SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Downplaying traditional brand elements of their call letters and channel numbers online, broadcasters have found success with websites that play up other features of the station’s local news coverage, executives said at a BIA/Kelsey conference Tuesday. In New York, CBS consolidated the websites of its WINS-AM, WCBS-AM, WCBS-TV and WFAN-AM into a single online news hub and has seen a significant increase in revenue, said president of CBS Local Digital Media Ezra Kucharz. “We are able to get more money out of the market” by integrating the websites and the advertising on them, he said. The consolidated site plan will be rolled out to 15 CBS markets by the end of the year and another nine in January, he said.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps is seen as holding the key vote on net neutrality rules to be decided on at the Dec. 21 meeting, said agency and industry officials closely watching the order. Democrat Copps is widely seen as the commissioner whose vote Chairman Julius Genachowski must work hardest to win, by making changes to the order whose first draft circulated Nov. 30. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, the third FCC Democrat, is seen as more supportive of the draft, though she’s continuing to review it and doesn’t appear to have made up her mind whether to support it, said agency officials.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- TV will remain a large part of the local ad market, but other traditional local outlets will lose share of local ad budgets to new digital marketing competitors, said Neal Polacheck, president of BIA/Kelsey, at the consulting group’s Interactive Local Media conference Tuesday. “Increasingly, we think the two dominant drivers of this will be television on the one hand, and everything else digital on the other,” he said. Local advertisers will use TV for brand advertising while digital marketing tools like Groupon, Yelp and Google Places will increasingly be focused on transactional activity, he said.

The new FCC Title I approach to net neutrality is likely to get widespread support and reduce the risk of legal battles, ex-FCC Chairman Michael Powell told an Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) panel Tuesday. The FCC seems to be moving toward a resolution that would remove the regulatory uncertainty over broadband, said Powell, who chaired the FCC 2001-2005. Open Internet has universal support and is a common vision shared by many major operators, Powell said. Broadband infrastructure is critical to solving national challenges, he said. But “we have been stuck in the never ending debate over net neutrality,” he said: Enormous amounts of time and money have been spent, but the gain is modest, and it’s time to move on.

Strong sales of iPads and e-readers will boost AT&T’s Q4 performance and the company expects continued growth in its broadband and U-verse product lines, said AT&T Chief Financial Officer Rick Linder Tuesday. Linder expects margins for AT&T’s wireless products to increase this quarter, he told a UBS investor conference. “Across the business I feel good about the momentum we are seeing.” Last quarter, AT&T added and retained more wireless customers than it had in any previous Q3, primarily due to the release of Apple’s iPhone4 handsets (CD Oct 22 p6), he said.

Over-the-top video represents only a modest threat to pay-TV subscription rates, DirecTV Chief Financial Officer Pat Doyle said Tuesday at a UBS investors conference. Only a marginal group of “outliers” will give up subscription to watch programming online, he said. The company will “certainly monitor” developments in over-the-top content but doesn’t consider it an immediate threat, he said. Still, DirecTV foresees a TV market that relies on both conventional delivery and Internet connections, he said.

Sprint Nextel will spend up to $5 billion to upgrade its network with a focus on improving speed and reducing operating costs, Steve Elfman, president of network operations and wholesale, said on a company conference call Monday. Phasing out the iDEN network and repurposing part of the 800 MHz spectrum for CDMA-based service are part of the plan.

The GOP Steering Committee soon will begin considering candidates to lead the House Commerce Committee, voting as soon as Tuesday, said industry lobbyists, lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides watching the vigorous competition to chair the committee. It’s likely to amount to a contest between Fred Upton of Michigan; Ranking Member Joe Barton of Texas, a former Commerce chairman; and John Shimkus of Illinois, several communications industry lobbyists said. Upton is the senior-most committee member in contention for the top spot. Barton may need a waiver Republican caucus rules to again head the committee.

Some fundamental challenges in wireless come from the FCC’s decisions on matters other than spectrum that can hurt spectrum-specific steps and send the wrong signal to the commission’s foreign counterparts, said Commissioner Meredith Baker. They include the net neutrality proposal, the Harbinger restriction and findings on mobile market competitiveness, she said on a panel held Monday by the Georgetown Center for Business & Public Policy.

The FCC won’t have an order ready on reverse auctions for the proposed mobility fund until mid-February at the earliest, Chief Margaret Wiener of the Wireless Bureau’s Auctions & Spectrum Access Division said Monday at a Federal Communications Bar Association lunch. In October, the commission opened a rulemaking on whether it should use between $100 million and $300 million left over in the high-cost Universal Service Fund to create a reverse auction in which wireless companies in underserved areas have a chance to win subsidies to build out 3G networks. The comment period for the current rulemaking closes Dec. 16, and replies are due Jan. 17, Wiener said, making it unlikely that an order will be ready to go out before mid-February.