The focal point of new media ownership rules is wholly back on the FCC, since all pending litigation challenging the agency’s last review of the limits has ended. Industry executives and lawyers, FCC officials and nonprofit representatives who oppose further consolidation agreed in interviews last week that the ball’s in the commission’s court. The regulator had been waiting for a ruling, which came in July from a Philadelphia appeals court, on how to proceed on diversity issues (CD July 8 p3). Another court Wednesday (CD Aug 11 p13) denied a licensing challenge on the 2008 order.

Two popular cable channels with lots of live shows are exempt from needing to orally describe action scenes with little dialogue on multichannel video programming distributors, under a draft Media Bureau order implementing video description legislation. FCC and industry officials said Thursday the bureau wants the order voted on later this month, so the rules can take effect soon as required by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. MVPDs and their associations as well as advocates for the disabled have been visiting the commission to lobby on the item, officials said and filings in docket 11-43 show (http://xrl.us/bk8c2o).

Another program access complaint may make its way to the FCC. Hawaii’s biggest telco has threatened one against that state’s largest cable operator. And the commission may finish work soon on two other program carriage complaints made by AT&T and Verizon against Cablevision and its former programming unit.

There’s no reason to expand telecom outage reporting mandates from traditional phone service to VoIP, broadband and backbone service providers, said all corporate filings to the FCC. There are major differences between outages on public switched telephone networks (PSTN) and on broadband and other newer networks, associations and companies said. But states said such outage reporting is needed, given increasing reliance on VoIP to make calls instead of circuit-switched phone networks, and because Internet networks carry calls to 911. The FCC proposed (http://goo.gl/09KYY), amid concerns of Commissioner Robert McDowell, to extend Part 4 rules to ISPs, backbone services and VoIP for outages of at least a half-hour (CD May 13 p9). Comments were posted Monday and Tuesday in docket 11-82 (http://goo.gl/boqUK).

A proposal to delay FCC enforcement of emergency alert system rules doesn’t go far enough for many broadcasters seeking a longer extension, while EAS equipment makers said the plan makes sense. The comments in interviews came after the Federal Emergency Management Agency asked the commission to delay by four months until Jan. 31 penalizing broadcasters that can’t encode and decode alerts in FEMA’s new format (CD Aug 8 p3). Public TV stations, state broadcasters and the NAB, among those seeking a delay, want it to apply to the rules taking effect, their representatives said. Executives of equipment makers said FEMA’s proposal could be a workable compromise for their industry and for all EAS participants.

The agency that developed a new alerting standard sought a delay in the FCC enforcing compliance with it among radio and TV stations. The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked the FCC to hold off for four additional months in enforcing compliance with FEMA’s Common Alerting Protocol for emergency alert systems. The current EAS deadline, which a wide array of multichannel video programming distributors and commercial and nonprofit broadcasters want extended (CD Aug 2 p12), shouldn’t be enforced until Jan. 1, FEMA said. The industry entities want the deadline that’s now set at Sept. 30 extended by at least six months after the commission comes up with certification standards for CAP. Google said more time than the current deadline may be needed.

The Justice Department, sticking with a consent decree it agreed to with Comcast to clear its buy of NBCUniversal, answered a federal judge’s questions on how the proposed settlement’s terms affect online video distributors disgruntled with the combined company. Justice said the antitrust deal gives a choice to OVDs that can’t get deals for the rights to carry cable or broadcast online content from the company. They can complain to the FCC, which can order arbitration, or go to DOJ, which can send it to arbitration that can’t be appealed. The filing expanded on what a DOJ lawyer told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in his courtroom a week and a half ago: The commission is the likely venue for OVD complaints. The filing listed tradeoffs in taking a case to the FCC versus Justice.

Kentucky TV station leaders have spoken with GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell from that state on legislation to reallocate channels to wireless broadband, said Kentucky Broadcasters Association CEO Gary White. It’s among several state broadcaster groups that spoke with their congressional delegations as Congress weighed various debt-ceiling bills, one of which would have let the FCC hold the voluntary incentive auction the agency seeks (CD Aug 4 p2). “Senator McConnell has always been ‘with us’ on broadcast related issues in Congress,” White said in an interview. “The entire Kentucky congressional delegation, in general, supports the broadcast industry when it comes to matters that impact radio and television.” White said the group meets “on a regular basis” with members of the state’s congressional delegation in Washington and when they're home.

Pay-TV companies found their next exhibit in the quest to convince the FCC to change good-faith bargaining rules on retransmission consent deals with broadcasters. Four days after the FCC approved the contested sale of a TV station (CD July 22 p16) despite the concerns of an alliance of all major multichannel video programming distributors other than Comcast and opposition from the association for small cable operators, a broadcaster filed an antitrust lawsuit against a rival. Nexstar’s suit against Granite Broadcasting was ill-timed, agreed broadcast and cable lawyers who reviewed it and related FCC filings, because it gave ammunition to MVPDs to press the FCC to act on retrans. They also said the case won’t likely spur the agency to act more quickly.

TV stations, having dodged one spectrum bullet, now face longer-term prospects for Congress to pass legislation for the FCC to voluntarily auction some channels. Industry executives said they avoided having Congress authorize the incentive auction (CD Aug 2 p1), in debt-ceiling legislation that President Barack Obama signed Tuesday, through several means. Lobbying on Capitol Hill by state associations, NAB and its corporate members, House Republicans’ concerns about auctioning TV spectrum but not the D block, and GOP legislators’ focus on deficit reduction and not adding government revenue each played a part.