When it comes to FCC implementation of the Local Community Radio Act signed into law by President Barack Obama this month (CD Jan 6 p8), low-power FM (LPFM) and translator representatives told us they have different recommendations while relying on the same section of the legislation for authority. A commission official encouraged the submission of recommendations on how HR-6533 -- meant to make it easier for LPFM seekers to get new station licenses in urban areas where spectrum is scarce -- affects a proceeding on implementing a 2003 auction of translators, said Womble Carlyle broadcast lawyer John Garziglia, representing a dozen radio companies. That group and Prometheus Radio Project filed comments posted Monday to docket 99-25, both citing Section 5 of the act.

Among the many conditions that an FCC draft order seeks to impose on Comcast’s planned purchase of control in NBC Universal are several that deal with Internet content and broadband, agency and industry officials said this week. Some of the proposed conditions would require what the companies have recently proposed to the commission, and others appear to go beyond the offers. Included in the draft are requirements that Comcast not treat Web content affiliated with the combined company differently from unaffiliated content, agency officials said. Broadband deployment and selling what’s sometimes called naked, or unbundled, service are dealt with, too.

Revisions to a draft Comcast-NBC Universal FCC order await the return of commissioners from CES in Las Vegas, agency officials said. They said edits to the draft, which circulated Dec. 23, still will probably be made next week (CD Dec 28 p2). Commissioners and their aides have been reading the draft and starting to think about changes, but they haven’t formally proposed any yet, agency officials said. The draft would require the combined company to carry out public-interest proposals that the companies offered when the multibillion agreement for Comcast to buy control of NBC Universal was announced in December 2009 and since, commission and industry officials said. The proposed order would impose additional requirements on the companies, with many lasting seven years, they said.

Some at the FCC hewed to its recent stance of mainly watching retransmission consent talks and not actively encouraging broadcasters and cable, DBS and telco-TV companies to reach new deals as a slew of contracts expired New Year’s Day, commission officials said Tuesday. Unlike in some previous disputes, including those expiring Jan. 1, 2010, commissioners’ offices weren’t in constant communication with broadcasters and pay-TV providers whose retrans deals were expiring, they said. Career FCC staffers, including at the Media Bureau, also don’t seem to have been involved in many deals, a commission official said.

A $1.2 million indecency fine against 44 ABC affiliates was vacated Tuesday by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. The decision cited a Supreme Court ruling sending back to the FCC its policy that fleetingly indecent content could be found indecent. The 2nd Circuit also revealed that it recently turned down a U.S. government request that the court rehear en banc its affirmance of its earlier Fox ruling (CD July 14 p1). That puts all eyes back on the Supreme Court, which the government is expected to ask to hear Fox, said advocates on both sides of the issue.

A coming FCC rulemaking notice on retransmission consent deals may take a broad look at the contracts between subscription-video providers and TV stations, said agency and industry officials watching development of the draft. The notice may not propose many specific remedies to reduce the number of carriage disputes that lead to TV station blackouts on cable, DBS or telco-TV systems, they said. Although styled as a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), the draft may read more like a notice of inquiry (NOI), in that it may ask many questions and not propose many specific rules, said agency and industry officials not involved in writing the item.

An FCC order on Comcast’s plan to buy control of NBC Universal may circulate yet before Friday’s federal holiday, industry and commission officials said. If the order didn’t circulate late Wednesday, and it wasn’t as of 5 p.m., it may go to the eighth floor Thursday, they said. Approval by commissioners is unlikely this year, agency and industry officials have said (CD Dec 21 p5). Comcast said Wednesday the deal won’t be completed by Dec. 31.

Time Warner Cable won’t be required to carry Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals baseball games to its approximately 2 million expanded-basic subscribers in North Carolina, after all. FCC members adopted 4-1 an order that overturns an arbitrator’s decision to require the carriage and that undoes a draft circulated by Kevin Martin on his last business day as FCC chairman, commission officials said Tuesday afternoon. Commissioner Michael Copps is the dissenter from the forthcoming order, agency officials said.

Career FCC staff review of Comcast’s plan to buy control of NBC Universal appears to be moving closer to an end (CD Dec 14 p3), so that an initial draft order on the multibillion dollar deal can circulate, said commission and industry officials. The order hadn’t circulated as of midday Monday, agency said. The order may circulate soon, perhaps this week, though timing isn’t certain, commission and industry officials said. A spokeswoman for the Media Bureau, whose staff is reviewing the deal, declined to comment.

Comcast made more concessions to groups representing minorities, reaching a memorandum of understanding Friday with African-American organizations that will support the company’s deal to buy control of NBC Universal. The MOU document is at http://xrl.us/bib3dq. The NAACP, the National Urban League and the National Action Network said the companies agreed to add independently owned networks in which minorities have “substantial participation either through ownership or operational control” and increase giving to entities that serve blacks and are led by them. The memorandum is “a comprehensive commitment covering all business units and focusing on ... corporate governance, employment/workforce recruitment and retention, procurement, programming and philanthropy and community investment,” Comcast Vice President Payne Brown wrote on the company blog. “We have committed to carry ten new independent channels, four of which will be African American owned or managed.” Outgoing House Competition Subcommittee Chairman Hank Johnson, D-Ga., supports the Comcast-NBC Universal transaction, he wrote the FCC commissioners Friday. “I believe the parties have satisfactorily demonstrated” that the deal won’t “undermine competition in the media and telecommunications industry,” Johnson wrote. Free Press, which opposes the combination, thinks it’s “troubling” that the FCC may be close to finishing work on it, said Policy Counsel Corie Wright. “For six months, Comcast has refused to comply with the FCC’s May 2010 request for Comcast’s cable carriage contracts with independent programmers,” she said. “These contracts are essential to assessing whether and how Comcast limits independent programmers’ ability to distribute their content as a way of depriving emerging online rivals of the ability to compete.” “The government has asked for and received from Comcast and NBCU extraordinary volumes of information to conduct its thorough review, and that review has been under way for nearly 11 months at the FCC” and Justice Department, a Comcast spokeswoman said. “'This is a time when parties come out of the woodwork seeking leverage,'” she said of Free Press, quoting incoming House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich. (CD Dec 15 p8). “That is what this organization is seeking, and it should be rejected.” As of Friday afternoon, no proposed order had circulated at the commission for a vote, an agency official said. One may circulate this week, but probably not until after the net neutrality vote Tuesday, commission officials have said (CD Dec 14 p3).