TV License-Renewal Backlog Continues at FCC

“One of the things that the former chairman didn’t ever want to be seen doing was dismissing an indecency complaint, regardless of how meritless it was,” said lawyer Mark Prak, referring to Kevin Martin. Copps is taking a different approach, Prak said. The Enforcement Bureau is offering to grant tolling agreements with two-year periods in which it can later act against licensees if indecency complaints are upheld, instead of the periods of indeterminate length it previously sought, said Jennifer Tatel and Melodie Virtue. Among the court cases that the FCC is thought to be watching closely for hints on how to deal with long-pending complaints is FCC v. Fox. A Supreme Court ruling must be issued by the end of the court’s term in June and is “expected any day,” Tatel said.

NAB panelists didn’t have a firm figure on the number of long-pending license renewals. “We all have a couple,” Virtue said. “There is a huge logjam” in the Media Bureau’s Video Division, which deals with renewals, Harry Cole said. “It essentially just doesn’t grant the renewal,” to avoid a one-year statute of limitations to act on complaints after renewals are approved, he added.

Tolling agreements are a new idea that isn’t spelled out in the Communications Act, Cole said. Several years ago, when the Enforcement Bureau first started making the agreements, it would extend the statute of limitations on indecency complaints two or three years, he added. “Now they've realized that their processes grind even slower than they thought” and “they will insist on an indefinite period,” Cole said. “I suspect a lot of people are going to get off the hook as a result” of the earlier, shorter periods. “None of this stuff is written down in the books,” Cole said. “It’s all kind of made up. … You learn about it by making some calls” to people at the FCC.

The Media Bureau’s No. 2 staffer defended the FCC’s broadcast policies. Speaking from the audience, Senior Deputy Bureau Chief Roy Stewart said the lawyers hadn’t “told the other side of the story,” and “the commission doesn’t act irrationally.” Its job “is to enforce the statue, not to make up its own rule,” her said. “The question is how do you resolve these issues.” Tatel said the industry doesn’t want to flout public-interest obligations but seeks to “know what and what not” it can air.

Despite an ongoing inquiry on parental controls (CD April 20 p5) to carry out the Child Safe Viewing Act, the FCC is unlikely to ultimately issue rules, Cole predicted. “What Congress seems to be looking for in this thing is some kind of magic wand issued when you walk out of the maternity ward with your baby,” so youngsters won’t see objectionable programming on “all delivery” systems, including DVDs, cellphones, MP3 players, video games and pay-TV, he added. “It’s extremely unlikely any magic wand could be created.” Still, Cole and the other panel members said they think the FCC will take more action on content regulation the next two years. Most audience members indicated they agreed. -- Jonathan Make

NAB Notebook…

Atlanta, Seattle and Washington, D.C., will be the first mobile DTV launch markets this year, the Open Mobile Video Coalition said at the NAB show Monday. At least two stations in each market will participate in the launch at the start, ION Media President Brandon Burgess told a standing-room-only OMVC breakfast meeting. Burgess is OMVC president. “We need to make this part of our future,” said John Eck, president of the NBC TV network and Media Works. Eck said Washington would have the largest roster of participating stations at the start. Six stations there are signed on, including the NBC, Fox and ION affiliates as well as two PBS stations, Eck said. Responding to an audience questioner on how many mobile DTV channels will be possible in each of the launch markets, Burgess said Sinclair and Telemundo teamed to build an “example infrastructure” to broadcast mobile DTV in Las Vegas during the NAB show. Three stations in all are involved in the set-up, and they're capable of transmitting 10 channels, Burgess said. “That shows what only three stations can do.” One station owner at the breakfast, Colleen Brown, of Fisher Communications, estimated it takes a $50,000 to $150,000 investment to convert a station for mobile DTV, but said the money was well worth it. Not only is there vast “audience potential” in mobile DTV, but “the market is moving, and moving toward mobile,” Brown said. “We need to be in that space. We can’t disenfranchise those viewers.” LG plans to debut a DVD portable with built-in mobile ATSC tuner by the end of the year, executive Bob Rast said. They're to go along with introductions of modified LG Maize, Voyager 1000 and Lotus cellphones announced at CES and the recent CTIA trade shows, he said. Samsung regrets that it doesn’t yet have any “toys to show,” but company engineers are working to get new prototypes ready, said executive John Godfrey. Dell said it plans to introduce a Mini 10 netbook computer modified with an added mobile ATSC tuner sometime this year in the U.S. using chips sourced from LG Semiconductor, which has announced plans to mass produce the devices beginning in June. Dell will introduce a version of the Mini 10 next month in Europe with Vodafone as a partner. It likely will partner with another company when it introduces the Mini 10 in the U.S., it said. -- PG

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There are “concerns about availability” of consumer antennas in the DTV transition, but that “probably is not a problem,” said Hank Caskey, Audiovox vice president for reception products, speaking at the Association for Maximum Service TV’s annual meeting Monday during the NAB. Audiovox, which sells RCA and Terk antennas to all the major CE retailers, has seen most accounts “substantially increasing the number of new antennas” this year, in some cases as much as 50 percent from last year, Caskey said. Some models are on back order at some retailers, said Robert Schwartz, counsel to the CE Retailers Coalition. -- PG

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The Association of Maximum Service Television will continue its all-out fight against encroachments on the broadcast spectrum by nonbroadcast users, newly installed Chairman Robert Hubbard stressed at the association’s annual membership meeting Monday in Las Vegas. “We must address and we will address clear reception issues” for free TV. “Without doubt,” he said, the U.S. will change and not for the better, because more Americans still rely on terrestrial TV more than any other medium -- despite all the new technology available.

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Broadcasters and their lawyers expect Julius Genachowski, the nominee to become FCC chairman, to understand their needs and problems, since he’s a former broadcaster, said participants at an American Bar Association legal forum in Las Vegas. “I know,” said Christopher Woods of Univision Communications, because “my company bought 15 stations from him” when Genachowski worked for Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp.

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FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein will discuss improvements in its DTV Web site at the NAB show Tuesday, the commission said. The recently redesigned site (CD March 6 p2), www.dtv.gov, answers frequently-asked questions about what equipment needs to be bought and installed to get digital signals, the agency said. “The collection of resources and statistics on the site will also be valuable for broadcasters, local government officials, businesses - in short, anyone affected by the transition.” Also at the show, Adelstein will hand out a new DTV guide for viewers. It was produced by Consumers Union with help from the FCC.

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Radio stations that accidentally broke Equal Employment Opportunity rules ought to ‘fess up rather than try to “finesse your way past it,” said the Media Bureau’s No. 2 official at an NAB panel Monday. “It’s misrepresentation that can get yourself in trouble with the FCC,” said Roy Stewart, senior deputy bureau chief. “I don’t care who the chairman is.” Most stations must have an employee monitor compliance with the employment rules, Stewart said.

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A request for the FCC to start an inquiry on media hate speech (CD Jan 30 p10) may wait for action until the agency has a permanent chairman, said a broadcast lawyer on an NAB panel. The National Hispanic Media Coalition has “gotten a lot of interest from public interest groups that are going to file in support of the petition,” said Melodie Virtue. “I tend to be a First Amendment purist” she said, but some of the examples the group’s petition cited “are really bad.” The petition doesn’t seek the return of the fairness doctrine, but a notice of inquiry, Virtue noted.