The House Commerce Committee voted overwhelmingly Wed. to raise FCC fines for “indecent” broadcasts to a level even higher than previously proposed. HR-3717, which was completely rewritten, gives the FCC authority to levy fines up to $500,000 for each violation, vs. the $275,000 previously proposed. The rewritten bill, called the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004, will require the FCC to hold a license revocation hearing for a 3rd offense and create a 180-day time limit (or so-called shot clock) for the FCC to determine whether broadcasters have violated the indecency statutes.
State regulators remain tangled with vexing procedural questions that must be settled before they can come to grips with the market impairment analysis cases required by the FCC’s Triennial Review Order (TRO), officials said. In actions in the last week, states were considering whether they had enough evidence to conduct cases, deciding on splitting cases into phases and ruling on discovery issues.
Qwest, AT&T and WorldCom proposed a uniform batch hot- cut process for all 14 states in Qwest’s territory. Some states said they would be willing to entertain the idea as they continued with their dockets to address competition impairment issues from the FCC’s Triennial Review Order (TRO). Elsewhere, N.M. and Ark. regulators decided there was no need for 90-day TRO cases on enterprise switching, and a W.Va. Task force recommended against such a case.
State regulators in N.C., Ida., N.D. and Me. say they agree with the FCC’s Triennial Review Order (TRO) conclusion that unbundled switching isn’t required for effective local competition in the enterprise market for large business customers, but left open windows for CLECs to contest that conclusion. Meanwhile, Qwest told all its state commissions that it planned to challenge the need for unbundled switching in the mass market for residential and small business customers.
The neighboring state commissions of Cal. and Ore. drew exactly opposite conclusions on whether they needed to conduct the 90-day case to challenge the FCC’s presumption that unbundled switching isn’t essential for local competition in the “enterprise” market for large business customers served by DS-1 or larger loops. Meanwhile, several other states set deadlines for CLECs to request a challenge to the FCC’s presumption.
State regulators around the country are taking up the issues referred to them in the FCC’s Triennial Review Order (TRO) on network unbundling. The commissions of Ill., Ind., Mich., Ohio and Wis. plan to hold a regional workshop session at Ill. Commerce Commission headquarters Oct. 16-17 to prioritize the issues and establish paths for communication and information exchange. The N.C. Utilities Commission (NCUC)established 2 dockets to address TRO issues. One is for the 90-day review on whether competition in the large- business local market segment would be impaired without access to unbundled switching (Case P-100, Sub 133P). The agency told the state’s 4 largest incumbents to file by Sept. 19 information on how many UNE combinations of DS-1 loops and unbundled switching they had in service. CLECs have until Oct. 3 to challenge the presumption that unbundled switching isn’t needed for effective large-business competition. The other docket (Case P-100, sub 133Q) is the 9-month case on the mass market’s need for unbundled switching. No procedural schedule has been set. The Tenn. Regulatory Authority (TRA) gave parties until Sept. 24 to file their challenges to the FCC’s presumption that unbundled local switching wasn’t needed in the large-business market. The TRA (Case 03-00490) said challengers must identify the specific markets that would be impaired absent unbundled switching and provide evidence to support their impairment claims. The Mass Dept. of Telecom & Energy (DTE) plans hearings Nov. 12-14 in its TRO docket (Case DTE 03-59) on switching for large business customers, with final briefs by Dec. 4. The Mich. PSC asked SBC to respond by Sept. 24 on whether it planned to amend the cost studies underlying its wholesale rates in the wake of publication of the full TRO. SBC in May asked the PSC to increase its UNE rates to cost and comments were to be filed by Nov. 10. The PSC last month acknowledged the TRO could affect the UNE price case and said the procedural schedule could be changed if amendments were needed because of the TRO.
State regulators plan to spend the next 2 weeks poring over the text of the FCC’s newly released Triennial Review order on network unbundling, preparing detailed summaries of what the order does and what the FCC expects from the states with regard to unbundled network element platforms (UNE-P) and other complex network unbundling issues being referred to state commissions, officials said. With release of the full order Thurs., the state commissions put into motion their plans for implementing the communication and information- sharing channels they have been setting up on a national and regional basis for the past 6 months.
In an opinion released Wed., the 11th U.S. Appeals Court, Atlanta, granted EchoStar a stay of the permanent injunction imposed by the U.S. Dist. Court, Miami, in June in a case in which local broadcasters disputed EchoStar’s ability to provide distant network signals to its customers (CD June 12 p11).
LOS ANGELES -- New studies indicate that the reality genre can offer advertisers special marketing and branding opportunities, in both traditional spots and product placement. Studies by Initiative Media in conjunction with MIT show that the more interaction viewers have with a TV program, the more attentive they are to the commercials and the better they are able to recall the ad message.
EchoStar announced it planned to redeem $245 million of its 9-1/8% senior notes due 2009. The redemption, which will reduce EchoStar DBS’s interest expense, will be effective Sept. 3 for a total of $267 million. Following the redemption, $455 million of the principle amount will remain, the company said.