Internet Association hires Mèlika Carroll, ex-aide to Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, as senior vice president-global government affairs ... Amazon hires as public policy managers: Liz Garner, ex-Merchant Advisory Group; Dan O'Connor, ex-Computer and Communications Industry Association; John Drake, ex-American Trucking Association; Chris Wilson, ex-21st Century Fox; and Matthew McCardle, ex-Boeing ... Wiley Rein adds Rick Engelman, ex-Sprint, to Telecom, Media & Technology practice, as consultant ... Niskanen Center names Mike Godwin, ex-Center for Democracy and Technology, senior fellow.
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FCC Chairman Ajit Pai promotes Tom Sullivan to chief of the International Bureau, where he was acting chief ... Michael Platt, chief of staff to Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., nominated to be an assistant secretary of commerce ... Tribune Media's Matt Cherniss, president-general manager, WGN America and Tribune Studios, steps down effective at month's end; TV industry veteran Gavin Harvey named interim president, WGN America ... AT&T Global Public Sector moves Rob Dapkiewicz to vice president-federal civilian, succeeding Mike Leff, named vice president-strategy and operations.
Broadcasters are confident the national ownership cap will be relaxed, ownership rules will be rolled back, and broadcasters will continue to grow through M&A, said panelists at S&P Global Market Intelligence’s TV & Radio Finance Summit Thursday in New York. “Consolidation will continue,” said Nexstar Broadcasting President Tim Busch. “Consolidation has to happen,” said Heartland Media CEO Robert Prather. “There’s got to be somebody like Sinclair and Nexstar that has the clout” to push back against the more powerful networks, Prather said. There have been $4.3 billion worth of deals so far in 2017, compared with $5.2 billion in 2016, said S&P Global analyst Robin Flynn: “We anticipate seeing strong M&A momentum.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected public interest groups’ request for an emergency stay of the FCC’s restoration of the UHF ownership discount, and ended the administrative stay of the rule (see 1706070053). “Petitioners have not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending review,” said the order issued Thursday. “This is not very surprising, since stays are rarely granted. However, it is extremely disappointing,” said Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman, who represented Free Press, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Prometheus Radio Project and the others in the case. Since the restored discount’s effective date of June 5 passed during the administrative stay, the rule is effective immediately, an FCC spokesman said: “We are pleased by the court's decision.”
FCC Deputy Chief Information Officer-Technology and Resiliency Christine Calvosa to be acting FCC CIO when David Bray leaves (see this section of the June 6 issue of this publication); also at the commission, Sanford Williams moves up to director-Office of Communications Business Opportunity, where he was acting director ... Christensen O'Connor adds patent attorneys from Blakely Sokoloff, as partners James Go and Cory Claassen, and as associates Daniel Hutchins and Denton McAlister.
NTIA Administrator nominee David Redl is likely to face questions about his vision for the U.S.’ post-Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition influence within ICANN, during his Thursday Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing, rather than criticisms about the handover itself, industry lawyers and officials told us. The U.S. spun off its IANA oversight role in October despite concerns from Senate Commerce Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., and other committee Republicans (see 1610030042). Redl’s confirmation hearing is at 10 a.m. in 253 Russell (see 1706020046).
After broadcasters pushed hard in the lead-up to the incentive auction for the option to forego repacking reimbursement in exchange for having “flexible use” of their spectrum in the aftermath, the FCC received only six applications for the “service rule” waiver needed to trigger that option by last week’s deadline. Flexible use of their spectrum will allow broadcasters to adjust to changing wireless technology and "mine for innovation,” said WatchTV President Greg Herman, an applicant. He and other broadcast officials agree lack of enthusiasm for flexible use spectrum is a consequence of the increasing viability of ATSC 3.0, which offers many of the same opportunities as flexible use did in what’s seen as a more widely accepted and clearly defined package.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau has “redoubled” its efforts to combat unauthorized broadcasting and is working its way through some of the changes required by the 2015 field modernization order, bureau officials told an FCBA event Tuesday. The bureau is seen as likely to function differently under the current administration than in the past, said a panel of industry officials. The bureau's general policy for enforcement actions is to start with a warning and then proceed in a way that will discourage future violations. “The driving force is what will be needed to encourage the individual to stop,” said Senior Field Counsel Steve Spaeth.
Mismatched IP addresses caused a widespread March 8 outage of 911 service that kept AT&T wireless customers from making emergency calls during five-hours (see 1703090017). FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said at the commissioners' meeting Thursday that the problem never should have occurred. The FCC will release a public notice reminding carriers of best practices in the area. The Public Safety Bureau plans a workshop of consumer groups, service providers and public safety. The agency reported 12,539 Americans were affected. AT&T relies on subcontractors Comtech and West, which give it 911 call routing information, said James Wiley, Public Safety Bureau legal adviser, who presented the report. March 8, AT&T “inadvertently” broke its connection to Comtech when it initiated changes to its network, which led to a mismatch between the trusted set of IP addresses in AT&T’s network and the IP addresses Comtech used to send 911 call routing information to the carrier, Wiley said. AT&T rerouted the calls to a backup call center for manual processing, but that call center dropped most of the calls it received, Wiley said. “These findings are highly instructive,” Pai said. “This outage could have been prevented. It was the result of mistakes made by AT&T. The bureau’s report shows that there were shortfalls in operational redundancies, risk assessment, and stakeholder and consumer outreach. Had AT&T followed certain best practices as outlined by the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council, or CSRIC, this outage would have had much less impact. Indeed, the cause of the outage could and should have been identified and addressed with periodic audits.” The carrier addressed the vulnerabilities, Pai said. “I urge every carrier to address similar vulnerabilities." The company did "an extensive evaluation of this outage and concluded it was caused by a system configuration change affecting connectivity between a 911 vendor and our network," a spokesman said. "We’ve taken steps to prevent this from happening again." Public Knowledge had called for audits, said Senior Vice President Harold Feld. "Who recommended stuff like that?” Feld tweeted. “@publicknowledge. Who voted against and called us chicken little? @AjitPaiFCC.”
The FCC could consider a "phased approach" to the transition to ATSC 3.0 and could be open to changes to broadcaster public interest requirements, said Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey at an ATSC conference (see 1705170033) Wednesday, saying the agency is "drilling down" into comments on the ATSC 3.0 NPRM. ATSC 3.0 is a "top priority," Carey said, saying the recent comments created a "robust record" and staff are working on the new standard as fast as they can.