The Department of Homeland Security outlined the ways in which it says it maintained the privacy of individuals in the course of its investigations and research between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30 of last year. The details came in a report to Congress dated March 31 but made public Monday (http://1.usa.gov/Zi4le4). The quarterly report is required under Section 803 of the 9/11 Commission Act and was sent to the chairmen, vice chairmen and ranking members of the Senate committees on Homeland Security, Judiciary and Intelligence and the House committees on Homeland Security, Oversight, Judiciary and Intelligence.
LAS VEGAS -- That News Corp. would consider making Fox a pay-TV network if Aereo is legally able to deliver that and other broadcast network stations’ signals to subscribers without paying retransmission consent caught some NAB attendees by surprise. “We're not going to sit idly by” with the upstart online service able to transmit stations to Aereo subscribers, News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said in a Q-and-A with NAB CEO Gordon Smith. “Clearly there’s a path available to us, that’s a business solution available to us, if we can’t get our rights protected in another way.” Making Fox a cable network isn’t Carey’s preference, he said Monday at the NAB show.
LAS VEGAS -- Broadcasters should give a close look to updating technologies, from better targeting ads to moving to a new terrestrial TV standard, NAB CEO Gordon Smith said at the start of the association’s annual conference. The rollout of mobile DTV is picking up speed, as evidenced by broadcasters adding more markets for the service (CD April 3 p10), he said Monday. Other technology updates may be needed to ward off competition from carriers and other rivals to broadcasters, he said.
LAS VEGAS -- Global interoperability and spectrum efficiency need to be the biggest cornerstones of any next-generation broadcast system if terrestrial broadcasters want to retake valuable competitive ground lost to wireless carriers, streaming services and other content-delivery rivals, various speakers said Sunday at the NAB Show’s Broadcast Engineering Conference. Though terrestrial Ultra HD and 3D TV are on the list of desired features of the next-gen system, they're nowhere as high on the priority scale as other attributes like mobility or interactivity, or so it appeared from the many speakers who gave presentations at the conference.
The FCC is failing to do enough to encourage diversity in media ownership, said former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and others at the National Conference for Media Reform Friday, as the FCC released a letter from members of Congress opposing changes to cross-ownership rules. “Minorities own 2.2 percent of full-power TV stations in this country,” said Copps: “How’s that for representing America?”
The FCC Media Bureau placed limits on the filing and processing of full-power and Class A TV station modification applications. The bureau’s action is aimed at facilitating analysis of repacking methodologies and assuring that the objectives of the broadcast TV incentive auction aren’t frustrated, it said Friday in a public notice (http://bit.ly/Z6T4yc). The bureau also said the move is warranted by a mandate in the Spectrum Act which requires the commission to “make all reasonable efforts to preserve, as of Feb. 22, 2012, the coverage area and population served of each broadcast television licensee,” it said.
A circulating draft order would “eliminate or streamline” more than 100 outdated regulations, as sought in the 2012 USTelecom petition for forbearance, FCC officials said Friday. The petition (CD Feb 17/11 p14) sought relief on an industry-wide basis from, by the FCC’s count, 141 unique requirements.
The recent back and forth in FCC filings between Charter Communications and CEA over acceptable conditions for granting the cable operator’s application for a waiver of CableCARD rules could indicate a decision on the matter is upcoming, several industry observers said. The sides have been trading opposing filings on the company’s request for a CableCARD waiver (CD March 26 p13) so it can deploy downloadable security to set-top boxes. With Julius Genachowski planning to leave as FCC chairman, he may want to grant the waiver before he departs, said some industry officials.
The FCC’s circulating draft order giving VoIP providers direct access to phone numbers contemplates a trial period of about a year, with conditions designed to evaluate the trials, said industry and agency officials. That’s in contrast with the blanket waiver Vonage has been seeking for the past several years, they said. Level 3 and Bandwidth.com, which have long warned about the potential harms of granting VoIP providers direct number access, said the proposed order poses “considerable risks.” A Wireline Bureau spokesman had no comment.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) emphasized a desire for deploying more broadband across the state, speaking at a press conference during the Wisconsin Public Service Commission’s two-day broadband symposium last week in Madison. He spoke of the significance of “high-speed Internet connections, both for uploads and downloads” for potential businesses in the state, citing competition from all over the world. The state rolled out multiple new tools to help achieve the broadband goals, part of a broader set of initiatives the state has launched to that end.