The FCC media ownership review due to Congress in 2010 has been further delayed (CD May 18 p4), and a final order is unlikely until the second half of next year, agency officials said. They said the reasons include a lag in getting from Congress money that the commission needed to pay for outsiders such as professors to study media ownership (CD Aug 9 p6). The FCC’s focus on broadband, the difficulty of completing the quadrennial review on time -- which has never been done before -- and career Media Bureau staffers focusing on reviewing Comcast’s multibillion dollar purchase of control in NBC Universal are other explanations, agency and industry officials said.
The FCC is looking to Capitol Hill for action on retransmission consent rules, perhaps by new legislation, instead of acting now on the issue, officials at and outside the commission said Monday. Almost 15 days into their retrans dispute, Cablevision and News Corp. over the weekend ended a blackout, restoring Fox TV stations as well as several cable channels to the cable operator’s subscribers. Fox and Dish Network averted a separate retrans blackout Friday, signing a long-term deal. With those negotiations wrapped up for now, the commission doesn’t seem poised to take regulatory action on the issue, FCC and other officials said.
Those lobbying the FCC would get more time to report most conversations in ex parte filings, which would need to have more details than some do now, under a draft order awaiting commissioner approval, agency officials said. They said the order sticks mainly sticks to what was proposed in a rulemaking notice on ex partes approved by commissioners in February. A twist is that the draft contains a rulemaking notice to seek further comment on the disclosure of financial ties to companies, groups and others lobbying the FCC, said agency officials. That subject isn’t now part of the draft order’s provisions, they said.
Cablevision will give subscribers a $10 credit to pay for the cost of viewing World Series games live on MLB.com, since customers lack cable access to the games on the Fox network. Cable subscribers who buy the website’s “Postseason.TV” packages will get the credit, applied within two billing cycles to their monthly bill, Cablevision said late Wednesday. Late the next day, the cable operator asked government entities and non profits to consider retransmitting the World Series online for free. That’s allowed under the Copyright Act of 1976, Cablevision said.
Comcast said it wouldn’t change NBC Universal’s relationship with Hulu.com. The renewed promise came after a blackout by News Corp. of Fox video on the website was brought up in relation to Comcast’s deal to buy control of NBC Universal. It was Comcast’s first comment to the FCC on the Cablevision-Fox retransmission consent dispute and on News Corp.’s decision to temporarily block Cablevision broadband customers from Fox video on Fox.com and Hulu, which is partly owned by NBC Universal and News Corp. (CD Oct 19 p5). The FCC criticized Cablevision for using PR tactics in the retrans dispute. About 18 hours later, Cablevision said it’s willing to pay what News Corp. seeks from another major cable operator for carriage of two of three blacked-out TV stations. Fox rejected the offer hours after it was made.
Career FCC staffers are reviewing responses from Cablevision and Fox to see whether negotiations that led up to a carriage blackout that’s in its 12th day were done in good faith, agency and industry officials said. They said Media Bureau staffers are reviewing the responses received late Monday from the companies on their retransmission consent dispute (CD Oct 26 p8) to determine whether to fine either or both if they're found to have acted in bad faith. If the bureau finds that FCC rules on retrans talks were broken, it could have the policy basis to order interim carriage. Because the bureau still lacks a complaint, it may not have statutory authority to order Fox’s three stations in the New York and Philadelphia areas back onto Cablevision, agency and industry officials said.
Don’t open the floodgates for more TV programmers to start airing shows based on cartoon characters that hawk goods, by allowing a Viacom cable channel to keep running a show based on characters sell kids’ sneakers, a dozen groups asked the FCC. Those groups and Free Press backed a request by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood that the commission find the Zevo-3 show that began running Oct. 11 on Nicktoons violates the Children’s Television Act. Opposing a petition for declaratory ruling was the cable programmer, Skechers -- the sneaker maker whose Z-Strap, Kewl Breeze and Elastika characters are on the show -- and several ad industry groups. How the FCC treats the petition may show how, under Chairman Julius Genachowski, it will tackle the issue of increased commercialism on kids media (CD Sept 23 p6).
Congress is unlikely to make changes soon to retransmission consent rules despite stepped up lobbying by pay-TV companies trying to make the most of an ongoing dispute between Cablevision and News Corp., according to broadcast, cable and Capitol Hill officials. A bill on FCC handling of such disputes that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has said he'll introduce soon (CD Oct 20 p1) seems unlikely to pass this Congress, they said. Legislators focused on getting re-elected means there’s less time to pay attention now to the blackout of three Fox TV stations owned by News Corp. on Cablevision systems in the New York area, a cable executive acknowledged.
Three dozen nonprofits asked the FCC to resume collecting the numbers of minorities and women employed at each broadcaster, after a lapse of most of the past decade. They said late Thursday it’s far past time for the commission to require radio and TV stations to fill out Form 395-B yearly and for the FCC to disclose publicly each broadcaster’s information. Those requesting the commission action include the Communications Workers of America, Common Cause, Free Press, the New America Foundation and Public Knowledge. Broadcasters have asked that the data be kept private and submitted to a third party, not the FCC, a position that some still support, said nonprofit and industry officials.
Requests to ban blocking of online video by NBC after control of its parent company goes to Comcast may gain traction at the FCC after a different broadcast network prevented its Web video from being seen by some cable broadband subscribers, antitrust lawyers and industry analysts predicted. The blocking of Fox.com and Hulu.com video from News Corp. over the weekend, in the company’s retransmission-consent dispute with Cablevision, has raised speculation about similar action by NBC against a pay-TV provider during a retransmission contract dispute when it’s controlled by Comcast (CD Oct 21 p5). The American Cable Association, DirecTV and Dish Network -- foes of the Comcast-NBC Universal deal as it’s planned -- cited the Fox Web video blackout to the approximately 2.6 million broadband subscribers with Cablevision Internet Protocol addresses to renew their request for curbs on Comcast.