Buckeye Cablevision filed a complaint with the FCC against Sinclair Broadcasting (SBG) alleging that the broadcaster violated its duty to negotiate a retransmission consent agreement. Due to a retransmission consent disagreement, Sinclair station WNWO-TV, Toledo has been removed from Buckeye’s lineup since Wednesday, Sinclair said in a news release (http://bit.ly/Mf5hRe). “While we are aware that Buckeye has been providing its subscribers with a monthly credit of 24 cents as a result of the absence of WNWO, obviously this represents a mere fraction of the value of WNWO’s programming,” it said. “Buckeye is not asking the FCC to dictate any particular outcome in this matter, but the FCC must confirm that SBG violated the rules when it terminated negotiations in this case,” the Buckeye complaint said (http://bit.ly/1dT94iu). Buckeye asked the commission to issue an order that includes finding that Sinclair breached its duty to negotiate for retransmission of the station in good faith and requiring Sinclair to immediately recommence good faith negotiations with Buckeye, it said.

A Utah federal court’s granting of a preliminary injunction against Aereo Wednesday (CD Feb 20 p19) is a good sign for broadcasters in their approaching U.S. Supreme Court case against Aereo, said analysts in emails to investors Thursday. “This is a huge win for broadcasters with the SCOTUS hearing only 2 months away,” said Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker. “We give broadcasters the edge at this point,” said Stifel Nicolaus. “We are pleased with this outcome and believe there is no reason the Supreme Court would not come to the same conclusion,” said Sinclair CEO David Smith in a released statement. Two Sinclair stations are among the plaintiffs in the Utah case against Aereo. Both Ryvicker and Stifel pointed out that the injunction is the first win for broadcasters against Aereo in court, though they have previously had injunctions granted against competing service FilmOn. FilmOn’s injunctions bar the company from streaming content throughout the country except for the jurisdiction of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had previously ruled in Aereo’s favor. Wednesday’s ruling bars Aereo from transmitting copyrighted material only within the jurisdiction of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision gives broadcasters “a little more ammo in their campaign against Aereo,” said Stifel. Broadcasters “are more likely than not to succeed in some form or fashion at the Supreme Court,” Stifel said. Justice Samuel Alito recused himself from the decision to grant cert to the Aereo case, and “will presumably still be recused, leaving only eight justices to hear the case,” Stifel said. That means the court could theoretically deadlock, Stifel said, “which would leave the Second Circuit ruling in place and the parties to continue to fight it out in courts around the country.” An Aereo victory could lead to broadcasters looking to Congress for a legislative fix in satellite-TV copyright legislation, Stifel said. If that happens, it could “give pay-TV companies leverage to extract concessions from broadcasters on retransmission consent,” Stifel said.

The U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City issued a preliminary injunction against streaming service Aereo, barring the company from transmitting copyrighted material in the jurisdiction of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, according to court documents. The decision is the first loss for Aereo, despite many attempted preliminary injunctions sought by broadcasters. Though Aereo had argued that the court should follow the precedent in prior decisions in its favor, Judge Dale Kimball said he was more persuaded by 2nd Circuit Judge Denny Chin’s dissent in an Aereo case and the D.C. Circuit’s ruling against Aereo competitor FilmOn, court documents said. Along with the preliminary injunction, Kimball stayed the case pending a decision on Aereo’s case in the U.S. Supreme Court. Both Aereo and the broadcaster plaintiffs had requested the stay, but were in conflict over whether Aereo would be enjoined while awaiting the high court decision. Kimball also denied Aereo’s request to move the case to the 2nd Circuit. “We are extremely disappointed that the District Court in Utah has chosen to take a different path than every other Court that has reviewed the Aereo technology,” said Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia in an emailed statement. “Consumers have a fundamental right to watch over the air broadcast television via an antenna and to record copies for their personal use. The Copyright Act provides no justification to curtail that right simply because the consumer is using modern, remotely located equipment."

Oral argument in the Supreme Court’s Aereo case will be April 22, said the Supreme Court website. Though brought to the court as an appeal of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision not to grant a broadcaster-requested preliminary injunction against Aereo, both sides asked the high court to grant cert in the case (CD Jan 13 p5). Court cases in multiple jurisdictions involving both Aereo and its competitor FilmOn have been put on hold pending a decision in the high court case, which is expected to be issued by the summer.

The FCC critical information need (CIN) studies are an initiative to “thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country” wrote Commissioner Ajit Pai in a Wall Street Journal editorial (http://on.wsj.com/1ogUBkc). The studies, of how news organizations gather information and serve their local populations, could allow the FCC to meddle in news coverage, Pai said. Though participation in the study is voluntary, “the FCC’s queries may be hard for broadcasters to ignore,” Pai said. “They would be out of business without an FCC license, which must be renewed every eight years.” Pai compared the CIN studies to the FCC’s now-defunct fairness doctrine, which required broadcasters to give air time to opposing points of view, before being taken off the books in 2011. “The demise of the fairness doctrine has not deterred proponents of newsroom policing, and the CIN study is a first step down the same dangerous path,” Pai said. His comments echo a letter sent to the FCC by Republicans in Congress, which also compared the CIN studies to the fairness doctrine (CD Dec 11 p11).

A broadcaster channel-sharing pilot program will “arm” the FCC with the information needed to create a “productive” channel-sharing system, CTIA told an aide to Commissioner Ajit Pai in a meeting Friday, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/LQw8mh). The Association of Public Television Stations and staff from pilot sharing stations KJLA-TV and KLCS, both Los Angeles, were also involved in the meeting, the filing said. The sharing project will be facilitated by equipment and consulting services provided to the stations by CTIA, and will yield “critically important data,” the filing said.

Proposed closed caption quality standards that would require content previously captioned using real-time captions to be provided with higher quality captions on rebroadcast would have a “disproportionate impact” on education and public affairs content, said Media Captioning Services in an FCC ex parte filing in docket 05-231. “Closed Caption Quality” is listed as an agenda item for the commission’s February meeting. NCTA also opposes the commission’s “unduly limiting the circumstances in which programmers could use real-time captioning,” said NCTA in its own ex parte. The FCC should “adopt an approach in this proceeding that did not interfere with programmers’ editorial discretion,” said NCTA. NCTA also endorsed the creation of a system of “best practices” for captioning video, a concept echoed by NAB in its own filing. Broadcasters need the ability to use electronic newsroom technique in medium and small markets, NAB said. Electronic newsroom technique involves generating captions using the script, rather than transcribing what is happening on screen. “We propose that the Commission adopt a ’safe harbor/deemed in compliance’ model similar to that implemented in the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act,” said NAB.

Comments on consumer groups’ petition for reconsideration of the FCC’s new accessibility rules for user interfaces and programming guides are due Feb. 18, the Media Bureau said in a public notice Friday. Replies are due Feb. 25. The petition for reconsideration was filed last month by several consumer groups representing the hearing impaired, including the National Association for the Deaf, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and the Technology Access Program at Gallaudet University (CD Jan 24 p12).

Lack of choice in on-screen movies is driving demand for legal and illegal film downloads, the European Commission said Thursday. Almost 70 percent of Europeans download or stream movies, and 40 percent of smartphone users and more than 60 percent of tablet owners watch on their devices, its audience behavior study found. That’s unsurprising, the EC said, because the public is very interested in films in general, but the nearest cinema is often some distance away and the choice of movies is limited. The findings suggest that Europe’s film industry could boost revenue by exploiting different kinds of profit-making online platforms to make movies more available and reach new audiences, it said. The study relied on research, analysis and interviews with audiences in the U.K., France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Croatia, Romania, Lithuania and Denmark. Around 5,000 people ages 4-50 were asked about their movie habits and preferences. Other findings included: (1) Europe produces about 1,000 films per year, most seen only in the country where they are made. (2) European movies are considered original and thought-provoking, but audiences complained about “slow or heavy” story lines. (3) Ninety-seven percent of Europeans watch films at least occasionally. (4) Sixty-eight percent of those polled download movies for free and 55 percent watch free streamed films via computers or handheld devices. Free downloaders tend to be young, urban, educated and keen viewers who are frustrated by the cost and limited catalogs of legal offers, the EC said. The study divided audiences into five groups: hyperconnected movie addicts; rushed independent movie selectives; mainstream blockbuster lovers; occasional hit grazers; and movie indifferents. European film-lovers mainly fell into the first two groups, the EC said. Filmmakers should make the most of funding provided through the Creative Europe initiative, said Education, Culture, Youth and Multilingualism Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou.

Recent increases in retransmission consent fees are a sign of market success, and not a failure, said Fred Campbell, executive director of the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology. The increase is the natural consequence of the increase in competition among video service providers (VSPs), he said in a CBIT blog post (http://bit.ly/1eqos75). “As a result of increasing competition among VSPs, broadcasters are finally in a position to negotiate fairer prices for their content.” Now that there are competitive VSPs in most markets, “cable operators have something to lose from a blackout too -- their subscribers,” he said. The premium paid by VSPs for their own content reflects the economics of the video programming market, he said. Though VSP competition has increased, “there is still significantly greater concentration and market power in the video distribution market than in the video programming market,” Campbell said. “It should be no surprise that, as competition among VSPs has increased, the price of retransmission consent has increased with it."