FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said broadcasters and pay-TV providers alike must negotiate retransmission consent deals in good faith and not deviate from that because of a forthcoming FCC rulemaking notice (CD March 1 p6) on retrans. Of the notice, set for a vote at Thursday’s agency meeting, he told an audience of broadcast executives visiting Washington to lobby on Capitol Hill for them and pay-TV rivals to “please don’t use this as an excuse” to not negotiate fairly. But most broadcasters and cable companies won’t wait for the FCC to change the dynamic, McDowell said Tuesday at an NAB conference. He also used FCC figures his office received to show that the agency is whittling down the number of indecency complaints against broadcasters, something he’s said should be reduced, although many license renewals are pending.

The FCC affirmed some cable operators’ billing practices of charging subscribers for products and equipment as part of a bundle and not individually requested by name (CD Feb 16 p17). A Media Bureau declaratory ruling Tuesday granted much of a petition from Time Warner Cable. The ruling said so-called negative option billing, when a subscriber doesn’t tell a customer service representative each product and service being requested, comports with the 1992 Cable Act. Nothing in Section 623(f) requires the customer to tell the CSR each product being purchased, in many cases, said the ruling signed by Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake.

The FCC might not put off a vote on making it harder for radio stations to move from rural to urban areas, even after a group of more than 500 broadcasters last week formally sought a delay, agency officials said. They said that, as of Monday afternoon, the move-in part of a tribal radio order remained set for a vote at Thursday’s FCC meeting. It’s the only controversial part of a Media Bureau order that otherwise seeks to make it easier for tribes to get AM and FM licenses (CD Feb 22 p6). Broadcasters have no objections to the rest of the order, said a filing posted Friday to docket 09-52.

Cable, DBS and telcos’ desire for changes to a draft retransmission consent rulemaking may not be fulfilled entirely when the notice is voted on at Thursday’s FCC meeting. Agency officials said wholesale or substantive changes to the notice are unlikely. Commissioners hadn’t formally proposed any changes by midday Monday, FCC officials said. Some pay-TV executives had said they would like the forthcoming notice not to tentatively conclude that the agency can’t force carriage or require arbitration when a TV station is blacked out on a subscription-video system. The draft before commissioners reaches the tentative conclusion that the commission can’t (CD Feb 22 p5).

Audio descriptions of on-screen action would make a comeback, starting next year, under a draft rulemaking notice that the FCC is tentatively set to vote on at Thursday’s meeting (CD Feb 14 p6), said agency officials and an advocate for people with disabilities. They said the rulemaking largely proposes to implement last year’s Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act and would phase in compliance starting Oct. 8, the legislation’s first anniversary. As set forth in the CVAA, the commission proposes to require top-market Big Four broadcast network affiliates by Jan. 1 to start describing, using speech, what amounts to about four hours weekly of programming, FCC officials said. Cable, DBS and telco-TV providers would have obligations, too.

The state of civil rights at the FCC has worsened in the past year, said 23 groups representing minorities, women and African-American newspaper publishers that wrote the agency on the same subject Feb. 16, 2010. “We did not think it possible that a year later, the status of civil rights at the FCC would get even worse, but it has,” said a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Fourteen months after the regulator’s report on its work on lifting barriers that keep minorities from entering the media and telecom markets was due to Congress, it “still has not” been submitted, the letter said. The FCC this summer updated its draft of the report (CD Aug 19 p3), a document that’s required under Section 257 of the Telecom Act, but it remains on the list of items circulating for a vote and an agency official said it hasn’t been approved by all commissioners.

AllVid rules could cut out cable and satellite providers because consumer electronics companies could take pay-TV content without having to share it with them or work directly with their systems, said DirecTV and NCTA executives. Requiring all multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to connect to a wide array of video devices shouldn’t be allowed to cut the MVPDs out of technological advances that they could use in their own systems, said DirecTV Vice President Stacy Fuller. AllVid could let CE companies “slice and dice” MVPD content without having a mandate to share it with pay TV, said NCTA Senior Vice President Rick Chessen. Both executives, speaking on a Tuesday D.C. Bar Association panel, said they support video device innovation. The FCC is working on an AllVid rulemaking notice.

The draft FCC rulemaking notice on retransmission consent asks questions about the practices of both pay-TV providers and broadcasters, the sides sparring over whether rules need to be updated, said commission and industry officials. The questions deal with subjects such as pay-TV providers’ notices to subscribers about possible carriage blackouts, and broadcast practices in negotiating retrans deals, FCC officials said. Some broadcast officials said they would prefer the item not ask about their industry’s retrans practices, or even to have a notice at all, and several pay-TV executives said they would prefer that the draft (CD Feb 14 p6) not say the commission doesn’t have authority to order interim carriage or arbitration in cases in which good faith is lacking.

Moving AM and FM stations from rural to urban areas would become harder under a draft FCC order that also deals with tribal radio issues, agency and industry lawyers said. Among the many items tentatively set for a vote at the March 3 meeting (CD Feb 14 p6), the Media Bureau order circulated by Chairman Julius Genachowski sets up a rebuttable presumption against what are called move-ins, an agency official said. AM and FM stations seeking to change their community of license to reach a service contour that was half or more urbanized would need to make a case why they should be able to make such a move, FCC officials said.

The FCC is probing the representations of News Corp.’s Fox Television Stations in discussions it had with the agency over the pending and contested license renewal of WWOR-TV Secaucus, N.J. Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake on Thursday sent the a lawyer for the broadcast network a letter of inquiry saying it’s investigating whether Fox broke several rules by allegedly misrepresenting the extent of its news and operations. WWOR is the only full-power commercial station in New Jersey and is required to carry news serving the specific audience of the northern part of the state, rather than just its community of license, as is the case with all other U.S. TV stations.