cable operators including Insight and overbuilders including RCN said they're fully funded.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is asking commissioners to approve 25 notices of apparent liability to the nation’s largest consumer electronics retailers for improper labeling of analog TV sets, he said. He also wants to go after large manufacturers for not including proper V-chip functionality in DTV sets and one company for shipping sets lacking digital tuners, he added. It’s “critical” that commissioners vote on the notices by the April 10 meeting, he told reporters Thursday in Washington at a press briefing. Martin outlined telecommunications items on which he wants quick action, saying one on emergency alerts to cellphones has as much priority as the DTV fines.

NTIA will ask Congress to authorize the agency to spend as much as $450 million more on a second phase of the digital TV converter box coupon program (CD Feb 20 p13), said Acting Administrator Meredith Baker. The agency has approved requests for 8 million coupons -- 36 percent of the first $890 million portion, she told a Wednesday Internet Video Policy conference in Washington.

NAB and NCTA debated whether the FCC should require cable operators to give broadcast multicast digital signals channel slots linked to the stations’ main channels. Filings by the groups responded to a commission notice on channel placement and cable operators’ down-conversion of digital broadcast signals that they're required to carry (CD March 6 p8). Congress required channel locations of so-called must- carry stations to be the same as the over-the-air channel number, as assigned when must-carry rules expired in 1985 or in 1992 -- the year they were re-imposed by the FCC -- or in a slot agreeable to station and operator, said NAB and the Association for Maximum Service TV. “The Commission should reject NCTA and Verizon’s claims that operators should be able to unilaterally decide where to position must-carry broadcasters’ digital signals,” the broadcast groups said.