The FCC is unlikely to act on Tribune’s request to transfer radio and TV licenses and waivers of cross-ownership rules banning common ownership of broadcasters and daily newspapers in the same market until pending bankruptcy issues are resolved, agency and industry officials predicted. Work by career commission staffers reviewing the deal for the company to emerge from Chapter 11 appears to have been slowed down because senior creditors of the company that were set to take control of it have abandoned that deal, they said. The officials said the regulator may be reviewing some elements of Tribune’s long-form application -- put out for public comment in May -- that aren’t directly affected by disagreement over bankruptcy emergence by creditors.

The FCC would expand the types of providers getting guaranteed space on Sirius XM as full-time channels to be set aside for such use were expanded beyond those owned by minorities, in an order that circulated last week, agency officials said. The draft written by career agency staffers makes good on the 2008 commission order conditionally approving Sirius’s purchase of XM in a several-billion-dollar deal by dictating terms of channel set-asides. Instead of using minority-owned companies to fill 4 percent of the company’s channels, the draft would let Sirius XM pick as qualified entities any firm that doesn’t already have a programming relationship with the company, commission officials said. The channel set-aside was part of FCC approval of the 2008 deal that created the company.

Increased interest on retransmission consent among legislators of both parties and from many parts of the U.S. is demonstrated in a spate of recent letter-writing by members of Congress on the subject to the FCC, some broadcast and cable executives agreed. At least 49 members of Congress have written the FCC, some multiple times, on the subject of contracts between TV stations and subscription-video providers, often cable operators, our research found. The 33 Democrats and 16 Republicans represent 19 states. Two letter writers each sit on the Senate and House Commerce committees.

Dish Network gets a step closer to being able to resume importing signals of TV stations outside subscribers’ home markets with the same affiliation as the local broadcaster, in a draft FCC order delivering on part of this year’s Satellite TV Extension and Localism Act, agency officials said. They said the draft would certify the DBS provider as carrier of such distant TV signals because it’s carrying TV stations in all 210 markets. That would let Dish meet another part of STELA so it can resume carrying stations to subscribers who wouldn’t be able to get their local station with an antenna.

The FCC largely sat out retransmission consent talks between Time Warner Cable and Disney-owned ABC TV stations and cable networks including ESPN that the companies said are close to reaching a successful conclusion, according to commission officials. The ongoing contract negotiations drew widespread attention, with a large number of stations, channels and cable subscribers involved. They didn’t seem to lead to overt worry inside the FCC that a deal wouldn’t be reached, agency officials said.

The radio industry seems split on whether agreeing to pay royalties when broadcasting music would be offset by a cost cut in streaming fees, a requirement that FM chips be included in all cellphones and removal of legislative and Copyright Royalty Board uncertainty, our survey found. Some larger radio station groups and some of all sizes with relatively low debt believe that the potential of paying 1 percent on average of revenue in terrestrial music royalties, estimated to total $100 million annually, is offset by the benefits of a possible deal between NAB and RIAA. Smaller station groups and those that are more indebted are more wary because they can’t afford the royalty even if it gives them more business certainty, we found.

The FCC plans a gathering of economists to discuss the financial implications of Comcast’s plan to buy control of NBC Universal, commission officials said. A spokeswoman for the Media Bureau, which is organizing Friday’s meeting, declined to comment. Economists representing deal opponents and backers will meet at the agency to discuss the deal, an FCC official said. The gathering will be behind closed doors and the regulator will release a transcript of the event sometime afterward with proprietary information blacked out, another official said.

The full appeals court whose three-judge panel threw out an FCC decision to censure Fox for broadcasting unscripted swear words on 2002 and 2003 music awards shows probably won’t agree to rehear the case, said law professors and industry lawyers with indecency expertise watching the proceeding. The six we surveyed said the chances of the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in New York granting the commission’s request are low, as with most such requests for en banc rehearings. They said the ten judges may not be moved by FCC arguments that panel’s July ruling conflicts with the Supreme Court decision which sent the case back to the 2nd Circuit, the high court’s landmark 1978 Pacifica indecency ruling and other cases and would hobble the commission’s ability to regulate indecency. The FCC’s request, made Thursday, was expected (CD Aug 25 p3).

Both sides in a cable program carriage dispute before the FCC met Monday with Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps to update them on the case, as expected (CD Aug 18 p2), agency and industry officials said. They said no settlement of the dispute, in which the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network contends it should be carried to Time Warner Cable’s subscribers in North Carolina, appears to be in the offing. Rather, the Monday meeting was an opportunity for representatives for the programmer, whose channel carries games of baseball’s Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals, and the cable operator to update commissioners on their case, agency and industry officials said. A draft order from the Media Bureau for a full-commission vote to overturn an earlier bureau decision and not require MASN to be carried to Time Warner Cable’s approximately 1.5 million basic-cable subscribers in North Carolina hasn’t yet circulated, an agency official said. It’s still expected to circulate soon. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment, as did spokesmen for both companies.

An appeals court’s recent reversal of an FCC finding that unscripted curse words aired during prime time broadcasts are indecent could be applied to another case involving the appearance of a woman’s buttocks, the U.S. government said. The case on fleeting swear words reversed by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York (CD July 14 p1) wasn’t on the subject of scripted airing of nude adults, as occurred in the 2003 NYPD Blue episode now at issue. Yet the three-judge panel’s decision on Fox v. FCC “does not turn on such distinctions,” said the government’s brief.