The FCC faces a “daunting” task putting in place a system for calculating and paying the costs of moving broadcaster channel assignments following an eventual auction of TV broadcast spectrum, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake said Monday during an agency workshop. February’s spectrum law requires the government to reimburse broadcasters for moving, up to a total of $1.75 billion. What the repacking plan will look like and how many broadcasters will have to move remain major question marks. Lake said the government must be scrupulous in ensuring that only actual costs are billed and paid. “This is not Christmas. It’s not winning the lottery,” he said. “It’s reimbursement of costs that are actually incurred by broadcasters.”

NASUCA passed resolutions Monday addressing the need for telecom regulation at a time when many states throughout the last year have embraced the industry-backed trend of deregulation. At its mid-year meeting in Charleston, S.C. the organization adopted firm stances on such controversial topics as VoIP regulatory oversight.

FCC options of scaling back program access rules drew no support from telcos, DBS providers and small cable operators, while operators that also own programming want the ban on exclusive deals for such content fully sunset. That’s according to initial comments on a rulemaking notice (CD March 22 p8). The document sought comment on whether to sunset the rules -- last extended for five years and expiring Oct. 5. Options the commission sought comment on other than keeping the rules or removing them in their entirety drew no support in docket 12-68. USTelecom and some others linked broadband service to keeping the rules, as cable rivals have in the past on video competition, saying subscription-video provider access to channels affiliated with operators helps them sell video and broadband.

T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless announced a spectrum swap Monday, for the purchase and exchange of AWS licenses in 218 markets. Some of the licenses T-Mobile will get are among those Verizon Wireless is buying from the SpectrumCo venture of three cable operators and from Leap Wireless. T-Mobile had been among the toughest critics of Verizon Wireless’s buy of the SpectrumCo licenses, but formally withdrew its FCC petition that had asked for denial of that deal as well as Verizon’s buy of Cox licenses. The Verizon Wireless/SpectrumCo transaction was already well on its way to approval by federal regulators, though likely with conditions, commission officials have said. The FCC and Department of Justice must also approve the Verizon/T-Mobile license transfer.

More teenagers engage in risky online behavior than many parents think, McAfee’s 2012 Teen Behavior study said (http://xrl.us/bncu62). “While it is not necessarily surprising that teens are engaging in the same types of rebellious behaviors online that they exhibit offline, it is surprising how disconnected their parents are,” Stanley Holditch, an online safety expert for McAfee, said in a McAfee news release (http://xrl.us/bncvb5). The majority of parents, 73.5 percent, trust their teens to not access age-inappropriate online content, the study said. It said that 43 percent accessed simulated violence, 36 percent access sexual topics and 32 percent access pornography or nude content.

The Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association (SBCA) defended its petition urging the FCC to amend its Over-The-Air-Reception Devices(OTARD) rule against opposition from the cities of Boston and Philadelphia and some local government groups. The parties submitted reply comments, due last week, in docket 12-121. SBCA filed its petition to determine that state and local governments are prohibited from restricting reception devices on rental property.

A Supreme Court ruling against FCC indecency actions lacks clarity for public broadcasters to determine what makes content indecent or obscene, said attorneys and executives in the public broadcast industry. Although indecency issues aren’t common in public broadcasting, the ruling doesn’t provide a clear context for some programming that may contain sensitive subjects, they said. In Thursday’s decision, the Supreme Court threw out a commission censure of News Corp. for curse words and a fine against some stations affiliated with Disney’s ABC for nudity (CD June 22 p1). The court determined that the FCC failed to notify the networks that broadcasting so-called fleeting expletives or nudity could result in fines or censure.

Chairman Julius Genachowski was still the only FCC member to have voted (CD June 21 p1) on the special access order he circulated two weeks ago, an agency official said late Friday. “It’s the dog that doesn’t bark and I think it speaks volumes that no one is currently supporting the circulated item except the chairman,” an agency official said. Industry and government officials have expected resistance from Commissioners Ajit Pai and Robert McDowell.

House and Senate lawmakers are unlikely to push for legislation to clarify the rules on broadcast indecency following the Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling (CD June 22 p1), Capitol Hill staffers told us the next day. Family groups said that’s not surprising, but the ruling does present Congress with a good opportunity to reform the way the FCC manages complaints.

The Obama administration is increasingly embracing the concept of spectrum sharing for making federal spectrum available for commercial use. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has played a key role, approving a report on sharing in May, which it forwarded to the White House. But sharing continues to meet with resistance from carriers, and sharing might not survive long as administration policy if President Barack Obama fails in his reelection bid in November. Industry officials noted that the George W. Bush administration resisted embracing sharing.