The FCC expanded its ex parte rules to require filings be made in most active proceedings after any lobbying conversation with commissioners, their aides or other agency officials. An order approved by the commissioners and released late Wednesday largely stuck to a draft that circulated in October (CD Oct 29 p2) in also doubling the amount of time in which most ex parte filings can be made to two business days. That would have made on-time some of the recent late filings we found in our review, as many were made a day late. But advocates for ex parte reform focused on the order’s expansion of the ex parte rules.

Alaska’s second statewide test of its emergency alert systems through radio and TV stations and cable operators last week -- following one a year ago that had major problems -- was a success, participants told us. The lessons from those tests, and exercises across other states, may help prepare broadcasters, cable operators, government officials and others for a nationwide emergency alert test, industry officials said. The national test could come late this year (CD Feb 2 p3), under draft FCC rules that some commissioners have already approved, agency officials said.

Broadcasters would be among those required to run nationwide tests of the emergency alert system (EAS) in conjunction with federal agencies and other programmers, under a draft FCC order that commissioners may vote on soon, commission and industry officials said Tuesday. The Public Safety Bureau circulated an item on EAS Jan. 20, the FCC website said. That’s a draft order to require nationwide tests to be done annually, perhaps starting this year, commission and industry officials said. The order would turn into rules the proposals in a January 2010 rulemaking notice (CD Jan 15/10 p5), FCC officials said.

Cable and telecom ISPs are continuing efforts toward IPv6 deployment, as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority issues the last five IPv4 address blocks, executives told us Tuesday. Cable operators and consumer electronics manufacturers are working together and with other companies affected by the looming transition to IPv6 from IPv4, said CableLabs and CEA officials.

The work of career FCC staffers on an order about an independent programmer’s complaint against the three largest U.S. cable operators and another sizable one is continuing and may be getting closer to completion, said commission and industry officials watching the progress. No order was circulating midday Monday on WealthTV’s program carriage complaint against Bright House Networks, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable, commission officials said. The Media Bureau may finish its work soon, though it’s unclear exactly when, said commission and industry officials.

A Time Warner Cable executive’s comments show the company is “warehousing spectrum” that could be used to build out Internet service to underserved markets, NAB President Gordon Smith wrote the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Commerce committees. Statements by Time Warner Cable Chief Operating Officer Rob Marcus on a conference call last week to discuss Q4 results (CD Jan 29 p7) amounted to a “surprising admission,” Smith wrote. It comes “at a time when other press reports have indicated that wireless carriers are sitting on as much as $15 billion in spectrum that has yet to be deployed,” he wrote in a letter Friday. Hours after the NAB released the document Monday, CTIA criticized it as “baffling.” The wireless and broadcast industries have been at odds over whether a spectrum shortage is approaching.

A delayed FCC proposal to let all pay-TV subscribers connect video devices, such as set-tops boxes and DVRs, bought from retailers or other third parties seems to have been slowed by concerns expressed by many multichannel video programming distributors and their content suppliers, said commission, industry and nonprofit officials on both sides of the issue. An AllVid rulemaking notice on a gateway device to connect consumer electronics to all MVPDs was supposed to have been voted on by commissioners last quarter, under the National Broadband Plan’s agenda. The item may not circulate until later this quarter or Q2, said officials inside and outside the commission watching development of the item.

Career FCC staffers continue working on a retransmission consent rulemaking notice that Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake has said will be done this quarter (CD Dec 9 p5), agency and industry officials said. Some said bureau staffers may be nearing completion of the bulk of their work, though it’s uncertain when the item will be circulated and voted on, and some think it won’t be scheduled to be decided on at any FCC meeting but will be approved on circulation. As they may be preparing to finish the draft order, staffers seem to be giving attention to several areas of retrans deals between cable, DBS or telco-TV providers and broadcasters, said agency and industry officials not part of the drafting process.

Understanding the economics of broadcaster/pay-TV deals raises several questions -- not all of which may be readily answerable -- but the industries can help inform the FCC as it looks to start a rulemaking on retransmission consent deals, the commission’s top economist said Friday. “This is an interesting economic question” about the benefits of such deals to TV stations, subscription-video providers and their consumers, Jonathan Baker told a Technology Policy Institute event on Capitol Hill. Retrans deals aren’t a “lump-sum transfer” of money since the payments are made on a per-subscriber basis, Baker noted.

FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker wants more attention given to satellite spectrum repurposing or incentive auctions, and less for now to broadcasters’ spectrum, she suggested in a recorded interview that was to have aired over the weekend and run again Monday. Speaking on C-SPAN’s The Communicators, she renewed her call for a comprehensive approach to spectrum policy. It must go beyond the recent conversations about redeploying TV stations’ airwaves for wireless broadband and focus on satellite and other areas, she said last week.