SILICON VALLEY -- TV executives promoting new and old shows can’t ignore the power of social media and search, executives at the OTTCON show said Wednesday during a panel on TV program discovery tools. It’s driving TV networks to think about metadata they provide to companies like Rovi and Tribune Media Services in new ways, they said. “One of the things we've had to do is make sure our shows are titled in a way that’s going to attract attention,” said Rob Demillo, chief technology officer at Revision3, a unit of Discovery Communications. And show descriptions need to be search-engine optimized to make sure they come up when people are looking for them, he said.

There has been little movement in the debate over the Marketplace Fairness Act (HR-684, S-336) since it failed to pass the Senate in December, eBay Senior Director of Global Public Policy Brian Bieron told us. The Senate had rejected including the bill’s provisions as an amendment to the 2013 Defense Authorization Act. The bill would allow state governments to collect sales taxes when an in-state resident makes an online purchase from an out-of-state retailer. “It seems like the same people who were for [the bill] before are for it now, the same people who had objections to it before have objections to it now,” Bieron said. “It seems to be pretty much the same debate it’s been for some time now, only louder.” The bill effectively gives states a “new power” to tax people outside their own borders, he said during an Information Technology & Innovation Foundation event Tuesday. EBay has been an active opponent of the Marketplace Fairness Act -- the company organized a gathering of small business owners on Capitol Hill earlier this month to voice their concerns about the bill.

The FCC recognizes that satellite industry innovation will continue to play a role in driving efficient use of spectrum in the satellite industry and everywhere else, said Chairman Julius Genachowski. “No one dealing with spectrum had to deal with efficiency earlier and faster than the satellite industry did,” he said Tuesday at the Satellite 2013 Conference in Washington. After focusing on wireless, auctions for terrestrial use and providing unlicensed spectrum for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other services, the commission has been working to further expand spectrum use and availability, he said.

The FCC responded to attacks on several fronts, arguing in four briefs filed with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that it had authority to adopt the reforms in its landmark 2011 USF/intercarrier compensation (ICC) order. The commission defended Monday its new Access Recovery Charge for ILECs to recoup lost access fees, a rule governing ICC for CLEC-VoIP partnerships and a rule banning call blocking by VoIP providers. The reforms it adopted will let the commission meet its congressionally directed mandate to make broadband service available throughout the U.S., it said.

Republican members of the House Communications Subcommittee Tuesday sharply criticized a Food and Drug Administration proposal to regulate thousands of medical apps and warned of a 2.3 percent Obamacare excise tax that could soon apply to mobile devices. Democrats said heightened scrutiny of medical apps is justified.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced a bill Tuesday aimed at modernizing the 27-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The ECPA Amendments Act seeks to update privacy laws to improve protections for electronic communications stored or maintained by third party service providers, according to a review of the legislation (http://1.usa.gov/WBxwf7). The bill drops a provision in Leahy’s 2011 ECPA Amendments bill (S-1011) that would have required the government to obtain a warrant or a court order to access or use an individual’s geolocation information from smartphones or other electronic communications devices, Leahy’s spokesman confirmed. Privacy advocates generally supported the aims of the bill, but some House lawmakers acknowledged it may be difficult to increase online privacy protections without hampering law enforcement investigations.

The chief judge of the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals questioned whether the rationale supporting regulation of broadcasters’ speech rights from the landmark Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC case in 1969 still stands up. During oral argument with an en banc panel of 9th Circuit judges, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski and his colleagues on the bench had tough questions for both parties in the case Minority TV Project v. FCC on Tuesday. Kozinski indicated one possible outcome of the case would be a complete ban on all ads on noncommercial stations. But he seemed to grow the most animated when discussing the Red Lion case.

The state of Washington may change how it taxes telecom. Legislators introduced House Bill 1971 Feb. 27 and held a House Finance Committee hearing last week. Sponsored by one Democrat and one Republican, the bill would remove some tax exemptions from the law and draw millions of dollars more in taxes, as well as create a five-year state USF. The bill’s central purpose is tax parity, said House Finance Committee Chairman Reuven Carlyle (D), a bill sponsor, at the hearing. The state’s tax policies “are behind the age and the era,” he said. “We're also trying to recognize that issues like bundling ... really call us to try to get a much simpler, more consistent approach to taxation that is a better reflection of what’s happening in the marketplace."

The commercial satellite industry must figure out how to overcome challenges, including launch service options, government budget constraints and expanding services in emerging markets, said executives Tuesday at Satellite 2013 in Washington. The real challenge for satellite is to become part of the telecom ecosystem and to be meaningful from a communications perspective, said Romain Bausch, SES CEO. Launch services must improve overall and some opportunities need to become more available, said executives from Intelsat and Eutelsat.

Public safety agencies in at least five of 11 metro areas that use the T-band for communications don’t have anyplace to go if they clear the band, as directed by the February 2012 spectrum law, said a report released Tuesday by the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council. The report from NPSTC’s T-band task group estimated the overall cost of moving from the T-band could be more than $6 billion. While the spectrum act would pay for relocation through the sale of the spectrum, NPSTC questioned whether auction proceeds would cover the costs of moving the systems.