Paul Gluckman

Broadcasters have pledged over $1 billion to promote the DTV transition, and retailers should step up by stocking converter boxes as of February, when NTIA begins mailing the $40 coupons, NAB President David Rehr told Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson in a letter. NAB, which released the letter, said copies also went to the CEOs of Circuit City, Kmart, Wal-Mart, RadioShack, Sam’s Club, Sears, and Target. “Many in your industry have spoken of the necessity of a retail commitment” to the coupon program, Rehr said. “Now that the operational details of the program have been established, having converter boxes available from day one is vital to its success.”

Data on “charter” subscribers in Los Angeles show ESPN’s audience 22 percent higher in HD households than in standard- definition homes, Bryan Burns, vice president of strategic business planning and development, said Tuesday at the Future TV conference in New York.

News coverage of the DTV coupon program sent the number of coupon requests soaring Wednesday following a somewhat slower start on New Year’s Day, NTIA told us Thursday. At Wednesday’s peak, NTIA’s contractor processed about 80,000 coupon requests an hour, the agency said. Asked to comment on our report that found bugs and peculiarities abounded when we mystery-shopped the program (CD Jan 3 p2), an NTIA spokesman said “demand is strong,” and the agency is pleased it opened for business “on schedule” Jan. 1, as the DTV statute required. In the first 48 hours after NTIA’s systems went live at 12:01 a.m. Jan. 1, over 725,000 consumers had requested more than 1.4 million coupons, NTIA said. It’s also pleased that 46 percent of those who applied on Jan. 1 certified that they were exclusively over-the-air households, it said. Other disclosures: (1) Though online ordering is available for English or Spanish, it won’t be available for other languages, the agency said. Applicants in Chinese, French, Russian, Tagalog and Vietnamese will continue to be directed to a PDF application form that can be printed out for mailing or faxing, it said. However, NTIA vowed to correct the forms to inform applicants that the coupons won’t be mailed out until late February or early March. Right now, they say the coupons will be available in two or three weeks. (2) It’s unfortunate that multiple families living at a single address can’t qualify for coupons, as our survey also found, NTIA said. NTIA decided to use the Census Bureau’s definition of a household because it’s time-tested, it said. The bureau defines a household as consisting of all persons who currently occupy a house, apartment, mobile home, group of rooms, or single room that is occupied as a separate U.S. postal address. (3) Nothing in the NTIA rules prohibits a household that already qualified for two coupons at its permanent residence to qualify for two more at a vacation home with a separate postal address, the agency said. As we found, the system will disqualify the additional coupon request if mail is sent to the permanent residence where two coupons already had been ordered, it said.

Incorporation of HD Radio in satellite radio receivers should be a condition for approving the XM-Sirius merger “to insure a level competitive playing field” between satellite and terrestrial digital radio, iBiquity Digital told the FCC in an ex parte filing. The agency should require XM-Sirius to end and prohibit exclusives with suppliers, retailers and auto makers, the HD Radio developer said. IBiquity has “no formal position” on the merger, it said. However, major radio group owners with significant stakes in iBiquity have register vehement opposition to the merger. Ibiquity fears a combined XM-Sirius “could be in a better position to hamper iBiquity’s ability to introduce HD Radio technology into the marketplace,” it said. Exclusive XM-Sirius deals with auto makers “could serve as a barrier to iBiquity’s ability to sell HD Radio receivers to end users,” it said. XM and Sirius “may have used subsidies and incentives paid to the automobile manufacturers and their suppliers to discourage proliferation of HD Radio products,” and a merger could “exacerbate these problems,” it said, adding that a merged XM/Sirius would have a stronger economic position and more cash for subsidies and incentives. As sole provider of satellite services, the merged entity would have more leverage over retailers, car makers and suppliers, iBiquity said. “This combined satellite monopoly would be in a better position to act anticompetitively to exclude HD Radio products,” it said.

Many CEA member companies have signed OCAP license agreements and will help draft OCAP specifications, News Corp. told the FCC in an ex parte filing. That participation “does not necessarily constitute endorsement of everything” OCAP, but it does show how many CEA members participate in OCAP developments, News Corp. said. But signing “the only license agreement that cable operators make available is not the same as supporting a particular policy position or endorsing a commercial solution,” a CEA spokesman said. “CEA continues to believe that its DCR+ proposal offers the best pathway to a competitive cable equipment marketplace, and will continue to advocate for such competition on behalf of its member companies.”

Skepticism about the government’s “motive” for turning off the analog service and subsidizing DTV converter boxes was common among participants in 18 focus groups that NTIA contractor IBM held in September and October to tweak the coupon application and the program’s messaging, according to an IBM report. Fears that coupons could get lost in the mail were common, as was confusion about the program, the report said. One respondent had the mistaken impression that the government would send a box to anyone who submits an application, and others thought they would be required to pay a monthly fee for the box. The report, dated Nov. 30 but released Tuesday for an NTIA’s media briefing (CD Dec 12 p2), may foreshadow problems when the program starts Jan. 1. The IBM team revised the coupon application form and program messaging to take the comments into account.

Feb. 17, 2008, a year to the day before analog service goes dark, marks the date when NTIA will begin mailing out DTV converter box coupons to consumers who can begin requesting them Jan. 1, Acting NTIA Administrator Meredith Baker told reporters in a phone briefing Tuesday. NTIA has certified 111 retail accounts to take part in the program, representing about 14,000 storefronts, Baker said.

Public Knowledge seeks a fourth condition in exchange for its backing the XM-Sirius merger, it told the FCC in an ex parte filing Friday. The combined company should agree to make its device and network technical specifications of “open and available to allow device manufacturers to develop, and consumers to use, any device they choose without interference,” Public Knowledge said. Devices should be FCC- certified “for receiving signals on the frequencies licensed to the merged entity” and have to comply with a “do-no-harm” requirement, Public Knowledge said. The new condition is needed “for the merger to be in the public interest,” it said. “After talking with hardware companies, we realized this is a concern of theirs,” a spokesman for the group told us by way of explaining why the proposal came so late. “As the FCC is still in the early stages of its analysis, we thought it proper to bring it to the attention of FCC staff.” Previously, Public Knowledge hinged its merger support on the combined company’s having to: (1) Offer a la carte or tiered programming pricing choices. (2) Make 5 percent of its capacity available to noncommercial educational and information programming over which it has no editorial control. (3) Hold the line on prices for its combined programming package for three years after the merger is approved.

The FCC was asked to find quickly that coupon- eligible digital converter boxes that don’t pass analog signals to TV sets violate the All-Channel Receiver Act and sections 15.115(c) and 15.117(b) of commission rules. The rules and the Act require such boxes to get all frequencies allocated by the commission to TV broadcasters, the Community Broadcasters Association said in a petition for declaratory ruling filed Thursday. Some CE makers are producing boxes that won’t pass along analog signals, or plan to do so, making it “critical” that the FCC act “promptly,” said the CBA, which represents class A and low-power TV stations, most of which won’t stop analog broadcasting in February 2009.

NTIA coupon program subcontractor CLC Services erred when it told us a consumer reporting a DTV converter box coupon lost or stolen can get it replaced (CD Dec 4 p16), the agency said Wednesday. CLC also was wrong in saying no “statutory prohibition” bars private sale of an active, lawfully acquired coupon on eBay or another means, the NTIA said. Its rules, published in March, prohibit coupon resales, the agency said. Section 301.4(g) says the coupon “has no cash value” and “it shall be illegal to sell, duplicate or tamper with the coupon.”