Paul Gluckman

NTIA and its NOAA procurement office won high praise from industry groups Wednesday for awarding the DTV coupon program contract to an IBM-led team and for meeting the Aug. 15 deadline set in the program’s request for proposals. The contract is worth $119,968,468, NTIA said. That includes $84,990,343 for the “base” period when all households are eligible to request two coupons each, it said. The DTV statute authorized NTIA to spend up to $100 million running that part of the program. The other $34,978,125 is for a “contingent” period, during which coupons will be available only to households relying exclusively on over-the-air TV, NTIA said. Congress authorized NTIA to spend up to $60 million for that phase of the program.

The control that XM and Sirius wield over receiver production “allows them to use hardware pricing as a tool to promote self-serving practices that can harm the consumer,” distributor U.S. Electronics told the FCC in opposition to the satellite radio merger. The company said it thinks XM and Sirius are moving from using multiple receiver distributors to “sole source supply.” Sirius “is believed to be entering into an exclusive distributorship” with Directed Electronics, and XM is negotiating an exclusive arrangement with Audiovox, U.S. Electronics said. Executives at Audiovox and Directed -- both competitors of U.S. Electronics -- couldn’t be reached for comment.

Vendors vying to win NTIA’s contract to run the DTV coupon program have had about three months to cool their heels since submitting their bids in early May, but there will be little rest after the contract is awarded next week. The winning vendor faces one tight deadline after another to get the program rolling, with little wiggle room in the schedule. NTIA has said it will pick a vendor and award the contract Aug. 15. On Jan. 1, the law requires that the vendor be ready to begin accepting consumer requests for coupons. In between, the vendor must produce a multitude of “deliverables” -- including a startup plan, retailer training manuals and security materials -- on a grueling schedule. Missing the deadlines would put the coupon program woefully behind schedule, raising the ire of Democrats in Congress who have vowed tough oversight. To keep the process moving, NTIA designed the contract as a “performance-based” procurement. When the vendor meets specified program “milestones,” as NTIA calls them, that’s when the vendor gets paid.

CEA opposes a bill that would order the FCC to study parental-control blocking technologies, because there’s already “an abundance of parental controls available today should parents choose to use them,” a spokesman said. S- 602, introduced by Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., was unanimously approved Thursday in a Senate Commerce Committee markup (CD Aug 3 p1). It would ask the FCC to “consider advanced blocking technologies” to be applied to a wide variety of platforms including wired, wireless and Internet. The blocking technologies could be used for TVs, DVD players, VCRs, cable set-top boxes, satellite receivers and wireless devices, the bill says. “Though the Commerce Committee directs the FCC to conduct an inquiry, we do not believe that there is any need for regulation in this area,” the CEA spokesman said.

A combined XM-Sirius could begin offering newly announced programming packages to owners of existing radios within six months after a merger is consummated, senior Sirius executives told analysts in a Q2 earnings call Tuesday. If the merger is approved this year, as XM and Sirius still predict it will be, the combined company could begin offering the packages by Father’s Day 2008, CEO Mel Karmazin said. XM-Sirius a la carte programming options, and the new radios needed to receive them, would become available in time for the 2008 holiday selling season, Karmazin said.

XM and Sirius expect by fall to complete their document submissions at the Justice Department and should know soon afterward how the government might rule on their merger proposal, XM Chairman Gary Parsons told analysts in a Q2 earnings call Thursday.

NTIA should require “full-disclosure labeling” on coupon-eligible DTV converter boxes because the agency’s final rule made BTSC stereo capability a permitted but not a required feature on those set-tops, technology company THAT Corp. told NTIA Director John Kneuer in a letter Wednesday. THAT, which succeeded dbx Inc., administers BTSC patents and licenses and has waged an uphill campaign to convince CE makers to build BTSC functionality into the boxes’ RF outputs. “If the NTIA is not going to require BTSC stereo, it is in the interest of consumers, retailers and taxpayers that boxes be clearly and prominently labeled,” THAT CEO Leslie Tyler told Kneuer.

The five largest cable operators deployed over 241,000 CableCARDs as of May 31, the National Cable and Telecom Association (NCTA) said Monday in its latest progress report at the FCC. Counting the five next largest companies, the number of CableCARDs deployed reached over 271,000 serving about 90 percent of cable subscribers in the country, NCTA said. As of June 15, 26 CE makers have had 568 CableCARD-ready product models certified, NCTA said. In its last report, in March, NCTA said over 259,000 CableCARDs had been deployed by the 10 largest companies. The number of CE makers certified for CableCARD-ready products didn’t change since the last report, but the number of models was up from 548. With the July 1 FCC CableCARD deadline looming, the five largest cable companies had 122,730 CableCARDs in inventory, said the report. Comcast had the most CableCARDs in stock, 59,375, but also by far the most CableCARD subscribers, 143,195, said the report. Comcast reported the most CableCARD “self-installs” in the quarter ended May 31 -- 1,979, or 13.9 percent of total installations.

As of June 15, the FCC had inspected nearly 600 stores and e-commerce sites, issuing over 250 citations to retailers alleged to have failed to put consumer alerts next to analog- only TV products as a new FCC new labeling order requires, Chairman Kevin Martin said Monday in a letter to House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey, D-Mass.

A joint “educational and training advisory” issued Tues. by the FCC and the CE Retailers Coalition (CERC) warns the “national retail community” that retailers were to be labeling clearly “any broadcast television equipment they are selling that has only an analog tuner” by May 25. The advisory seems to be part of a CERC-FCC collaboration that began in 2004 with publication of the “DTV Tip Sheet” -- not a result of a lengthening list of citations sent brick & mortar and online retailers on allegations of violating the May 25 order. The Commission sent a similarly worded advisory jointly with the National Assn. of Consumer Agency Administrators, warning that the order is now in effect. By our Tues. deadline, the FCC site listed 69 citations to CE stores nationwide through June 6, declaring they failed to post alerts on or near analog-only products requiring them. Among national chains, Wal-Mart owns the most stores cited (13), followed by Circuit City (11), RadioShack (9), Target (8) and Best Buy (5). Major e-commerce sites also have been cited, and Buy.com and Newegg.com joined the list Tues. Newegg didn’t post an alert on one Lite-On DVD recorder model it was selling, the citation said. Commission allegations against Buy.com were more extensive -- 14 products bore no alerts when investigators checked the site June 5 and again June 11, the citation said. Alerts were missing from 11 TVs, 1 TV/DVD combo and 2 DVD recorders sold at Buy.com, the citation said.