Advertising buyers should bar discrimination against media companies they purchase ads from, the group representing such agencies recommended. The recommendation that members of the American Association of Advertising Agencies adopt a non-discrimination policy in picking vendors, and let those that feel they've been discriminated against complain about alleged violations, comes after the 4As worked for years on such an initiative, industry officials said. In 2007 the FCC banned discrimination in broadcast advertising (CD March 7/08 p9). The commission’s reach doesn’t go beyond radio and TV stations, and so the ban on so-called non-urban or non-Hispanic terms in contracts can’t be enforced for the companies that buy commercials and the agencies they use to make those purchases.

The Justice Department and FCC worked very closely together to review Comcast’s purchase of control in NBCUniversal, approved by the government and completed in January, officials from both agencies said during an American Bar Association webcast Wednesday. They laid out some behind-the-scenes interagency work in reviewing the multibillion-dollar deal, with collaboration that a lawyer for Comcast called “unprecedented.” Justice continues oversight of the joint venture Comcast and NBCUniversal created with former NBCU parent General Electric to house all of their programming assets. There are regular meetings of a committee overseeing Comcast’s compliance with terms of the department’s antitrust settlement with the company. That’s according to committee member and DOJ Antitrust Division attorney Yvette Tarlov.

The FCC seems likely to stick with a notice of inquiry, rather than a rulemaking, in the draft item on TV station programming, political advertising and other disclosure (CD Oct 14 p7) that’s set for a vote at Thursday’s meeting, agency and industry officials told us. They said it seems unlikely for now that the commission will change course before the gathering and make the draft Media Bureau notice of inquiry on programming into a notice of proposed rulemaking. Some nonprofit groups had sought an NPRM, contending an NOI isn’t necessary because the enhanced disclosure proceeding began 11 years ago, while broadcasters have said an NOI is the right way to go (CD Oct 21 p13). And some at the commission still want an NPRM, agency officials said.

A nascent proposal for TV stations to act as broadband content delivery mechanisms (CD Oct 14 p14) for Internet Protocol traffic drew skepticism on technical and policy grounds from some industries whose support may be necessary for the proposal to succeed. Wireless companies, who want the FCC to voluntarily auction some broadcaster spectrum to free up frequencies for mobile broadband, declined to back the parts of the plan unveiled Thursday (http://xrl.us/bmgm8e) by the Coalition for Free TV and Broadband. An engineer who has worked for carriers and TV stations and a lawyer for full-power TV broadcasters told us the plan may face economic and equipment hurdles. Proponents said the economic analysis they paid for to show their plan would raise more money for the U.S. than an auction will be complete in a week, and standards for carriers to send traffic broadcasters’ way don’t fully exist.

Industries and disabled advocates seek changes to what the FCC proposed for rules requiring broadcast and pay-TV videos to be captioned when they're delivered by Internet Protocol. Wireless carriers, makers of consumer electronics, multichannel video programming distributors, broadcasters and advocates for those with trouble hearing sought changes to a rulemaking notice. The notice is on implementing the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, under which the commission must complete rules for IP captions by Jan. 12 (CD Sept 21 p12). Comments are in docket 11-154 (http://xrl.us/bmgjgj).

There’s the equivalent of a mini-DTV transition occurring through Nov. 9 by radio and TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors seeking to get the word out about a first-of-its-kind emergency message test set for 2 p.m. Eastern that day. Some executives, who along with the FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency are ramping up public outreach (CD Oct 14 p15) about the nationwide emergency alert system test, compared those EAS efforts to what occurred before the 2009 DTV transition. The extent of work among the FCC, FEMA, other government agencies and broadcasters and MVPDs resembles other cooperative efforts before the full-power analog broadcast cutoff, executives and government officials told us.

Cablevision discriminated against the Game Show Network by moving it off a basic tier of the cable operator in February, GSN said in a program carriage complaint filed with the FCC Wednesday night. It alleged the cable operator gave wider carriage to its own networks, which weren’t moved to the sports programming package like GSN was. The complaint portrayed those networks that were owned at the time by Cablevision -- We TV and Wedding Central -- as similar to GSN. Cablevision rejected that comparison.

The FCC will put an end to Form 355, under a draft order set to be voted on at the Oct. 27 meeting (CD Oct 7 p13), commission officials said. The document is a quarterly programming report the agency approved in 2007 but which TV stations were never required to complete. The Office of Management and Budget under both the administrations of President George W. Bush and Barack Obama didn’t approve the form under the Paperwork Reduction Act, industry officials noted.

CenturyLink may move public, educational and governmental networks to subchannels on Channel 99, much like AT&T has on its pay-TV service, a group of PEG programmers said. The American Community Television group wrote CenturyLink CEO Glenn Post on Friday asking for clarification on the company’s plans for its pay-TV service. Moving PEG networks to a single channel “is unacceptable to us as it discriminates against the blind or visually impaired” who may have trouble using on-screen menus to find the channel they want, ACT President John Rocco said. The group hasn’t heard back from the telco, which may not have received the letter until Tuesday, Executive Director Bunnie Riedel told us. CenturyLink continues to deliver PEG networks as individual channels, and it’s monitoring what the FCC and industry are doing on the issue of how to handle such programming, a company spokesman said. The telco’s Prism TV service distributes the channels “using the same process as most cable television providers,” he said.

Emergency alert system participants are increasingly focusing outreach on consumers before next month’s first nationwide test, industry officials told us. They said the FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency are shifting educational efforts from being just focused on letting radio and TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors know about the Nov. 9 test, to working on public education. The FCC has produced public service announcements about the exercise (http://xrl.us/bmfyvk), and FEMA is working on them, industry participants said. They said both agencies have been holding conference calls and meetings with the broadcasting and MVPD industries and local emergency management agencies.