Trade groups representing IT, telecom and Internet companies worry that financial industry revamp legislation being considered by Congress might be too broad and that some language in the House bill could significantly expand the FTC’s rulemaking authority, officials told us. But public interest groups supported expansion of FTC power under the House bill, which was absent from the Senate version.
"We now have seen how satellite radio performs in what was this terrible recession,” and the experience “bodes very, very well for our future,” Sirius XM CEO Mel Karmazin said Tuesday on a quarterly earnings call. “What we found is that consumers love our product. They stuck with us in spite of the 10 percent unemployment."
HOT SPRINGS, Va. -- The FCC has a huge agenda from the National Broadband Plan to work through, but the commission has every intention of completing the work assigned, top officials said at the FCBA conference over the weekend.
HOT SPRINGS, Va. -- The National Broadband Plan’s proposal that 500 MHz of additional spectrum be reallocated for wireless broadband over the next five years is only a recommendation, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said at the FCBA annual meeting Saturday. The administration may reach another conclusion. Strickling said: “The administration continues to evaluate what is doable in this area and how to organize itself, conduct an evaluation. I don’t think there’s any question but that the administration understands the importance of looking for additional spectrum. In my own agency we're already starting to think about how we would do that on the federal side."
Competitive local exchange carrier Global Naps owes Verizon nearly $58 million in access charges under a 2002 order by Massachusetts, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled Thursday. It upheld a decision by a Massachusetts U.S. District Court. The sum is for services provided between 2003 and 2006. Verizon also had prevailed in the lower court on counterclaims for the debt against Global Naps President Frank Gangi and affiliates of the company. The appeals court also affirmed that decision.
Cable mergers and acquisitions activity, which began picking up in late 2009, will continue and perhaps increase in volume because of private-equity and commercial financing being easier to get, executives we surveyed said. They expect more consolidation of cable systems and channels. No blockbuster deals are expected soon, with Time Warner Cable sitting out recent deals and Comcast awaiting regulatory approval for its purchase of control of NBC Universal. (See separate story in this issue.) Conditions for financing deals have improved since our last survey (CD Oct 13 p2), executives said.
Broadcasters are studying language in a bill heralded by Senate Democrats as a response to the recent Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision that could change the way politicians and their parties buy time on TV and radio stations. The Disclose Act, sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and others, would expand the rules giving candidates for elected office access to broadcast time at regulated rates. NAB is reviewing the bill and has some concerns, a spokesman said.
Partnerships with non-profit and for-profit news sites and blogs will bring diversity to public media and create opportunities for pubcasters to carve a niche where market gaps exist, speakers said Friday at an FCC workshop on the future of public media. “It’s critical to expand and embrace the nonprofit online news startups,” J-Lab President Jan Schaffer said. “Collaborations can produce a lot of journalism.” With a focus on public service journalism, panelists noted gaps in investigative, local/statehouse and foreign reporting in both the private and publicly funded news industries and warned that traditional efforts to fill those gaps will be expensive.
The FCC is expected to hire an outsider to oversee review of Comcast’s planned buy of NBC Universal to augment existing staff efforts of what many inside and outside the commission see as a unique deal because of the combination of broadband and cable with broadcast properties, agency and industry officials said. The move would be unusual in that most major transactions before the regulator are solely reviewed by long-time officials, though not unprecedented because of this commission’s hiring of outsiders for various roles. The regulator has looked at hiring existing employees and people outside the agency for the new role, FCC and industry officials said. It decided to hire an external candidate, an agency official said. We couldn’t learn the person’s name. This commission has used outsiders to work on the National Broadband Plan, most notably Blair Levin, who led that work.
The first two DTV allotments made by the FCC in five years may attract few broadcasters willing to bid for the licensees at auction and start operations from scratch, several industry lawyers predicted. Wednesday, the Media Bureau approved the second new allotment in as many months, for channel 5 in Seaford, Del. (CD April 29 p14). Because that slot and channel 4 in Atlantic City, N.J., are in the VHF band, where digital reception problems have occurred, and the stations are far away from large cities, interest may be limited, the lawyers said. One was upbeat about Seaford’s drawing interest because of the area’s demographics.