CBS objected to aspects of an FCC information request connected to the Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger review, in a heavily redacted response posted online Friday in docket 14-57. An FCC question asking CBS to list agreements with “announced OVD (online video distributor) services since Jan. 2011" is “vague and ambiguous,” CBS said. Other FCC questions are “vague and overly burdensome,” CBS said, such as an FCC request that CBS “describe all provisions relating to restrictions or limitations on distribution of the Company’s Video Programming.” CBS also objected to “any requirement that it produce information after the FCC reaches a decision on the applications relevant to MB Docket No. 14-57,” the filing said. The FCC didn’t comment.
Correction: NTCA, not NCTA, was concerned about a possible disparity between online- and facilities-based multichannel video program distributors, it told the FCC (see 1504020051). “The fees and compliance costs incurred by existing MVPDs can translate to tens of thousands of dollars to millions annually, and these costs must be passed on to customers,” NTCA said. “New entrants would not have these fees and would have the opportunity to offer service at a substantially reduced rate and compete unfairly.”
Spotify and Sony unveiled a new option that lets gamers using a PS4 concurrently listen to music, said Spotify in a news release. The partnership lets the player use a mobile device or tablet to skip tracks or change volume of the music instead of requiring the gamer to pause the game, Spotify said. Spotify on PlayStation Music rolled out on PS4 Monday and also will be available on Sony Xperia for smartphones and tablets, the release said.
NBCUniversal hasn’t withheld programming from Apple’s over-the-top venture, and Apple hasn’t even approached NBCUniversal to discuss such a deal, Comcast said in an ex parte filing Friday responding to allegations from anti-merger group Stop MegaComcast. Meanwhile, NBCUniversal licensed substantial amounts of content to Apple in connection with the platforms for which Apple has approached NBCUniversal, Comcast said. The real facts reinforce “that Comcast has taken its compliance obligations very seriously,” Comcast said. Stop MegaComcast didn’t comment.
The third meeting of the Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee is set for April 21 at FCC headquarters in the Commission Meeting Room, the Media Bureau said in a public notice Friday. The meeting of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization-mandated group (see 1503240063) will include subcommittee presentations by the Current Commercial Requirements Working Group and the Technology and Preferred Architectures Working Group. The meeting is in the Commission Meeting Room.
Some video programmers may still be using cut-rate captioning services, said a filing from the Clinical Legal Education Program at the University of Colorado-Boulder posted Friday in FCC docket 05-231. Captioning vendors Feb. 18 sought an FCC waiver and petition for rulemaking. The letter Friday was signed by members from the Hearing Loss Association of America, Technology Access Program at Gallaudet University, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and others. It asked the FCC to provide programmers with incentives to seek out high-quality captioning services. "We agreed with Commission staffers’ observation that programmers must retain responsibility for ensuring the quality of closed captions and cannot simply pass quality certifications from captioning vendors on to video programming distributors to satisfy" certification rules, said the filing on the groups' meeting with staff in the Consumer & Governmental Affairs and Media bureaus and General Counsel's Office. "Programmers must take a similar level of responsibility for the captions in their programming as they do for the audio and video and should provide their own independent certifications that captions are intact and of high quality."
Digital audio company Triton Digital will "deliver and monetize streaming audio advertisements" for Major League Baseball's Gameday Audio desktop product and for MLB.com, said a company news release Thursday.
Comcast now expects government review of its proposed buy of Time Warner Cable to be completed in mid- 2015, said Executive Vice President David Cohen at the Center for Media Law and Policy of the University of North Carolina Tuesday, according to a blog post on Comcast’s website. “Given the FCC's recent decision to pause the shot clock, we have recently reassessed the time frame,” Cohen said. Comcast will continue to describe the public interest benefits of the deal while it waits for the review to be completed, Cohen said.
The American Cable Association isn’t inconvenienced by Senior Vice President Ross Lieberman being blocked from access to confidential information connected to Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV deals, said a joint filing from content companies. Lieberman can’t look at confidential information on the deals because of an objection that the content companies, including CBS, Disney and Viacom, filed against his seeing video programming confidential information. The structure of the FCC protective order for the deals means those blocked from VPCI are also blocked from other levels of confidential information, attorneys have told us. ACA has nine other representatives who are able to access the information, the content companies said. Though ACA had pointed to a Comptel in-house counsel's being allowed access to the information as evidence that Lieberman’s blocking was unfair, the content companies said they refrained from blocking the Comptel lawyer because the matter is connected with a pending U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision. “If the Court-ordered stay is lifted, the Content Companies expressly reserve the right to assert appropriate objections to any request to access VPCI filed while the stay was in place,” said the content companies.
Making effective competition a rebuttable presumption could have “unintended consequences,” NAB said in a meeting with Chairman Tom Wheeler’s aide Maria Kirby Tuesday, according to an ex parte notice posted Wednesday. The proposal (see 1503200039) goes “far beyond” the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization’s “limited directive to modify the petition filing process for small cable operators,” and could lead to higher rates for cable customers, NAB said. The commission is “best served by confining the NPRM to the four corners of what Congress instructed it to do,” NAB said.