Monty Tayloe

A week after being sued in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., online TV service FilmOn.com will stop streaming major broadcasters in D.C. and eventually all over the country, said an open letter sent to U.S. broadcasters by CEO Alki David. Doing business until now as Aereokiller, David’s company continues to call itself FilmOn.com after a recent legal settlement with competing company Aereo. David said FilmOn will replace the local network affiliates, the content of which it’s been streaming online, with independent stations, with which his company will negotiate residual fees. “This model will set a standard by which companies like Aereo will have a tougher time establishing the precedent of not paying broadcasters for the content that they own,” wrote David. Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC didn’t comment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the FCC can’t force Comcast to carry the Tennis Channel on the same tier as the operator’s own Golf Channel and NBC Sports, in a 3-0 ruling Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/12gefp0). In an opinion that communications attorneys said could affect other FCC carriage conflicts, the judges said the agency failed to show unlawful discrimination, or present evidence to refute “Comcast’s contention that its rejection of Tennis’s proposal was simply ‘a straight up financial analysis.'” Judges were skeptical of the FCC’s case during oral argument, with some courtroom observers predicting the cable operator would win the case (CD Feb 26 p1). The channel said it will appeal, while FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai cheered the ruling, as did Robert McDowell, who left the commission earlier this month and had voted against the agency’s order siding with the programmer over Comcast.

Several major broadcasters sued online TV service Aereokiller in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, and requested a preliminary injunction barring the company from rebroadcasting Washington-area TV stations. The lawsuit is the latest in an ongoing battle between broadcasters and Aereokiller and competing service Aereo, which both use networks of tiny individual antennas to rebroadcast TV stations’ content. “A court in California has already enjoined Aereokiller from operating in nine western states, in the process recognizing that the commercial retransmission of our broadcasts without permission or compensation is a clear violation of the law and congressional intent,” said ABC, NBC, Fox and Allbritton Communications in a joint statement. “We believe that the DC court will uphold our copyright interests and further restrict Aereokiller’s operations.” Aereokiller did not comment.

The 600 MHz band plans proposed in a FCC Wireless Bureau public notice would promote competition among carriers and lead to more revenue for federal coffers than the plan endorsed by Commissioner Ajit Pai, NAB, AT&T and Verizon, representatives of several public interest groups said last week. Consumer Federation of America Research Director Mark Cooper and Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld told us the “down from 51” plan endorsed by Pai, and by NAB and the two carriers in a joint blog post Wednesday (CD May 22 p4), would require higher relocation costs and lead to a concentration of the best spectrum in the hands of a few large companies. That’s as compared to the plans outlined in the May 17 public notice, said Cooper and Feld.

The FCC’s proposed plan for the 600 MHz band shows a “disconnect” between the commission and the wireless and broadcast industries, said AT&T, Verizon and NAB in a joint blog post featured on all three entities’ websites Tuesday (http://bit.ly/191hcK7). Echoing comments by Commissioner Ajit Pai on Friday’s public notice requesting comment on the band plan (CD May 20 p4), the three said the FCC proposals of a reversed “down from 51 plan” and a time division duplex (TDD) plan fly in the face of “hundreds of pages of comments” and two industry consensus letters. “The first has absolutely no support in the record and the second adopts a technological approach contrary to the one proposed by the majority of U.S. carriers,” they said. An FCC official responded that the PN was intended to “expand the record” on the ways “various band plans can deal with market variation so that we avoid a ‘least common denominator’ effect that could limit overall spectrum recovery and revenue generation."

The FCC Media Bureau contradicted its own rules and exceeded its authority when it granted Charter Communications a two-year waiver from the agency’s CableCARD rules in April (CD April 22 p3), said CEA. The association’s application for review (http://bit.ly/16FKP51) filed Monday asked the bureau to reconsider or rescind the order. “In freeing Charter from its post-waiver obligations by fashioning arbitrary conditions never offered for public comment, while declining to determine whether this outcome complies with Commission regulations ... the Bureau’s Order exceeds both its own delegated authority and the Commission’s legal authority,” said CEA. Spokeswomen for Charter and the bureau declined to comment.

The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council media ownership study won’t provide the level of analysis required by the Prometheus II decision, Free Press told staff from Commissioner Mignon Clyburn’s office Monday, said an ex parte filed Thursday (http://bit.ly/109zeqe). Outgoing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski paused a vote on a draft bureau media ownership order to allow MMTC to conduct the study of cross ownership on minority-owned broadcasters (CD Feb 27 p1). Policy Director Matt Wood said Free Press has “serious concerns” about the study, which he characterized as consisting of “interviews with former and current broadcast station principals and executives.” Wood told us Friday that this kind of “qualitative study” won’t provide data showing the economic impact of consolidated media ownership on smaller businesses and minority owners. “It’s nice to see MMTC volunteering to take this on, but it’s not necessarily the kind of research,” requested by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in its decision on the FCC’s media ownership rules, he said. MMTC President David Honig said in an email Friday that Free Press had been involved in the design process for the study, and that the council had adopted all of Free Press’s suggestions at the time. “So it’s puzzling why they would be critical of our study even before it’s been completed and published,” said Honig. Wood agreed that his organization had been involved, but said that it still preferred a quantitative study to meet the court’s requirements. “When science is being done, an open mind is helpful,” said Honig. MMTC has said the study will be submitted to the FCC May 29 (CD May 3 p12).

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System allows localities to reach those a normal EAS alert wouldn’t by triggering multiple alert systems, officials said during a FEMA webinar Wednesday on how localities can plan for, test and use the IPAWS system. The system allows officials to send out warnings using the Emergency Alert System, Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) and other public alerting systems from a single interface. IPAWS Program Manager Manny Centeno said that because IPAWS alerts across multiple systems, it can be used to reach people beyond those a standard EAS alert would reach. He used the example of WEAs, which send short text alerts to mobile devices. “WEA can wake people up with their phone,” he said. Centeno pointed out that though the short WEA messages don’t convey much information, they can be used to get people’s attention, so that they will go check for other information that might be provided by EAS or another system through IPAWS. Centeno also said it’s important for localities new to the system to test it extensively, through tabletop exercises and other methods. “We certainly don’t want to go out there and press the big red button before we know how to press the big red button,” he said. The seminar included a presentation on the Joint Interoperability Test Command, a federal organization affiliated with the Department of Defense that helps FEMA test alert systems like IPAWS without accidentally triggering a real response. Because IPAWS involves so many different systems working together, JITC’s work is especially important, said Centeno. “Knowing that the message I put into the system is going to be properly represented elsewhere in the system -- that’s interoperability hand-in-glove.”

The consumer groups said they tested a variety of online videos, full-length online TV shows and video clips using multiple Web browsers and different devices. The report said 10 percent of full-length video viewed for the study lacked captions, but that the numbers went up significantly for shorter chunks of online video. The FCC order said IP video clips aren’t required to be captioned, but longer video segments, or multiple segments that together constitute the bulk of a full-length program are required to have captions. The consumer groups said that telling the difference between a video clip and a segment was extremely difficult, but 76 percent of video segments they viewed were uncaptioned, including 70 percent of news segments and 93 percent of non-news segments. Video clips, not required to sport captions, lacked them 87 percent of the time, said the report. “This is a big issue,” said Associate Professor Christian Vogler of Gallaudet University and director of its Technology Access Program. “During the Boston bombing, there were lots of news clips out there and they weren’t accessible to us. We have limited access to news, because everything has gone video."

Aereo filed a motion for summary judgment in the case against it by several major broadcast networks over its online TV service. Aereo said Tuesday that all of the issues in the case were already decided in the company’s favor during failed preliminary attempts by broadcasters to get an injunction in lower court and again in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Both courts ruled that Aereo’s system of tiny, individualized antennas doesn’t infringe on broadcasters’ copyrights. “Because that reasoning applies with equal force at this stage, Aereo is entitled to summary judgment,” said the motion.