Hulu and Sony’s streaming TV services are unlikely to survive for long, said David Bonderman, founder of private equity firm TPG, part owner of Univision, at the opening of the University of Colorado’s Silicon Flatirons Center conference on monetizing video programming Tuesday. Bonderman said investing in content is safer than investing in any particular form of delivering that content. “The tech is gonna continue to shift, but what isn’t gonna shift is people’s attachment to certain kinds of content,” he said. Bonderman said a recent attempt to sell Hulu failed because investors were “skeptical” that content providers would allow the streaming TV service to survive as an independent entity. “In the long term the odds are against success,” said Bonderman.
An appeals judge hearing oral arguments in online TV retransmission service FilmOn X’s appeal of a preliminary injunction brought by broadcasters in California suggested that if broadcasters want existing copyright policy changed, they should look to Congress rather than the courts. “In the end, isn’t this really a problem for Congress?” asked Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain in a recording on the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals website. He was speaking to Baker Marquardt attorney Ryan Baker, who represented FilmOn X -- formerly Aereokiller. Broadcasters sought the injunction against FilmOn for retransmitting Los Angeles broadcast TV stations over the Internet without their consent, which the broadcasters said violates copyright law. The injunction was granted in a U.S. District Court in California, but appealed by FilmOn. “So long as we can determine that your client has come within the terms of existing copyright act, that’s enough,” O'Scannlain told Baker Tuesday.
The FCC should give smaller stations an election cycle under requirements to post political ad sales information online before deciding whether to reconsider the rule, NAB commented Monday, the last day for replies on the agency’s public notice on the rule. The requirement is already in effect for the Big Four network affiliates in the top 50 markets, and set to apply to all broadcasters starting in July. A group of broadcasters has asked the FCC to reconsider and relax the requirements, and in June the commission asked for comments on possible changes (CD June 27 p20).
Providing emergency description for video accessed over Internet Protocol on mobile devices would present “tremendous technical challenges,” said NAB and other industry groups in reply comments filed Thursday. The comments responded to the commission’s rulemaking on emergency video description, released with the video description order in April (CD April 10 p6) as part of the agency’s implementation of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. The industry groups also challenged the FCC’s right to make the proposed mobile device rules. “The CVAA authorized the commission to reinstate its previous video description rules, but not to extend those rules to include IP-delivered video programming of any type,” said the Entertainment Software Association.
The FCC should take action against Comcast’s use of data caps in “test markets” and start monitoring usage-based pricing, Public Knowledge said Thursday in a letter to acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn (http://bit.ly/150H1EE) and in a blog post(http://bit.ly/17NjeLl). Video viewed online as part of Comcast’s Xfinity service on an Xbox 360 or TiVo doesn’t count against Comcast’s data caps, said Public Knowledge Vice President Michael Weinberg in an interview Thursday. That violates conditions of the Comcast/NBCU merger designed to protect competition in online video and undermines “the ability of video providers unaffiliated with ISPs to compete with those video providers that are also ISPs,” said Public Knowledge’s letter. In the letter, Weinberg asked the FCC to take action on a Public Knowledge petition filed on the matter a year ago (CD Aug 12 p2). “The FCC has a responsibility to at least investigate if their merger conditions are being violated,” Weinberg told us.
The FCC doesn’t have to wait for a full rulemaking proceeding on shared services agreements (SSAs) to rule against the ones associated with the Gannett/Belo merger, said the American Cable Association, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and multiple public interest groups in reply comments filed in docket 13-189 Tuesday. To avoid overlaps that would conflict with media ownership rules, the terms of the merger call for some TV stations involved in the transaction to be transferred to other companies but still share services with Gannett under SSAs (CD July 26 p1).
An ownership discount for VHF TV stations could encourage participation in the incentive auction, said a broadcast attorney and a broadcast engineer in interviews Thursday. Such a discount is among the items the commission would seek comment on in a draft NPRM on eliminating the existing UHF discount for calculating the 39 percent national ownership cap (CD Aug. 14 p1). Since UHF stations became more desirable for broadcasting than VHF stations following the DTV transition, and freeing up UHF spectrum is one of the incentive auction’s goals, a VHF discount might be intended to encourage more stations to participate in the auction, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Frank Jazzo. An ownership discount for VHF stations “could make it a lot more desirable for stations to move to VHF,” said Bob du Treil, president of engineering firm du Treil Lundin.
A draft FCC NPRM on the UHF discount proposes grandfathering existing companies but applying a new nationwide ownership limit calculation to any deals pending between the rulemaking’s issuance and when an order is adopted, FCC officials told us Tuesday. Deals pending now with Tribune’s buying Local TV and Sinclair’s buying Allbritton’s TV stations could put those companies close to or over the 39 percent nationwide ownership cap on U.S. viewers reached by a broadcaster, said market research firm BIA/Kelsey. Tribune/Local TV would be at 42.7 percent, while Sinclair would be just under the cap at 38.2 percent, said BIA/Kelsey. If the rule is approved in the form proposed in the NPRM (CD Aug 6 p1), it could affect Tribune/Local TV and others coming down the pike, said SNL Kagan analyst Robin Flynn. “This sounds like changing the rules in midstream."
Industry interest is high in an NPRM on circulation that would end the UHF discount for broadcast ownership, but attempts to lobby the FCC on one side or the other haven’t yet begun, said agency and industry officials. Although the eighth floor has received many phone calls for information about the item, there hasn’t been any substantive advocacy, said an FCC official. If the discount is revoked, large broadcasters such as Sinclair could find themselves close to the 39 percent national ownership cap, and a pending purchase by Tribune of Local Broadcasting would leave the new company at 44 percent, public interest groups have said (CD July 2 p2). Large companies that could be affected by the deal are likely waiting for an NPRM to be issued with specific language, said a longtime industry official who lobbies the FCC. The status of existing broadcast operations and pending transactions is one of the questions asked in the NPRM (CD Aug 6 p1). Companies may be “keeping their powder dry” until they have something to respond to, said the lobbyist.
Petitions asking the FCC to reject a proposed $1.5 billion deal between Gannett and Belo because it depends on shared service agreements (SSAs) are an effort to “hijack” the transaction to “advance broader policy goals,” said Gannett in an opposition comment. It was filed alongside similar ones from Belo and affiliated companies Sander Operating Co. and Tucker Operating Co. in docket 13-189 Friday. Under the terms of the Belo’s purchase by Gannett, some of the stations involved in the transaction will be transferred to Sander and Tucker but still share services with Gannett under SSAs (CD July 26 p1). The American Cable Association, Time Warner Cable and DirecTV asked the commission to deny the deal to keep retransmission consent fees down, while a host of public interest groups filed a petition arguing that the FCC should stop companies from using SSAs to get around cross-ownership rules. The petitions are a “stale and overblown rehash of policy positions” from the 2010 Quadrennial Review and the retrans proceeding, said Belo’s filing.