Audio descriptions of on-screen action would make a comeback, starting next year, under a draft rulemaking notice that the FCC is tentatively set to vote on at Thursday’s meeting (CD Feb 14 p6), said agency officials and an advocate for people with disabilities. They said the rulemaking largely proposes to implement last year’s Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act and would phase in compliance starting Oct. 8, the legislation’s first anniversary. As set forth in the CVAA, the commission proposes to require top-market Big Four broadcast network affiliates by Jan. 1 to start describing, using speech, what amounts to about four hours weekly of programming, FCC officials said. Cable, DBS and telco-TV providers would have obligations, too.

A fight over municipal broadband erupted for the fifth time in four years in the North Carolina Legislature. The “Level Playing Field” legislation, proposed by Rep. Marilyn Avila (R), seeking to put a ban on community fiber network efforts, violates the federal law, and could put state economic stimulus projects in jeopardy, said officials representing municipalities, in interviews. With a GOP-dominated General Assembly, fighting this year’s legislation could be tougher than ever, some said.

With fervent support from members of Congress, state legislators, local government leaders and public interest groups, “targeted reforms” of the system of designated market areas (DMAs) face “significant opposition” only “from the broadcasters,” Dish Network said in reply comments filed at the FCC. The NAB offers “unsupported doomsday scenarios” about the results of changes that “falsely equate improvements to the system” with “outright abandonment,” Dish said. Allowing a statewide license that would permit TV providers to provide in-state broadcast stations to “orphan counties” would be an “incremental” change that would deal with problems without disturbing the market, the company said. Dish was responding to the Media Bureau’s request for comments on in-state local broadcast programming information and ways to resolve the problem of orphan counties, those at least partly outside the borders of a designated market area. The bureau is putting together a report on the issue that will be provided to Congress by Aug. 27 under the Satellite TV Extension and Localism Act.

Dish Network’s recent S-band acquisition efforts aren’t part of “a grand strategy at this point,” said Dish CEO Charlie Ergen during its Q4 conference call Thursday. Dish recently agreed to buy bankrupt S-band licensee DBSD, though the deal still needs bankruptcy court approval. “I think spectrum has value,” Ergen said. Using that spectrum and acquiring more spectrum that fits together are both ways to increase the value of that spectrum, he said. The recent acquisition efforts have raised speculation among analysts that Ergen is planning a wireless network and/or seeking new ways to complement the core DBS business with Internet-delivered programming.

Migrating to Next Generation 911 requires clarity on jurisdiction, funding and technical standards, speakers said during an FCBA Homeland Security and Emergency Communications Committee meeting Wednesday.

The state of civil rights at the FCC has worsened in the past year, said 23 groups representing minorities, women and African-American newspaper publishers that wrote the agency on the same subject Feb. 16, 2010. “We did not think it possible that a year later, the status of civil rights at the FCC would get even worse, but it has,” said a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Fourteen months after the regulator’s report on its work on lifting barriers that keep minorities from entering the media and telecom markets was due to Congress, it “still has not” been submitted, the letter said. The FCC this summer updated its draft of the report (CD Aug 19 p3), a document that’s required under Section 257 of the Telecom Act, but it remains on the list of items circulating for a vote and an agency official said it hasn’t been approved by all commissioners.

Broadcaster participation need not be high to raise nearly $28 billion from voluntary incentive auctions, said Phil Weiser, National Economic Council senior adviser to the director for technology and innovation. The White House estimated in its FY 2012 budget that the wireless effort could raise $27.8 billion. At a New America Foundation event Wednesday on the Hill, Weiser and other government officials acknowledged that the auctions and much else in Obama’s wireless plan rely on Congressional action. Meanwhile, speakers from industry and public interest groups urged government not to lose focus on spectrum sharing as it moves forward on auctions.

The FCC made the right decision by putting off a fight over contribution reform to focus on reforming the high-cost Universal Service Fund distribution system, said National Broadband Plan architect Blair Levin. There are “too many moving parts” in the debate over contribution factor, so the commission focused on “low-hanging fruit” in its recent rulemaking notice, Levin said on a panel Wednesday sponsored by the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee. He was having an exchange with fellow panelist National Telecommunications Cooperative Association CEO Shirley Bloomfield. She said she “would have liked to see the FCC wrestle with contribution.” NTCA members are seeing up to 10 percent of their bandwidth gobbled by companies like Netflix and the situation is critical, she said.

Changes to the retransmission consent process are likely in about a year, despite the FCC’s March 3 meeting where the agency will vote on a retrans rulemaking, said DirecTV CEO Mike White during the company’s Q4 earnings conference call. “Realistically, change comes slowly in this area in Washington, so while there is a hearing in March or they may talk about some things, I think you are a year away before you would see those things change.” DirecTV is part of the American Television Alliance, which seeks changes to retrans rules, and White discussed the issue in response to an analyst’s question.

The House approval of resolution HR-1, which cuts federal spending by $100 billion, including all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, has the public broadcasters trying to prevent that from passing the Senate, industry officials said. “We held no program harmless from our spending cuts, and virtually no area of government escaped this process unscathed,” said House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky. The House also rejected an amendment by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., that calls for restoring $460 million for CPB.