Deals where separately owned TV stations in a market share responsibilities for ad sales, pay-TV carriage and other functions are getting more attention inside the FCC and among those lobbying on upcoming media ownership rules, officials inside and outside the agency said this week. Multichannel video programming distributors and nonprofits opposed to pacts such as shared services agreements, joint sales agreements and joint retransmission consent negotiation deals are lobbying to expand a draft order from only issuing new rules on JSAs, said industry and public interest officials and ex parte filings. Broadcasters got a late start on such lobbying, and are expected to visit the agency next week, industry officials said.

A request for the FCC to let AM stations buy FM translators farther away from their main transmitter to rebroadcast their programming within the market raises important issues on AMs’ future, though the agency seems unlikely to approve the waiver, industry officials said. The owner of a few dozen radio stations wants the commission to let broadcasters buy FM translators from as far as 100 miles from their AM transmitter, without waiting for a filing window to seek such opportunities. The waiver points out that the radio industry wants FCC help to make changes such as these without needing to wait for a filing window to present such an opportunity, and other regulatory flexibility, said a lawyer and an engineer who reviewed the waiver at our request.

The FCC plans to pay for research on the hurdles demographic groups like minorities face getting radio and TV stations, of which new data shows they continue to own a disproportionately low share (CD Nov 16 p21). The results will come too late for consideration prior to a forthcoming vote on media ownership rules, agency officials said. They said the coming study or studies would be done so the commission could possibly adopt future rules to target minorities and comply with the strict constitutional scrutiny the Supreme Court’s 1995 Adarand decision requires of such policies. The Adarand research won’t be finished in time for the expected adoption this year of new media ownership rules (CD Nov 15 p1), agency officials said. Some inside and outside the commission said they worry that will prompt the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a third time to send back the quadrennial review order to the agency.

TV stations that have joint sales agreements with rivals within a market would see those JSAs attributable under FCC ownership rules, while a limit on common ownership of a radio station and daily newspaper in the same geographic area would end under a draft order, agency officials said. Those are the mandates in a Media Bureau order that were not proposed but were asked about in a December rulemaking notice. The draft order FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated as expected Wednesday for a vote (CD Nov 13 p1) otherwise mostly follows what was proposed in the notice, agency officials said.

Future low-power FM stations could be two notches away on the radio dial from full-power outlets, if LPFMs make certain interference showings similar to what other types of radio stations must make now. That’s under a draft FCC order tentatively set for a vote at the Nov. 30 commissioner meeting (CD Nov 12 p1), said agency, industry and public-interest group officials. They said the second-adjacent frequency spacing waiver would let LPFMs be two notches away if they won’t create interference in a populated area also reached by the full power.

The FCC mass-media agenda may be light in 2013, compared with work on USF and spectrum issues that will take up much of the eighth floor’s and many bureaus’ and offices’ attention, commission and industry officials predicted in interviews last week. They said Media Bureau staff may find the new year sharpens their focus on spectrum, with Chairman Julius Genachowski hoping to finish an order for the voluntary incentive auction by the end of next year. He would need rules for how to change the channels of stations that don’t agree to sell all or some of their frequencies.

Carriers’ capital expenditures may be a boon for small firms and those owned by women, minorities and other disadvantaged groups, the heads of PCIA and USTelecom said Thursday. Building more towers and adding other equipment to meet subscribers’ demand for data applications gives such firms an opportunity, speakers at a Minority Media and Telecommunications Council event said. CEOs Walter McCormick of USTelecom and Jonathan Adelstein of PCIA cited AT&T’s plan disclosed Wednesday to spend $14 billion on wireless and wireline broadband capacity (CD Nov 8 p11).

Unaffiliated presidential candidate Randall Terry unsuccessfully sought to buy political ads on other Washington TV stations, according to an interview with him Friday and records posted that day on fcc.gov. The FCC Media Bureau last week granted the complaint of the candidate, on the ballot in West Virginia but not states adjacent to the District of Columbia, to buy ad time on Gannett’s WUSA(CBS) (CD Nov 2 p3). Allbritton Communications’ WJLA(ABC) and News Corp.’s WTTG(Fox) also wouldn’t run Terry’s ads, which he said is prompting him to complain to the commission. He said he'll file another complaint against WUSA, because it wouldn’t accept a new request to buy ads that followed the bureau’s order in his favor. The ads depict aborted fetuses and feature criticism from Terry of President Barack Obama including allegations he sides with Muslims against Christians and Jews (http://xrl.us/bnxgh9).

The Department of Energy will issue a rulemaking notice on set-top box energy efficiency standards, a spokeswoman said Friday. That’s now that talks lasting for most of this year for some multichannel video programming distributors to agree on voluntary guidelines broke down (CD Nov 2 p8). Stakeholders each blamed the other side for why the negotiations ended Oct. 26 at the request of advocates.

Negotiations for energy-saving commitments by cable companies for set-top boxes ended, advocates for energy efficiency who had sought rules and the cable and consumer electronics industries that had opposed them told us. They said talks ended last Friday with CEA and NCTA on one side and groups including the Appliance Standards Awareness Project and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on the other. The continuing talks had prompted the Department of Energy (DOE) to delay issuing a rulemaking on such standards until at least Oct. 1 (CD July 6 p4). The notice has not been issued, and a DOE spokeswoman had no comment.