At FTC, Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter tweets that she hires Caroline Holland, ex-Mozilla Foundation, as competition adviser, and Rohit Chopra adds Erie Meyer, ex-U.S. Digital Service, as a technologist, which Chopra says is a new post for a commissioner's office ... Manatt Phelps elects Donna Wilson, who chairs privacy and cybersecurity practice, to succeed Bill Quicksilver as CEO-managing partner, effective July 1, 2019, when Quicksilver becomes managing partner emeritus ... CBS starts CBS Experiences experiential events division, naming Rich Lobel its executive vice president-managing director.
The Senate confirmed CPB board nominees Rubydee Calvert and Laura Gore Ross Thursday under unanimous consent. Technology shifts are “placing a financial burden on local stations” and “setting up a challenging decision-making process at CPB and the other national organizations as they look to invest their limited resources,” especially given the shift to ATSC 3.0, Calvert said in her questionnaire responses to the Senate Commerce Committee. Uncertainties about funding at the federal, state and local levels are also a major challenge for CPB because its grants “are critical to all stations,” even for large stations that rely on smaller stations to help contribute to national programming. Ross cited CPB's need to bolster “innovative use of multiple digital platforms to reach broader audiences” and the importance of maintaining strong public broadcasting content as CPB's top challenges. Senate Commerce advanced the two nominees during an April markup (see 1804040059 and 1804250048).
Broadcasters need to move as quickly as possible to transition to ATSC 3.0 or they're in danger of losing their spectrum and market share to other industries, said FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly and Spectrum Consortium President John Hane in separate speeches Thursday to the ATSC Next Gen TV Conference. Through 3.0, broadcasters need to maximize the use of their existing spectrum, or it will be given to another industry, Hane said. Under the current technology, broadcasters provide a valuable service but take up too much spectrum to provide it, leading regulators to periodically pursue “progressive reclamation” of it as with the incentive auction, Hane said.
Since KFPH-CD Channel 35, a Univision-owned Class A station in the Phoenix market, became “the first stick to go up” in the Pearl TV-led ATSC 3.0 model-market project (see 1804080002), “we’re getting a lot of emails from consumers,” Pearl Managing Director Anne Schelle, told the ATSC Next Gen TV Conference Monday. In the emails, initiated through the model-market project website that went live during last month’s NAB Show, consumers are “asking when they can buy this new service,” said Schelle.
In what some called an unusual move, FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly used the agency's blog Friday to defend each of the commission's media regulations under Chairman Ajit Pai against criticism that such actions are benefiting Sinclair. Recounting a trip last week to the Pearl TV-led ATSC 3.0 model-market project in Phoenix (see 1805090082), O'Rielly fleshed out his view that the Pai-led commission isn't trying to help only Sinclair, but broadcasters overall when circumstances dictate.
FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly met Thursday with Cox Communications about machine-to-machine applications, internet access for kids, smart cities and wireless infrastructure builds, he tweeted during a Phoenix trip. He also said he visited the Phoenix Model Market, a marketwide collaboration on promoting ATSC 3.0 implementation.
PMCM was peppered with questions from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit during oral argument Thursday over the broadcaster’s contention the FCC should allow its WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey, to broadcast on virtual channel 3 (see 1805140068). When PMCM attorney Donald Evans of Fletcher Heald said there was “ambiguity” in rules on channel assignment to a station relocated to a new market as WJLP did, Judge Thomas Griffith interrupted. “What do we do with ambiguities in this court?” Griffith asked. In such cases, the court generally “defers to an administrative agency,” Evans conceded. “That’s what the law tells us to do,” said Griffith, nodding.
Broadcaster PMCM will argue that its WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey, should be assigned virtual channel 3 over the FCC’s objections, at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Thursday (see 1709280034). The broadcaster won a previous case against the agency to be allowed to relocate the station from Nevada to New Jersey (see 1212170043) after the DTV transition, but the FCC and the courts rejected the broadcaster’s arguments this time around. Since the case deals with arcane concepts such as virtual channels and the Program and System Information Protocol, broadcast attorneys told us it’s likely the court will defer to the FCC now. “The FCC’s insistence that WJLP utilize major channel number 33, rather than major channel number 3, is flatly inconsistent” with the commission’s own rules, PMCM said (in Pacer).
Pearl TV and its partners in the Phoenix ATSC 3.0 model-market project are “collaborating” with the Spectrum Co. consortium that Sinclair shares with American Tower, Cunningham Broadcasting, Nexstar and Univision to fashion a “transition model that we could offer to the industry as a way to move multiple markets, so that we’re all operating on the same sheet of paper,” Pearl Managing Director Anne Schelle told us Wednesday. The ultimate goal is to blanket the U.S. with coverage in a "rapid build" over three years, said Schelle.
Sinclair announced Fox as the final proposed buyer of the stations it said it plans divest to buy Tribune, as expected (see 1804250077), paving the way for FCC OK, said CEO Chris Ripley in an earnings call Wednesday: “We are going to go back in front of the FCC and hopefully get this on public file very shortly.” Ripley outlined possible outcomes for the proposed purchase if the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit knocks down the FCC’s restored UHF discount rule, a possibility many industry officials believe likely (see 1804200059). If the agency loses, Sinclair can “wait to see if there’s an appeal or some sort of FCC action,” Ripley said.