The surge in types of video available online and in the sheer amount of it offer opportunities for broadcasters, cable operators, DBS providers and newer Internet and other new-media companies, executives from those industries said on a panel Friday. Executives from Disney and the NCTA said they see such trends as adding to the total amount of time consumers spend viewing video, not subtracting from it. “We view it as an opportunity for established media companies,” and Google TV represents one such product, said Johanna Shelton, the company’s senior policy counsel. An underlying concern expressed by some at the event organized by the Media Access Project is that “disintermediation” of content bundling could threaten the business models that pay for high-quality content.

A rulemaking notice on emergency alert system (EAS) gear certification, in the wake of a new standard from the federal government on protocol for transmitting such warnings, should be ready to circulate by year’s end, a career FCC official working on the draft said Thursday. The notice on applying Part 11 rules to radio and TV station and cable operator gear using the new Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is being wrapped up now, Chief Tom Beers of the Public Safety Bureau’s Policy Division told an FCBA brown bag lunch. Also there, the FEMA official overseeing the integrated public alert and warning system said that agency hopes to have a nationwide EAS test, possibly in the next two years, something an NAB representative in the audience said broadcasters likely would support.

A spate of small and mid-sized cable system deals likely will continue as financing increasingly becomes available, private-equity firms eye more mergers and acquisitions, and existing operators buy other operators, said all the executives and brokers we interviewed. The major deals, some for tens of billions of dollars at peak valuations, that occurred in the late 1990s and early part of last decade probably are a thing of the past, they said. The drought of major deals for cable networks seems likely to continue, industry officials predicted. At the time of our last cable M&A survey, deal activity had just begun picking up (CD May 3 p4).

The FCC found a wide array of video captioning problems in a first-of-its-kind study of all complaints to the commission about broadcast-TV and subscription-video programming in the 52 weeks through May 7. Equipment from broadcasters, cable operators and DBS providers had technical problems, and so did set-top boxes, said a report on digital closed captions by the Office of Engineering and Technology and the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. They studied 107 complaints to the FCC.

Three draft FCC rulemaking items on spectrum that circulated Tuesday for a vote at this month’s meeting seem to hold few surprises for industry or commissioners, said agency and industry officials. The drafts from career agency staffers are consistent with public comments by Chairman Julius Genachowski on the items, which he has made the focus of the Nov. 30 meeting (CD Oct 21 p1), FCC officials said. The items haven’t become controversial within the agency, but commission staffers and lobbyists are just starting to focus on them, they said.

The FCC will postpone by a half year the deadline for broadcasters and cable operators to be able to pass along emergency alerts using new standards from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said commission and industry officials. The deadline to implement Common Alerting Protocol at radio and TV stations and cable systems is 180 days after FEMA finalized CAP, which was Sept. 30, putting the deadline at the end of March. A draft FCC order likely to be finalized soon extends the time to Sept. 30, 2011, agency and industry officials said. The delay had been expected (CD Oct 5 p1).

DirecTV and Dish Network could import the signals of far-away TV stations only when subscribers couldn’t get in-market outlets with the same network affiliation using outdoor antennas, under a draft FCC order starting to get attention from lobbyists and commissioners, agency officials said. They said another draft order would let a DBS provider carry stations from adjacent markets that are deemed significantly viewed (SV) in an area if the company sells the subscriber a package of local broadcasts. The drafts are seen by officials inside and outside the FCC as a mixed bag for broadcasters and satellite companies, giving each some of what they had sought in follow-through on the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act. The orders generally comport with rulemaking notices issued this summer by the commission, which has until Nov. 24 to implement STELA.

The FCC will set a precedent however it decides a complaint that a new cartoon on a Viacom channel violates children’s media rules because it’s based on characters used elsewhere to advertise athletic shoes, supporters and critics of the show agreed in interviews and recent filings. Those seeking commission approval of a petition for declaratory ruling on the show Zevo-3, which began airing Oct. 11 on the Nicktoons channel, believe that granting the request (CD Oct 26 p5) would prevent any further shows from being based entirely on characters that sell goods in other media venues. Opponents of the petition said its approval would not only stop future shows but also limit current ones.

Associations have their work cut out for them meeting incoming freshman GOP lawmakers now that the House has shifted to Republican control with Tuesday’s midterm elections, trade-group executives agreed. They said their groups will make a push with new lawmakers about their issues largely by using current lobbyists experienced working with both parties on Capitol Hill. The midterms represent an opportunity for the groups to tell new committee chairmen and committee members early on about their issues, association executives said.

Federal review of the Comcast-NBC Universal deal is intensifying and could lead to government approval with many conditions as soon as December, lobbyists and government officials said. They said the Department of Justice remains further along than the FCC in reviewing Comcast’s multibillion dollar agreement to buy control of NBC Universal. The DOJ may finish its work on the deal in December, while it’s less certain when FCC commissioners will get an order to vote on, said FCC, industry and nonprofit officials. Comcast executives have said they hope to get regulatory approval for the deal this year.