The FCC proposal to post online for the first time TV station public files and expand their required content to cover more types of joint broadcaster agreements would bolster research, communications professors told us Friday. The public files won’t initially automatically be searchable, under a further notice of proposed rulemaking that was approved at Thursday’s FCC meeting (CD Oct 28 p7). The data needs to be available in a standard format, so the electronic files can be searched, and should be machine readable so statistics can be imported into various data programs, the academics said.

Cable operators are “absorbing the [price of the] collapse of the broadcast industry business model,” through retransmission consent fees, Cablevision Chief Operating Officer Tom Rutledge said during the company’s Q3 earnings teleconference. He was asked whether Cablevision could move its businesses away from relying on increasingly expensive programming contracts. Retransmission consent payments to broadcasters, largely a fact of life since 2008, have caused a large step-up in Cablevision’s programming costs, he said. Over time, the rate of programming cost increases should moderate, he said.

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., hosted a discussion with LightSquared, GPS device makers and the FCC, according to ex parte filings (http://xrl.us/bmha3w and http://xrl.us/bmha32) and interviews with participants. Tuesday’s meeting points to a more hands-on approach to the controversy and one of the few public displays of interest on the issue by Walden. While other House committees have called hearings to look at the LightSquared debate over GPS interference, the House and Senate Commerce committees so far have taken a behind-the-scenes approach to the controversy (CD Sept 22 p6).

San Francisco’s city attorney said he will appeal a decision shredding an ordinance to require cellphone retailers to distribute city-written disclosures raising health questions about radiation from handsets and offering suggestions for minimizing exposure. Late last week, U.S. District Judge William Alsup threw out the ordinance as violating the First Amendment -- apart from a duty on merchants to give shoppers information sheets, which he required major changes in. He told the city to hold off on enforcement through Nov. 30, to give the sides time to file for appeals of his order granting CTIA a preliminary injunction. City Attorney Dennis Herrera said he'll ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the parts of the ruling that went against the ordinance.

NEW ORLEANS -- Seeking a new competitive edge against the cable industry, AT&T and Verizon detailed their plans to introduce two major new broadband devices or services at the annual TelcoTV convention last week. In one keynote speech, Jeff Weber, AT&T vice president-U-verse and video strategy, said the telco plans to introduce a new wireless IPTV set-top box that relies on Wi-Fi signals rather than a traditional cable coax link. The wireless set-top, supplied by Cisco, will match an IP video set-top with a Wi-Fi access point, both of which are part of Cisco’s Videoscape product portfolio. AT&T aims to roll out the new Wi-Fi set-tops in all of its U-verse TV markets beginning Monday.

The FCC proposed to expand what all TV stations must report to the public about their activities. A further rulemaking notice approved at Thursday’s meeting, over the partial concurrence of Commissioner Robert McDowell, would mandate online availability beyond requiring what’s currently in broadcasters’ paper public files (CD Oct 14 p7). The notice proposes that information on paid sponsorship of programming and details on stations’ shared services agreements (SSAs) with other broadcasters be reported for the first time to the FCC, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake told us. He said the proposal is for such information to be given by stations to the agency, which will put it on the commission’s website.

GENEVA -- More spectrum, small cell sizes and more dynamic approaches will be needed to meet consumer demand for mobile services, speakers said at ITU Telecom World. Video delivery has to be optimized for efficient spectrum use, while operators need to be able to dump traffic to fixed backhaul as soon as possible, speakers said.

Broadband is increasingly the operational and capital focus at Time Warner Cable, executives said during the company’s Q3 earnings teleconference Thursday. There’s still opportunity in that line of business to add more subscribers and take market share from telephone companies, they said. Usage of broadband is skyrocketing and has been for some time,” said CEO Glenn Britt. “That means we will need to spend more money on it and we already have been, both in capital and operating expenses,” he said. Meanwhile, the traditional cable video business is maturing, executives said.

The telecom world largely responded cautiously as the FCC on Thursday adopted its Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regime changes. But telecom officials and observers predicted lawsuits would begin pouring in after the 400-plus page order is published and digested. Meanwhile, the order itself hadn’t been finished, an FCC official told us. Staff were continuing to incorporate edits agreed upon by the commissioners late in the process but before the vote, and the order won’t be ready for release until at least the end of next week, the official said. Less-substantive changes are also still being made.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- BART is struggling over a policy on cellular service cutoffs in the absence of guidance it has requested from the FCC, said members of the transit agency’s board and its general counsel. The board couldn’t complete action at a public meeting Thursday because members sought changes in various directions in a draft (CD Oct 20 p8). “I'm not comfortable turning to the FCC” for guidance, said board member Robert Raburn. “They have not shown the leadership. We have shown the leadership.” General Counsel Matt Burrows said he had sent the draft to the FCC and California’s Public Utilities Commission for review but hasn’t received a substantive reply. “No regulatory agency has stepped up to say, ‘This is what we do.'” An FCC spokesman declined to comment.