FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly questioned what he said is a growing practice of calling in guest speakers at agency meetings, in a Friday blog post. O’Rielly doesn’t cite examples. At the FCC February meeting, at which the net neutrality order was approved, Chairman Tom Wheeler invited net neutrality supporters Chad Dickerson, CEO of Etsy, and TV producer Veena Sud, whose show The Killing survived with the help of Netflix, to address the meeting before commissioners started their lengthy discussion (see 1502260043). “I am not convinced that adding guest speakers is beneficial or appropriate,” O’Rielly said. “While witnesses may provide valuable insight into issues the Commission is considering, these presentations come far too late in the process to inform the outcome of an item. Indeed, they fall within a no-mans-land where they are practically too late to be ex partes but technically too early to be congratulatory.” The main propose of inviting witnesses seems to be to “further promote the viewpoint championed in the item about to be adopted,” he said. “The more controversial the item, the more likely we are to receive such presentations.” If speakers are still allowed at meetings, as a matter of fairness they should have to provide their testimony at least 48 hours in advance, O’Rielly said. Currently, no text is provided before the meeting, he said. Witnesses also should be subject to questioning if they join FCC staff at the presentation table, he said. O’Rielly also said he will no longer provide questions that he may ask staff to the various offices bureaus and offices before an item is presented. “I suggest that we can improve the discourse and relevance of an Open Meeting by allowing unscripted questions and answers,” O’Rielly said. “Accordingly, I serve notice that I no longer plan to provide questions to staff in advance of an Open Meeting. I promise that I have no intention of blindsiding or embarrassing staff by asking questions. There should be no gotcha moments.”
Correction: The Intelsat satellite network is composed of geostationary satellites that can be used for both mobile and fixed services (see 1504030043).
Low-power TV service displacement rights after the TV incentive auction give low-power broadcasters the ability to “homestead” spectrum ahead of unlicensed uses, the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition said in an email Tuesday. “Our Coalition predicts that the unlicensed industry will be stopped cold in its tracks for over a decade in its quest for low-band spectrum,” Director Mike Gravino said in the email. “Any attempt to put unlicensed users ahead of LPTV will result in a court case, and a long delay in the auction,” he said. Unlicensed industry companies could prevent LPTV from locking up needed spectrum by supporting “a buy-out of LPTV spectrum for the good of the economy,” Gravino said. The price for LPTV spectrum before the auction will be lower than it will be after, he predicted.
NAB expects to sell its current building and the land it sits on to partially finance its new headquarters planned for 2018, an NAB spokesman told us Wednesday. The current N Street NW building was “gutted and completely renovated in 1995” and NAB has been advised it will receive “top dollar offers” for both building and land, the spokesman said. NAB expects the building to be attractive to “embassies, think tanks and other trade associations.”
AT&T's planned buy of DirecTV should be granted only with conditions that “eliminate all regulatory advantages AT&T and DirecTV have enjoyed as putative upstart competitors to established rivals,” Cox Communications told an aide to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel in an April 2 meeting, according to an ex parte filing. The deal “will create a new company with unprecedented resources, diversity of service platforms, and household reach,” Cox said. The new company should be required to comply with the basic tier requirement that cable companies already face, and be prohibited from exclusive programming agreements, and demanding volume discounts from programmers, Cox said. The deal also should include conditions designed to prevent the new company from having “unfair competitive advantages in the bundled services market resulting from its control of the largest wireline and data network,” Cox said in docket 14-90.
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel is not leaving the FCC, despite rumors to that effect, an aide to the commissioner said Tuesday. Several top industry lawyers told us they had heard from numerous sources that Rosenworcel may leave as early as June, potentially leaving the agency with a 2-2 split between Democrats and Republicans. “This is really easy; she’s staying put,” the aide said.
Chanelle Hardy was named FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn’s chief of staff and media legal adviser, Clyburn’s office said Monday. The appointment is effective May 1. Hardy was the National Urban League’s senior vice president-policy and executive director of the group’s Washington, D.C., bureau, a news release said. She has been counsel and later chief of staff to then-Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala. "Chanelle Hardy is a deeply committed public servant, who brings significant experience in policy analysis, advocacy, strategic partnerships and media analytics to my office,” Clyburn said in the release. Former chief-of-staff Adonis Hoffman left the agency last month to start a think tank (see 1503260051).
The FCC published a list of prohibited written presentations made at the FCC on its net neutrality rules between Feb. 20 and March 12, the sunshine period on the order. FCC rules prohibit making any presentation, “whether ex parte or not, to decision-making personnel concerning any matter listed on the Commission’s Sunshine Agenda from the day after the Sunshine Agenda is released until the Commission releases the text of a decision or order relating to that matter or removes the item from the Sunshine Agenda,” the FCC said Friday. Among those who filed prohibited communications at the agency were the New Networks Institute, the Consumer Federation of America and Protect Internet Freedom, the notice said.
An FCC public notice was published Friday in the Federal Register seeking comment on how the commencement of operations for new 600 MHz band wireless licensees after the TV incentive auction should be defined (see 1503260047) . Comments are due May 1, replies May 18.
Multichannel video programming distributors' video subscribership showed the first-ever full-year decline between the end of 2012 and the end of 2013, the FCC said in its 16th Video Competition Report, released Thursday. Between year-end 2012 and year-end 2013, the number of MVPD video subscribers dropped from 101 million to 100.9 million households, the report said. Cable sub numbers fell from 56.4 million to 54.4 million, while direct broadcast satellite subscribership increased from 34.1 million to 34.2 million. Telephone MVPD video numbers increased from 9.9 million to 11.3 million subscribers, the report said. MVPDs have been increasing video revenue partly by raising the price of video service, but data in the report suggests “that programming expenses are rising faster than revenue,” the report said. MVPD programming expenses were 44.6 percent of MVPD video revenue in 2013, the report says. Fifty-seven percent of the total footprints of the top eight cable MVPDs had transitioned to digital by the close of 2013, the report said. In broadcast TV, the number of stations broadcasting in HD was down slightly at the start of 2014, from the previous year, from 1,536 stations to 1,517, the report said. The number of houses relying exclusively on over-the-air broadcast increased from 11.2 million households in 2013 to 11.4 million households in 2014, the report said: “The percentage of all households they represent has remained steady at 9.8 percent.” Broadcast industry revenue “rose to $24.6 billion in 2012 from the $21.6 billion in 2011, but were reported to fall to $24.2 billion in 2013,” the report said. The data also shows viewing of online video distributors' content on multiple devices becoming more prevalent, the report said, with more than 53 million U.S. households watching online programming with at least one Internet-connected device. During Q4 2013, 12.8 percent of video streams were viewed on smartphones, up from 7.2 percent during Q4 2012, the report said. The report is “filled with good news," said Commissioner Ajit Pai in a statement attached to the report. “When it comes to video programming, Americans have more choices than ever before.”