Wiley Rein promotions to partner include Edgar Class and Ari Meltzer, both for telecom, media and technology ... Internet Association promotes Michael Bloom to vice president-federal government affairs ... Harvey Nash Chief Digital Technology Officer Anna Frazzetto becomes also president-technology solutions, North America and Asia Pacific.
Most stakeholders support the proposed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in allowing individual countries to set privacy laws while promoting Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation privacy rules, Wiley Rein international trade attorney Stephen Claeys blogged Thursday. USMCA goes “farther than those in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement in requiring data protection and promoting compatibility.”
White House tariffs on steel are beginning to increase prices for companies involved in the post-incentive auction repacking, but the tariffs aren’t pushing up costs as much as competition for crews and resources is, said antenna and tower industry officials in interviews. “The main thing increasing the costs are the crew prices,” said Electronics Research Inc. Vice President-Marketing Bill Harland. “It’s an impact,” said FDH Infrastructure Business Development Manager Don Doty of the tariffs. “But the repack itself -- the demand -- is raising prices higher.”
FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Associate Chief Bruce Romano joins Wiley Rein as consulting counsel ... Disney and Pixar Animation Studios President Ed Catmull retires, effective year-end, when Pixar President Jim Morris and Disney Animation Studios President Andrew Millstein report to Disney Studios President Alan Bergman; Catmull won't be replaced ... New York Public Radio names Depelsha McGruder, ex-Viacom, chief operating officer.
NCTA hires Brooke Ericson, outgoing (see 1809120046) chief of staff-legal adviser on media to FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, as vice president-government affairs ... Peter Hyun, ex-office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., becomes Wiley Rein partner-white collar defense and government investigations, has privacy and cybersecurity expertise ... Former U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg joins Facebook as head-global affairs.
21st Century Fox promotes, effective with close of Disney transaction, Eric Shanks to CEO-Fox Sports; Mike Biard to president-operations and distribution, Paul Cheesbrough to chief technology officer and head-direct to consumer platforms, Marianne Gambelli to president-ad sales and Steve Tomsic to chief financial officer ... Richard Sofield, ex-DOJ, joins Wiley Rein’s National Security Practice as partner ... IHeartMedia hires Chuck Deskins, ex- C3 Media Advertising, senior vice president-inside sales.
The FCC should eliminate the national ownership cap and “remove an unnecessary barrier to the ability of local television stations to compete in the evolving media marketplace,” said Nexstar CEO Perry Sook in a meeting with Chairman Ajit Pai Thursday, according to an ex parte filing Monday in docket 17-318. Sook was accompanied by former FCC Chairman Dick Wiley, now chairman emeritus at Wiley Rein. The national ownership cap doesn't "support diversity, localism, or competition," said a presentation attached to the filing.
A provision in the FCC’s incubator program order that allows broadcasters to receive ownership waivers in markets comparable to the one in which they incubate a new broadcast owner “threatens to destroy” the entire program, said members of the Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment, in a call with Matthew Berry, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s chief of staff. “The notion that a market with fewer than 350,000 people and 63 stations is in any sense ‘comparable’ to a market of over 19,000,000 people with 153 stations is new to communications law,” said Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Senior Adviser David Honig and National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters President James Winston in the filing. Honig and Winston said they called Berry on behalf of fellow committee members DuJuan McCoy, CEO of Bayou City Broadcasting, and former FCC Commissioner Henry Rivera, now with Wiley Rein. No notice was provided during the proceeding of the FCC’s definition of a comparable market, and the definition “was not a logical outgrowth of any earlier proceeding,” the filing said. “The incubation proposal would suddenly have been converted into little more than an engine of large market consolidation."
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai appoints Babette Boliek, Pepperdine University law school professor and associate dean-faculty research who will take a leave from there while she's at the commission, as agency's chief economist, succeeding Jerry Ellig, returning to academia, now as research professor at George Washington University, affiliated with Regulatory Studies Center; also Monday, Pai names to Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment: current ACDDE Vice Chair Diane Sutter, ShootingStar Broadcasting, to chair, succeeding Julia Johnson, NetCommunications, who resigns from committee; Anna Gomez, member of Digital Empowerment and Inclusion Working Group, from Wiley Rein, as vice chair-member of the full committee; and Susan Au Allen, member of the empowerment and inclusion group from U.S. Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce, as full member, ACDDE.
Pirate radio operators should watch out because the FCC will stop you, Commissioner Mike O’Rielly told a Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council conference Thursday. Commissioner Brendan Carr also spoke at the conference on a panel with O'Reilly, taking questions from former Chairman Richard Wiley of Wiley Rein.