The FCC continues working on several radio rulemakings, has completed one proceeding and may finish two others later this year. The attention by staffers in the Media Bureau to radio issues is in contrast to what some see as the commission’s overall lack of attention to other media issues. The agency in December approved a tribal radio order, which industry lawyers said the bureau made quick work of. By contrast, the commission is more than a year behind schedule on its media ownership review, in which industry lawyers said radio isn’t much in play.

Civil rights and “digital divide” erasure advocates gave mixed reviews to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s Lifeline reform proposals Monday. As expected (CD Jan 9 p7), Genachowski promised what he called “cost controls” and “a budget” for Lifeline and Link-Up, with most of his efforts focused on rooting out some 200,000 duplicate claims and building a database to prevent future “waste.” The draft order will circulate Tuesday, Genachowski said.

News licensing startup NewsRight doesn’t follow the business model of Righthaven, the struggling law group that sued bloggers for reposting articles, but litigation isn’t out of the question, President David Westin told us. The organization, launched in the summer as the Associated Press’s News Licensing Group, last week said it signed up 29 news and information partners and investors, including The New York Times Co. and Hearst, covering more than 800 websites whose content it has authority to license (CD Jan 6 p12). Focused on digital text for the moment, NewsRight is in “very preliminary” talks with organizations interested in having licensed video and still images from NewsRight’s partners, Westin said.

PASADENA, Calif. -- Digital and social media have brought a significant number of younger viewers to PBS, said PBS President Paula Kerger at the winter television press tour. Through apps, streaming and Facebook, more than 60 percent of pbs.org visitors watching video are between the ages of 18 and 49, and the average age of PBS’ online viewer is 35.

LAS VEGAS -- With 2012 widely seen as a make or break year for mobile DTV, the Mobile 500 Alliance and Mobile Content Venture (MCV) are expected to continue discussions at CES this week on a potential merger, industry officials said.

An FCC Media Bureau report on regional sports network access and carriage issues that the bureau was required to write under a 2006 FCC order doesn’t assess the market for RSNs. That drew criticism from some multichannel video programming distributor officials and others. Some had hoped for more from the study (CD Sept 28 p9).

Efforts to deliver more TV Everywhere services to pay-TV customers were given a boost by the Disney-Comcast distribution agreement announced last week, executives said Thursday at a Citigroup investor conference. Giving the largest cable operator broader rights to distribute marquee programming from Disney will raise the profile of all TV Everywhere services, said John Martin, Time Warner chief financial officer. That’s good because though Time Warner has been successful in distributing its TV Everywhere services such as HBO Go, “usage is still de minimis and awareness is very low,” Martin said. “The more programmers that embrace this and put resources behind it,” the better, he said.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski plans to circulate an order on the Lifeline program as early as Tuesday, telecom and commission officials told us. As Genachowski did with the high-cost portion of the Universal Service Fund last fall (CD Oct 28 p1), the coming order is expected to put Lifeline on what the chairman will call “a budget.” It will not formally cap the Lifeline portion of USF, telecom and FCC officials said. It’s expected to address eligibility requirements and how to remove people from the Lifeline rolls if they're not eligible, telecom officials said.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell expects Universal Service Fund reform to dominate the FCC’s agenda in the early part of 2012, starting with a Lifeline cleanup order at the Jan. 31 meeting. McDowell hopes that will be followed by an order addressing USF contribution issues left unsettled by last October’s order (CD Oct 28 p1), he said during an interview last week. McDowell said he remains open minded on a 700 MHz interoperability order and stressed the importance of spectrum efficiency. McDowell also thinks more media ownership deregulation than the FCC proposed in the quadrennial review may be needed.

The FCC should move quickly to streamline foreign ownership rules, said industry reply comments to an August rulemaking notice seeking feedback on the agency’s foreign ownership practices for common carrier and aeronautical radio licensees (CD Aug 10 p11). In the initial comment round, the Satellite Industry Association asked for changes, while the Justice and Homeland Security departments jointly expressed concerns (CD Dec 6 p14).