The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC in a challenge from competitive carriers, who argued that the FCC “put the cart before the horse” when it ordered that relinquished USF monies shouldn’t be redistributed among a state’s eligible telecom carriers. Instead, the FCC set aside the money to be used later to pay for broadband. The Rural Cellular Association, joined by the Universal Service for America Coalition, argued that the January 2010 order violated the Communications Act and FCC regulations and was arbitrary and capricious in that it fell short of explaining how it ensures the “sufficient” level of support for CETCs required by the act.

A federal appeals court denied a petition for a writ of mandamus that would have forced the FCC to act on a pending program access complaint by Sky Angel against Discovery Communications. Sky Angel, which now does business as FAVE TV (Family and Values Entertainment), sells a package of linear pay-TV programming delivered over the Internet to proprietary set-top boxes. It complained to the commission in March 2010 that Discovery improperly withdrew its programming networks from Sky Angel’s service in violation of program access rules. Sky Angel sought the mandamus petition earlier this year to force the commission to act on the complaint.

A third company is involved in a retransmission consent dispute between Hearst Television and Time Warner Cable that went into its fourth full day Friday (CD July 13 p2). Nexstar, owner of three TV stations that Time Warner Cable is importing network programming from in five areas, filed a complaint at the FCC against the operator over the practice. Time Warner Cable said it’s within its rights to import the signals of Nexstar stations from other markets that have the same affiliation as Hearst stations blacked out on TWC’s systems.

The FCC should afford broadcasters more latitude when it comes to indecency enforcement, and focus on holding networks accountable for programming they supply to affiliates and on setting clearer guidelines for broadcasters to follow, TV station general managers and others said. With the Supreme Court’s rejection last month of indecency censures against Disney’s ABC and News Corp.’s Fox (CD June 22 p1), the onus returns to the agency to articulate what is actionably indecent. While much of the debate has focused on content, the question of how much responsibility should be borne by the affiliates should also be considered, said Bill Lamb, president of Block Communications’ WDRB-TV and WMYO-TV in Louisville, Ky.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will circulate an order terminating all 20 of the existing waivers allowing early build out of public safety networks in the 700 MHz band, an FCC official said late Thursday. The waivers were already scheduled to expire Sept. 2. The draft order also rejects the 36 waiver requests from other jurisdictions now before the agency. However, it allows the Public Safety Bureau, on delegated authority, to allow systems such as Charlotte, N.C., and Harris County, Texas, that had started construction to reapply for special temporary authorizations (STAs) to continue construction of their systems if they so choose. The order also approves, until Sept. 2, the interoperability showings for Charlotte and Harris County.

An arbitrator ruled in favor of startup online video provider Project Concord (PCI) in a dispute over terms of carrying some NBCUniversal programming online, documents filed with the FCC show (http://xrl.us/bngn5q). The company, which has yet to introduce its service, said in February it was having trouble accessing some NBCU programming under the online video distributor (OVD) condition of the Comcast-NBCU merger order (CD Feb 27 p5). An arbitrator found that Project Concord’s final offer “most closely approximates the fair market value of the programming carriage rights at issue.” But the arbitrator stopped short of finding that Comcast and NBCU acted unethically or deployed improper tactics in the dispute.

Viacom removed the online versions of its shows that are available to all Internet users amid a dispute over how much DirecTV will pay the cable programmer for its networks. MTV, BET and Nickelodeon were blacked out for DirecTV subscribers starting late Tuesday after an agreement wasn’t reached between the two companies (CD July 12 p10). After DirecTV informed customers that they could access the content online, Viacom cut off access to streaming content from these networks. Viacom blocked “not only DirecTV customers but also everyone else from seeing ‘The Daily Show’ … and other hits Viacom had always made available online for free,” DirecTV said Thursday.

Hundreds of privacy experts began to form an early consensus around mobile privacy guidelines Thursday during the first NTIA privacy multi-stakeholder meeting in Washington. Generally stakeholders focused on the principles of transparency and standardization in the mobile environment while urging a technologically neutral privacy solution that can be eventually codified into law. Though the event ended with few conclusive results, John Verdi, NTIA’s director of privacy initiatives, said the agency will likely host a subsequent multistakeholder meeting in August.

A Republican member of the Federal Election Commission warned media executives they face loss of an exemption the media industry has for some political disclosures. Donald McGahn said career FEC staff have a natural and nonpartisan proclivity to read a broad mandate into Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United in 2010 and legislation like 2002’s Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. Combined with the three Democratic commissioners who tend to be more regulatory on the six-member agency that’s evenly split among party lines, he told a Media Institute luncheon that the media’s exemption to certain limits on what constitutes impermissible political communications may be peeled away. He said the agency’s approach of not only “belt and suspenders but duct tape and everything else” mooted the practical effect of OK'ing political contributions by text message (CD July 10 p9).

The California LifeLine program will be changing, as the California Public Utilities Commission voted 5-0 Thursday afternoon in favor of Resolution T-17366. The resolution adjusts how California runs its LifeLine program, with many of the changes implemented to comply with the FCC’s Lifeline reform order issued earlier this year (http://xrl.us/bngnwe). California LifeLine customers will, according to the resolution draft (http://xrl.us/bngn2c), now be required to provide supporting documentation and have slightly different eligibility requirements, but the commission also opened a discussion for how to reform LifeLine in a way that would embrace 21st-century technology both in the process of applications and in the telecommunications devices covered.