The FCC has some options to prevent cable operator withholding from multichannel video programming distributor rivals the channels the operators own when a program access exclusivity ban sunsets Oct. 5, a draft notice of proposed rulemaking says, according to agency officials. They said the Media Bureau NPRM that’s tentatively set for a vote at the March 21 meeting, but may be approved before then, reaches few if any conclusions about how the agency should proceed. Instead, the item seeks comment on several scenarios for program access rules post-Oct. 5, when their five-year extension expires, commission officials said.
TV stations need ownership flexibility because the spectrum auction the FCC wants to hold could hurt the industry unless it continues to use multicasting and other arrangements linking separately owned stations within a market, some broadcasters said. Networks and affiliates alike cited last month’s passage of spectrum legislation in saying the agency shouldn’t place new limits on use of multicast channels to transmit signals of two or more network affiliates. But networks and affiliates disagreed on whether the agency should lift a ban on common ownership of more than one top-four rated broadcast network. And nonprofits and station owners of all stripes disagree, in comments on a media ownership rulemaking notice, on whether new media ginned up enough competition to TV to warrant more broadcaster mergers and acquisitions, much as they disagreed in the last quadrennial review.
Online video distributors’ concerns on giving to executives at Comcast and its NBCUniversal access to programming deals signed with major broadcast, cable and film companies underscores for some the difficulty in enforcing government behavioral conditions on mergers and acquisitions. The now-merged companies want the FCC to change terms of a protective order so their executives and in-house lawyers can see OVDs’ deals with other major programmers so they can deliver on the benchmarking condition in the 2011 order OK'ing Comcast buying control of NBCUniversal. While it seems reasonable for Comcast and NBCU to want and perhaps get such expanded access -- outside counsel and consultants now can view the benchmarking documents -- it raises competitive concerns and shows why it’s hard to deliver on such remedies, lawyers who opposed or backed the deal said in interviews Monday.
Goodwill between the FCC and broadcasters on spectrum, diminished in the runup to frequency reallocation legislation President Barack Obama signed Feb. 22, ought to get a bump up in the coming months, executives and ex-commission officials said. They said the law all but requires both sides to collaborate so the agency can raise maximum proceeds from selling TV spectrum for wireless broadband use and so broadcasters not volunteering to sell frequencies have channels changed -- or repacked -- with the least amount of viewer and business disruption. Former high-ranking commission officials and industry executives pointed to 2009’s transition to DTV as a model for ways stations and the FCC can work together now.
Goodwill between the FCC and broadcasters on spectrum, diminished in the runup to frequency reallocation legislation President Barack Obama signed Feb. 22, ought to get a bump up in the coming months, executives and ex-commission officials said. They said the law all but requires both sides to collaborate so the agency can raise maximum proceeds from selling TV spectrum for wireless broadband use and so broadcasters not volunteering to sell frequencies have channels changed -- or repacked -- with the least amount of viewer and business disruption. Former high-ranking commission officials and industry executives pointed to 2009’s transition to DTV as a model for ways stations and the FCC can work together now.
The cable industry ramped up efforts to get the FCC’s OK for all-digital systems to scramble the basic-tier (CD Feb 16 p7), to remotely turn on and off video service. Fourteen CEOs wrote Chairman Julius Genachowski asking he not wait any longer to circulate an encryption order, and NCTA CEO Michael Powell lobbied Genachowski on the subject. Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld, who had concerns that consumer electronics relying on encrypted signals won’t get programming, thinks the time has come for the FCC to vote (CD Feb 29 p18), with docket 11-169 (http://xrl.us/bmwmw8) having a sufficient record as long as poor customers are made whole. Boxee, the most frequent CE filer against encryption, said its concerns haven’t been addressed by operators.
A couple dozen stations’ public files are now online, posted by a researcher for a nonprofit that seeks such disclosure. That’s before the FCC moves to make all TV broadcasters put most of the files now in studios on the commission’s website. After several years of on-again, off-again work, the New America Foundation is making public documents it copied at radio and TV stations in some of the U.S.’s largest markets and some smaller cities. The files are “geomapped” with stations’ locations, so visitors to the site (http://xrl.us/bmwmv5) can see if an outlet in their area has its file available, said Media Policy Fellow Tom Glaisyer of NAF’s Open Technology Initiative. “If the FCC adopts the rules they're considering, this is what it could look like."
Whether a sports blackout rule supports terrestrial TV by keeping professional games on over-the-air broadcasts and not only on multichannel video programming distributors was debated in replies to the FCC on a petition from five groups to end the rule. The affiliate associations of three of the four major U.S. broadcast networks chimed in for the first time on the request, backing NAB’s opposition. The groups that petitioned (http://xrl.us/bmwid3) the commission (CD Nov 15 p3) to end the 1970s-era requirement that MVPDs not carry games in markets where contracts between leagues and stations keep them off-air said there’s “no compelling economic rationale” to keep the rule.
Whether a sports blackout rule supports terrestrial TV by keeping professional games on over-the-air broadcasts and not only on multichannel video programming distributors was debated in replies to the FCC on a petition from five groups to end the rule. The affiliate associations of three of the four major U.S. broadcast networks chimed in for the first time on the request, backing NAB’s opposition. The groups that petitioned (http://xrl.us/bmwid3) the commission (CD Nov 15 p3) to end the 1970s-era requirement that MVPDs not carry games in markets where contracts between leagues and stations keep them off-air said there’s “no compelling economic rationale” to keep the rule.
Six major TV programmers and movie studios opposed Comcast’s request (CD Feb 22 p4) to change the types of people who can read programming contracts that online video distributors seeking access to shows from the cable operator and NBCUniversal struck. CBS, Disney, News Corp., Sony Pictures, Time Warner and Viacom opposed a Feb. 17 request by Comcast to change the confidentiality provisions of the benchmarking provision for OVDs in the FCC order approving the combination of the cable and broadcast networks. Comcast/NBCU said the inability for its executives and in-house lawyers to see OVDs’ deals with other broadcast, cable and film content owners “made it impossible for NBCUniversal to make progress in good faith negotiations with OVDs seeking to invoke the Benchmark Condition.”