Retransmission consent fees are becoming less profitable for Belo’s TV stations as broadcast networks renegotiate affiliation agreements with station groups. CEO Dunia Shive told analysts Thursday during an earnings teleconference that retrans revenue will continue to outpace the cost of buying network programming, and “remain a net-positive for us.” But in some quarters programming costs may increase faster than the fees it collects from pay-TV distributors, she said. The Dallas-based broadcaster was one of the few media companies to report earnings early this week, after several based in the Northeast U.S. rescheduled them because of Hurricane Sandy (CD Oct 30 p17).

Segway inventor Dean Kamen is promoting a low-power generator designed to send reliable power to areas that can’t get electricity from the grid. He claims that this new generator, which his company DEKA Research and Development Corp. has spent $50 million developing over the past 10 years, can convert any fuel into electrical power in a clean, quiet and efficient way. Cable technologists aren’t ready to commit to Kamen’s project, they told us after he discussed the idea earlier Oct. 17 at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers conference. Time Warner Cable is intrigued by the idea and seeking to find out more, said Chief Technology Officer Mike LaJoie.

The election is almost certain to mean a change in leadership at the FCC, with Julius Genachowski widely expected to leave in early 2013 even if President Barack Obama is reelected. As is typical for this point in an election cycle, rumors are swirling in the communications industry about who will take over.

Hurricane Sandy began pounding the East Coast with high winds and rain this week, causing several governors to declare states of emergency and triggering widespread concern of outages. State commissions began watching as telcos, 911 centers, county officials and cable operators braced for the impact. The storm was expected to continue Tuesday, and the Office of Personnel Management said federal offices in the Washington area would for a second day be closed to the public (http://xrl.us/bnwozb).

Conservative Supreme Court justices questioned Amnesty International’s claim that it had standing to sue the federal government because the nonprofit and a broad group of lawyers, journalists and others faced a “substantial risk” of privacy invasion when their conversations with people abroad were monitored by the U.S. government. Those were among the questions Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts asked at oral argument Monday in Clapper v. Amnesty International USA. The case is over whether a broad group of lawyers, journalists and organizations suffered sufficient injury to establish standing by being compelled to take precautionary measures because they had reason to believe communications with people outside America were being monitored.

The briefing cycle ended Friday on broadcasters’ appeal to block Aereo from selling a service that receives TV station signals from tiny antennas, records them on personal DVRs and sends them to subscribers online. A handful of briefs supported the fledgling company. The friendly briefs came from consumer groups, industry associations and law professors, each arguing that a judge U.S. District Court in Manhattan correctly applied the 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals precedent in its Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings ruling on remote-storage DVRs, known as the Cablevision case. The court scheduled oral argument on the injunction appeal for Nov. 30.

Globalstar is seeking approval from the FCC to use some of its spectrum for terrestrial services. Globalstar has been supporting the FCC’s effort to free up spectrum, including a proceeding that would allow Dish Network to use wireless spectrum for a terrestrial network, said Barbee Ponder, general counsel and vice president-regulatory affairs. “We believe the FCC will use that proceeding as a model for future proceedings to free up additional spectrum in other bands.”

The presidential campaigns of President Barack Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney have begun efforts to select candidates for their administrations’ top communications positions, whichever candidate wins Nov. 6. Such efforts include preliminary plans for who might replace any outgoing administration officials, if Obama is reelected, and if Romney becomes president, determine who would be nominated for high-level telecom positions in the new administration. We recently interviewed former and current Democratic and Republican government officials to understand who will likely help each candidate make the necessary agency appointments if his campaign wins next Tuesday. The campaigns declined to comment, as did those said to be directly involved in the early-on planning efforts.

Although fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is capable of meeting the EU’s ambitious digital agenda targets, it has had limited rollout so far because of its challenging business case, DotEcon analysts said Monday on an FTTH Council Europe regulatory policy webinar. The EU wants 50 percent of households to have broadband speeds of over 100 Mbps by 2020, but, with only 2 percent having access to such speeds now, meeting that goal is a long way off, said DotEcon economist Christian Koboldt. Europe also lags in FTTH deployment compared to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, he said. The question is: with the public policy case for fiber so strong, why is the business case so difficult? The webinar discussion centered on an August DotEcon report (http://xrl.us/bnwm4x).

The TV band repacking that is to take place after the FCC completes the incentive spectrum auction might not affect most broadcasters that remain on the air, Julius Knapp, chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology said at the commission’s first workshop on the auction Friday. “The repacking does not mean that all of the stations will move,” he said. “In fact, probably a majority will stay right where they are.”