BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- PBS CEO Paula Kerger worries about congressional discussions to completely end funding for public broadcasting by 2015, she told TV critics in a presentation. Kerger expressed frustration at the constant fight over funding, saying: “When you look at the value that the American people place on public broadcasting and the irony that in the same week that we're awarded 58 Emmy nominations again, the question of whether a federal investment in public broadcasting is appropriate is disappointing."
Energy efficiency efforts are spreading among the range of industries involved in TV programming, said government officials, consumer electronics and multichannel video programming distributor executives and those aligned with groups seeking less electricity consumption. With the specter of U.S. regulation of set-top box energy efficiency comes private stakeholder discussions of ways to voluntarily give MVPD customers more efficient boxes, with cable, telco and satellite-TV deployments under way for years in some cases. Executives said MVPDs are moving from set-tops to Internet Protocol streaming to networked TV sets and other CE devices, reducing household energy use through increasing what’s stored in data centers and other company facilities. So operators try to use less energy in data centers, as TV stations cut electricity use, executives said.
The President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) Friday released its report that asks the Obama administration to move to spectrum sharing and away from attempting to clear federal users off the radio band offering carriers “exclusive-use” licenses. Most of the components were unveiled in May when the report was approved by PCAST (CD May 29 p1). In a key conclusion, PCAST recommended that the administration direct agencies to identify 1,000 MHz of spectrum that could be shared with the private sector.
The FCC’s Open Internet Advisory Committee got an impromptu pep talk by Chairman Julius Genachowski on what the group should strive to accomplish. “I think that if in two years this group can look back and say the Internet remains free and open; that incentives for innovation and investment are strong throughout the broadband ecosystem; that early stage entrepreneurs and startups know that if they get on the Internet they can reach an audience; that infrastructure companies know that they have incentives to invest and get a return on their investment; that speakers know that if they speak on the Internet they can reach an audience -- if we can say all of those things in two years, then this will have been a success,” Genachowski said.
Two high-profile pay-TV carriage disputes ended late last week. Time Warner Cable and Hearst Television agreed to a retransmission consent contract Thursday night and DirecTV and Viacom announced a carriage agreement early Friday. The FCC stayed uninvolved during both terrestrial programming blackouts, which the agency can have authority over if it finds there’s not good faith during negotiations (CD July 13 p2), industry and agency officials said. That’s in keeping with standard practice under Chairman Julius Genachowski. The Media Bureau continued getting updates from Hearst and Time Warner Cable during their retrans contract impasse, an industry official said. A bureau spokesman had no comment.
The FCC looked back at four years of data through June 30, 2010, in the market for multichannel video programming distribution services, and where possible, updated the information and regulatory and litigation developments. Friday’s release of the 14th MVPD competition report to Congress, meant under the 1996 Telecom Act an annual exercise, included four years of data to partly catch the agency up. The report noted as expected that online video distributors (CD July 10 p3) have cropped up in recent years to give MVPD customers other options. A notice of inquiry for the next report seeks data as of June 30 this year and last on MVPDs, OVDs and TV stations, the three major groups covered in the new document.
Critics of the revised Senate cybersecurity bill pounced on what they called suspicious regulatory loopholes that allow the government to mandate cybersecurity regulations on critical infrastructure providers. The Senate’s last-ditch effort to reach a compromise on a comprehensive cybersecurity bill was backed by a bipartisan group of senators and President Barack Obama (http://xrl.us/bnhjpy).
The increasing demand for broadband capacity and the need for technologies to expand into the mobile space has created an overlapping of fixed satellite and mobile satellite services, some satellite executives said. While the demand for a shared service is growing, the difference between FSS and MSS services won’t be completely blurred, they said.
Current rules are working and there is no need for the government to make changes, Sprint Nextel, the Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition (FWCC) and Clearwire told the FCC in separate filings in response to a June Wireless Bureau public notice (http://xrl.us/bncgh9), asking about the “rejection rate” on requests for common carrier use of spectrum in the 11 GHz, 18 GHz and 23 GHz bands. The FCC was required to make the inquiry and report to Congress by the spectrum law enacted in February. Sixteen years ago, the FCC consolidated its rules for most microwave point-to-point and point-to-multipoint services into a new Part 101 of the commission’s rules.
Looking for ways to counter the rapidly rising popularity of over-the-top (OTT) Internet video has cable, DBS and telco multichannel video programming distributors bolstering fledgling multi-screen video services. The additional bells and whistles include more VOD programming, mobile apps and customized features. AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have most recently added new features to their TV Everywhere offerings. So-called video cord-cutting and cord-shaving are growing threats to MVPDs and programmers, executives said in interviews. They said they're unsure whether the new multi-screen video moves will ward off the competitive threats or generate more revenue for the industry.