Moving to end a backlog of captioning exemption requests built up since 2006, the FCC this year rejected several hundred, about three quarters of the total. That came after requiring many of the broadcast-TV programmers to update their requests. Those that didn’t do so had them rejected, and some of those hired lawyers to refile. That’s according to our review of applications, commission data and interviews with waiver seekers and those opposing them. Efforts by the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau to decide on hundreds of requests led CGB to dismiss 851 without prejudice against refiling in 2012, bureau data show. They show 58 requests first made in 2006, 2005 or earlier and rescinded Oct. 20 to correct procedural flaws in waiver handling during the chairmanship of Kevin Martin were reapplied for (CD Oct 6 p5), and 100 requests predating October 2010 were updated. There are now about 245 requests pending.

A top aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski unsuccessfully suggested this spring that some major U.S. cable networks could add parental content ratings to all TV shows placed on their websites, several industry executives said in recent interviews. Shortly before Josh Gottheimer stepped down as senior counsel to Genachowski and left the commission in late June, he’s said to have asked the major broadcast-TV networks if they'd be willing to expand program-length linear shows’ parental ratings to those episodes when they go on the Internet. The broadcast networks acceded to the suggestion in a joint June 11 (CD June 12 p4) announcement that seven will, for new programs put online after Dec. 1 on websites they control, put ratings at the start of videos and in descriptions on the Internet.

Radio broadcasters, having stepped up online streaming, now look to promote mobile devices capable of receiving over-the-air FM signals, both for stations to save money on royalty costs and for wireless subscribers to save money on data plans. Most of the commercial stations owned by major U.S. radio broadcasters that responded to our survey stream transmissions in real-time online, and many but not all of the properties have apps for multiple mobile platforms. Those companies’ executives said they hope consumers will learn they could listen to nearby FM stations on smartphones, and that carriers react by adding devices with the chips.

Major U.S. cable operators, looking to make their facilities more energy efficient so it costs less to power them and equipment lasts longer (CD July 24 p12), have two new guides from the industry’s technical consortium for backend facilities. The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Tuesday released its first two standards for energy efficiency of hubs and headends which operators use to connect their larger networks and Internet backbones to regional cable systems. SCTE 184 is a recommended practice for how to locate such facilities and keep them running when commercial power goes out, and SCTE 186 is a specification for ventilation of such buildings and data centers, and ways to locate racks of equipment.

Broadcasters and carriers and wireless vendors are no closer on whether more types of mobile devices should have FM chips in them to get terrestrial radio transmissions, after the FCC convened a meeting on the subject, participants told us. They said commission staff and executives from the top four U.S. carriers, some makers of consumer electronics and a broadcast CEO and their trade groups met last Friday in an FCC-convened meeting (CD July 6 p9).

Energy efficiency efforts are spreading among the range of industries involved in TV programming, said government officials, consumer electronics and multichannel video programming distributor executives and those aligned with groups seeking less electricity consumption. With the specter of U.S. regulation of set-top box energy efficiency comes private stakeholder discussions of ways to voluntarily give MVPD customers more efficient boxes, with cable, telco and satellite-TV deployments under way for years in some cases. Executives said MVPDs are moving from set-tops to Internet Protocol streaming to networked TV sets and other CE devices, reducing household energy use through increasing what’s stored in data centers and other company facilities. So operators try to use less energy in data centers, as TV stations cut electricity use, executives said.

The FCC looked back at four years of data through June 30, 2010, in the market for multichannel video programming distribution services, and where possible, updated the information and regulatory and litigation developments. Friday’s release of the 14th MVPD competition report to Congress, meant under the 1996 Telecom Act an annual exercise, included four years of data to partly catch the agency up. The report noted as expected that online video distributors (CD July 10 p3) have cropped up in recent years to give MVPD customers other options. A notice of inquiry for the next report seeks data as of June 30 this year and last on MVPDs, OVDs and TV stations, the three major groups covered in the new document.

A third company is involved in a retransmission consent dispute between Hearst Television and Time Warner Cable that went into its fourth full day Friday (CD July 13 p2). Nexstar, owner of three TV stations that Time Warner Cable is importing network programming from in five areas, filed a complaint at the FCC against the operator over the practice. Time Warner Cable said it’s within its rights to import the signals of Nexstar stations from other markets that have the same affiliation as Hearst stations blacked out on TWC’s systems.

A Republican member of the Federal Election Commission warned media executives they face loss of an exemption the media industry has for some political disclosures. Donald McGahn said career FEC staff have a natural and nonpartisan proclivity to read a broad mandate into Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United in 2010 and legislation like 2002’s Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. Combined with the three Democratic commissioners who tend to be more regulatory on the six-member agency that’s evenly split among party lines, he told a Media Institute luncheon that the media’s exemption to certain limits on what constitutes impermissible political communications may be peeled away. He said the agency’s approach of not only “belt and suspenders but duct tape and everything else” mooted the practical effect of OK'ing political contributions by text message (CD July 10 p9).

The FCC Media Bureau is monitoring the blackout of 15 Hearst Television stations on Time Warner Cable, without taking sides in the dispute over retransmission consent fees that entered a third full day Thursday (CD July 12 p10), industry officials said. The agency’s sticking to the standard practice that it used in some but not all retrans disputes in recent years, agency and industry officials noted. They said that means the office of Chairman Julius Genachowski and his colleagues aren’t getting updates from either side and are instead letting career commission staff monitor the blackout.