The FCC’s Media Bureau granted in part and denied in part a petition by Comcast’s NBCUniversal to review elements of an arbiter’s ruling (CD July 13 p11) on the amount of programming it must license to an fledgling online video distributor (OVD) under the terms of an FCC order approving Comcast’s buyout of NBCU. The bureau also denied a request by Project Concord (PCI) to recover its attorneys’ fees from NBCUniversal. The case is the first that has been brought to the FCC under the so-called “benchmark” condition of the Comcast-NBCU merger order that gave certain access rights to OVDs seeking to license NBCU-owned programming.

FCC process reform will likely return as a major tech issue in the next Congress, industry experts said Tuesday at a TechFreedom event, but they were unsure of how effective a legislative solution would be. Continued Republican control in the House means FCC reform measures like those introduced in the last session -- including by Reps. Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Steve Scalise, R-La. -- will remain on the agenda when the new House convenes (CD Nov 13 p1).

Federal users need financial incentives to get off their spectrum, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said Tuesday at a conference on the next ten years of spectrum policy. Giving federal users the proceeds from spectrum auctions could be a “catalyst” to get federal frequencies into the hands of commercial users, and let the commission reach the 500 MHz benchmark for new wireless broadband use called for in a 2010 executive order, she said. Rosenworcel urged creating model rules for tower siting, and an “honest conversation” about network reliability after storms like superstorm Sandy. The conference was presented at the Pew Research Center by CTIA, Public Knowledge and the Silicon Flatirons Center.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sought to deflect criticism Tuesday that the Internet Radio Fairness Act (S-3609) hurts recording artists by decreasing the royalty rates they're paid through Internet radio broadcasters. Wyden, who authored the bill, thinks the legislation will help artists in the long run by encouraging investment in the Internet broadcasting marketplace, which will in turn broaden the marketplace for artists to receive more income, he said in a speech Tuesday at the Future of Music Summit in Washington. Pandora founder Tim Westergren agreed lower royalty rates are necessary to encourage investment in Internet radio and argued that passing the bill would give artists a “smaller piece of a bigger pie."

BALTIMORE -- The recent series of natural disasters, including superstorm Sandy and the summer derecho, rattled officials and regulators this week at the NARUC meeting in Baltimore. They brainstormed about the best practices to keep communications networks resilient in the face of what may be increasingly volatile weather and discussed potential 911 innovations and strategies.

Sky Angel alleged that C-SPAN has illegally withheld its programming from the online video distributor, in an antitrust complaint filed Tuesday. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C., marks the latest attempt of Sky Angel to litigate whether it has rights to programming controlled by incumbent pay-TV distributors. Sky Angel, which sells a package of family-friendly programming under the FaveTV brand to subscribers who use a set-top box to obtain the programming over the Internet, lost a bid this summer to force the FCC to weigh in on a similar question (CD July 17 p7). It wanted a federal appeals court to compel the commission to act on a pending program access complaint against Discovery Communications, but the court gave the agency more time.

Privacy researchers painted a starkly different picture of consumers’ grasp of privacy policies related to advertising and data-sharing than that of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), in dueling presentations Tuesday. In a conference call organized by consumer and privacy groups participating in the NTIA’s mobile privacy stakeholder proceeding, researchers said consumers had markedly different understandings of common privacy terms than that intended by companies, and barely interacted with the DAA’s “Ad Choices” icon, which when clicked directs users to information about behavioral or “interest-based” advertising. DAA statistics released by the group show millions of visits since the effort kicked off earlier this year.

Easing rules around spectrum use, streamlining rules for satellite license applications and satellite export control reform efforts will likely remain the top satellite-related priorities at the FCC and from a broader administration perspective under a Barack Obama presidential term, industry executives said. The agenda for satellite proceedings isn’t expected to change if FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski leaves his post, as some think he will next year, they said. Genachowski said Friday he has no plans to leave (CD Nov 13 p3).

BALTIMORE -- State regulators faced the ramifications of AT&T’s recent petition on a transition to Internet Protocol infrastructure and its $14 billion rural investment at their November meeting. NARUC discussed the implications of IP in multiple panels in initial days. AT&T promoted transition planning as Verizon defended its migration of customers off copper. State officials and regulators worried about consumer protections and reliability, and had many questions about what the future would mean for them. The focus centered on AT&T’s announcement and Verizon’s migration of customers, both of which seek to move consumers off traditional networks.

BALTIMORE -- State regulators are confronting an increasingly tortured relationship with the FCC, creating a task force to address it Monday at the NARUC meeting. It consists of seven commissioners and is already official and active. Meanwhile, two NARUC resolutions directly address the fractured FCC relationship, as was expected (CD Nov 2 p12), and NARUC adopted both resolutions as policy Tuesday after they advanced through the telecom subcommittee and committee. One urges FCC referral to the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service as well as to the Federal-State Joint Board on Jurisdictional Separations on major decisions, and another addresses a pending Supreme Court case on the Chevron doctrine, looking at the risk of federal overreach of authority.