The FCC has been summoning for meetings industry entities associated with set-top boxes and the Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee, said industry officials and a series of ex parte filings. Groups pushing for a rulemaking to come out of the DSTAC's report are pushing to get an item on the agenda of an FCC meeting, while multichannel video programming distributors and others opposed to the FCC's acting on the report are trying to keep the rulemaking process from proceeding, an attorney following the DSTAC process told us.
Monty Tayloe
Monty Tayloe, Associate Editor, covers broadcasting and the Federal Communications Commission for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications News in 2013, after spending 10 years covering crime and local politics for Virginia regional newspapers and a turn in television as a communications assistant for the PBS NewsHour. He’s a Virginia native who graduated Fork Union Military Academy and the College of William and Mary. You can follow Tayloe on Twitter: @MontyTayloe .
Uncertainty about the rules is a problem with the FCC's net neutrality order, Commissioner Ajit Pai said during an interview on C-SPAN’s The Communicators, in a segment to be shown Saturday. He cited Chairman Tom Wheeler’s reaction to T-Mobile’s Binge On service as an example, because Wheeler initially called the service innovative and later said T-Mobile officials should come before the commission to discuss the service. Pai also discussed during the interview FCC enforcement actions, broadband deployment and partisanship at the agency. Though the commission has taken no action against T-Mobile, Pai said its being called in to discuss a new service is a harm. “No company should have to guess” whether its products are allowed under FCC rules, Pai said. The FCC reaction to Binge On sets a precedent of the agency “jumping to the tune” of special interest group protests, Pai said.
Broadcaster participation in the Form 177 window for the reverse auction has “encouraged” the FCC, said Incentive Auction Task Force Chairman Gary Epstein in a statement Wednesday. The deadline for such applications was 6 p.m. Tuesday. Though numerous broadcaster and industry officials told us their sense was that participation was robust, they also said participation in the Form 177 window doesn’t necessarily equate to a high amount of spectrum going in the auction.
As the first chance for AM stations to seek FM translators in an upcoming window approaches, the underlying order approved in October (see 1510260062) is missing in action from the Federal Register, panelists noted at an FCBA Mass Media Committee brown bag lunch. The Federal Register told us it usually publishes documents given to it by other agencies within days. Last year, such delayed publication drew scrutiny from within and outside the FCC (see 1509070003 and 1509170046) and that was again on display at Tuesday's event.
A draft order that would expand online public file requirements to radio, satellite and cable doesn't include an exemption for stations with fewer than five employees, several communications attorneys said. Though currently on circulation, the draft order was included in Thursday's tentative agenda for the commission's January open meeting, which suggests that Chairman Tom Wheeler believes he has the votes to approve it in its current form, several broadcast attorneys told us.
With Tuesday the deadline for the Form 177 short-form application for the reverse auction, broadcast attorneys are scrambling to finish applications and prepare for an auction “quiet period” that broadcasters have never been in before, several lawyers told us. Though the type of quiet period mandated by the incentive's auction's anti-collusion rules is old hat for wireless companies, it's a new experience for broadcasters, and it's not clear how it will go, said broadcast attorney Jack Goodman. The deadline means broadcast legal experts will likely be working over the weekend to complete channel sharing agreements (CSAs) and finalize their auction applications, said Wiley Rein broadcast attorney Ari Meltzer.
TV station groups are creating standards and guidelines for programmatic advertising, the Television Bureau of Advertising said in a news release Wednesday. Programmatic ads use automated ad buying and selling, data and targeted ads to compete with digital advertising tech. TVB released a collection of suggested guidelines and best practices for the new type of ads in an online document and asked for edits and suggestions. "These guidelines will be maintained as an open and collaborative effort between broadcasters, advertising agencies, rep firms, aggregators and platform providers," TVB President Steve Lanzano wrote. "This document is expected to continue to evolve through successive updates, and is open to input from all companies and individuals who wish to contribute."
The FCC must act quickly on the matter of three Class A broadcasters currently excluded from participating in the incentive auction, said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in an order released last week. Though the court denied the request for a writ of mandamus by the Fifth Street Enterprises, Videohouse and WMTM, the FCC is expected “to rule on the pending reconsideration petition promptly, so as to allow petitioners to seek judicial review with an opportunity for meaningful relief before the incentive auction commences on March 29, 2016,” said the order. The FCC barred the broadcasters from participating in the incentive auction or being protected during the repacking because they hadn't met a 2012 deadline for Class A's to be auction-eligible (see 1512140049). The FCC didn’t comment on the D.C. Circuit order.
Low-power TV attorneys and groups had an unenthusiastic response to the FCC’s recent order on the TV incentive auction’s effects on LPTV and translators. “Much more was said by the FCC than done,” said Free Access Broadcast and Telemedia (FAB), which challenged the commission’s incentive auction order in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “Whether -- and if so, how many -- LPTV/translator stations will benefit from the newly adopted measures is unclear,” Fletcher Heald broadcast attorneys Peter Tannenwald and Ashley Ludlow said in a blog post. The FCC declined to comment.
The FCC needs to update and streamline its rules on foreign ownership of communications companies, NAB, Comcast, T-Mobile, Nexstar and 21st Century Fox said in comments filed in docket 15-236 by Monday's deadline. Though some offered opposing suggestions for how the commission's foreign ownership regulations should change, they all agreed the FCC's current systems for measuring and limiting foreign ownership need to be fixed. The FCC's existing policies for public companies are “complex and unclear” and require gathering “voluminous, difficult-to-obtain information about de minimus [sic] shareholders and entities remote in the ownership chain; and result in significant expense on licensees and the Commission,” T-Mobile said. “This process can discourage foreign investment.”