SAN FRANCISCO -- The robust Supreme Court jurisprudence on First Amendment law doesn’t seem to favor San Francisco’s case defending its law requiring retailers to provide information about potentially harmful effects of cellphone use at the point of sale, a judge hearing the case said during oral argument Thursday. CTIA and the city and county of San Francisco each appealed aspects of a U.S. District Court’s ruling on the law (CD Oct 31 p7), which CTIA says violates the industry’s First Amendment rights. The argument Thursday was over whether a preliminary injunction against the city from enforcing its new law should be lifted. “Let’s assume this case is going to go the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Consuelo Callahan, judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. “Tell me how you're going to get upheld there,” she asked a lawyer from San Francisco’s City Attorney’s office.
The FCC will use Web services, off-site backup and dedicated hardware to make sure its online political file system works well when TV stations are required to begin using it Aug. 2, Chief Data Officer Greg Elin told broadcasters Tuesday. Along the way, the commission is working to address concerns broadcasters have raised in testing of the system so far, he said. Separately, the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) wrote the commission to endorse an alternate proposal to the requirements that a group of TV station owners proposed that the commission’s majority didn’t take up in approving political file rules in April on a 2-1 vote.
*June 18 American Consumer Institute panel on “looming spectrum crunch,” noon, 2103 Rayburn building -- steve@theamericanconsumer.org
As the telecom industry transitions to Internet Protocol, traditional regulatory approaches will have to be totally rexamined, and government should enact policies that encourage investment in new broadband infrastructure, speakers said Friday at a Wiley Rein workshop on the “IP Transition as Grand Challenge.” Industry stakeholders discussed strategies for the transition away from the TDM, as some wondered what to do about what they called “corrupt” state public utility commissions that want to apply legacy regulations to a world of new technologies.
In a possible sign of the influence of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau in proposals for the World Conference on International Telecommunications, the SAMENA Telecommunications Council canceled a June 14 roundtable on the International Telecommunication Regulations because an ITU official couldn’t attend. The ITU representative canceled at the “last minute” due to an upcoming meeting of the ITU Council working group, a SAMENA spokesman said. SAMENA is a telecom consortium of 45 operators and dozens of members from 25 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Officials and executives from national regulatory authorities, GSMA, Wiley Rein, AT&T, Turk Telecom, and others were either invited to attend or scheduled to speak, the program said. The roundtable was scheduled to be at the Turk Telecom headquarters. The December ITU conference will revise the treaty. Tom Wilson, the SAMENA chief, in April had said the treaty revision is “an opportunity for change” (CD April 20 p7). Wilson didn’t clarify his remarks despite several email queries. Richard Hill, who is the ITU counselor to the December conference, and for the ITU-T study group dealing with economic matters, was scheduled to represent the intergovernmental organization during the SAMENA roundtable talk, according to a program we obtained. The SAMENA spokesman said Hill was not the official who canceled. ITU officials didn’t immediately respond to queries about who was scheduled to speak. Hill was slated for retirement before the December conference, but was retained beyond his term because of his specialized knowledge, officials had told us. Following a similar workshop in April at the European Network Telecommunication Operators Association (ETNO), Hill in an email, reiterated the views of ETNO officials who supported new business models to boost revenue assurance but were not cited in stories (CD April 20 p7). The ETNO officials made “comments to the effect that today’s Internet business models are becoming unsustainable in the face of an exponential growth in data traffic and that there is a need to address the current disconnect between sources of revenue and sources of costs,” Hill told us by email. The views, and others, were reported the following day because of time constraints (CD April 23 p4). ETNO, in a submission to the ITU Council working group this month had called for new business models for interconnection policies that would be based on the “value” of traffic, not just its volume (CD June 11 p10).
Tribune asked the FCC to “take all steps to act expeditiously” on the company’s applications “to allow Tribune to exit bankruptcy as soon as possible.” The agency’s non-binding 180-day clock remains at day 74 on the request to transfer station licenses as part of exiting Chapter 11 (http://xrl.us/bmf3e6). The plan is the only one before a U.S. bankruptcy court judge, and “the Company believes the plan is clearly confirmable” and the court will OK it, said a filing posted Monday to docket 10-104 (http://xrl.us/bnbkjj): “This would provide the Commission with the necessary court authorization to proceed with its final review and action.” Those meeting with Chief Bill Lake and others in the Media Bureau included Chief Restructuring Officer Don Liebentritt, Tribune Broadcasting President Nils Larsen, former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley, representing creditor JPMorgan Chase, and another lawyer for the station owner and daily newspaper publisher’s unsecured creditor committee.
Former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley and fellow Wiley Rein partner Henry Rivera, also a former commissioner, urged an aide to Commission Mignon Clyburn not to let the commission’s DTV viewability rules expire prematurely, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnbhwe). The rule was set to expire Tuesday. Meanwhile, the NCTA both expanded the commitments it made to minimize the disruption caused by the rule’s expiration to its members’ analog subscribers and attacked claims made by NAB in the docket about its ability to do so. It said the eight largest cable operators will notify must-carry stations at least 90 days ahead of ending their analog distribution, except when the cable operator is moving to an all-digital system (http://xrl.us/bnbhwn). Separately, the cable association wrote the agency claiming that NAB in its arguments to the commission distorted facts about the availability of converter boxes (http://xrl.us/bnbhwp). The three-year viewability period marked an agreement from the cable industry to help with the broadcast DTV transition, the NCTA said. “Now that three-year transition period is expiring and the cable industry needs to focus on its own DTV transition,” it said. “NAB’s arguments should be rejected.” Lawyers for smaller cable operators continued to meet with commission officials to push for an extension of a rule that exempts smaller and low-capacity systems from carrying must-carry stations’ HD signals (http://xrl.us/bnbhw5). A group of must-carry broadcasters held a teleconference Friday with an aide to Clyburn to push for the rules to be extended, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnbhxf).
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel names Priscilla Delgado Argeris, ex-Wiley Rein, as legal adviser on wireline and consumer issues, Valery Galasso, ex-office of Vice President Joe Biden, as confidential assistant and special adviser … Disney promotes John Idler to president and general manager of WLS-TV (ABC) Chicago … Verizon New Jersey President Dennis Bone to retire July 6; Jim Gerace, head of government and external affairs for New York and Connecticut region, adds those duties for New Jersey … Journal Communications hires Jason Graham, ex-Brookdale Senior Living, as vice president and corporate controller … Martha Stewart Living hires Casey Bukawyn, ex-Perry Ellis International, as executive vice president of global licensing … Style Media promotes Sarah Weidman to senior vice president of original programming and development, new position … Lobbyist Registrations: Level 3, Breaux Lott Leadership Group, effective April 25 … Viacom cable networks music and entertainment brands names as vice president: Pete Chelala, ex-Weather Channel, for mobile product and sales; and promotes Deborah Schlessinger-Brett for mobile sales.
Top U.S. policy makers are unified in their opposition to any proposed international governance of the Internet by the ITU, said FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell and Richard Beaird, State Department senior deputy U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy. Beaird said the U.S. position has “considerable support” in the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, and in some European countries. Google and Public Knowledge representatives said at the Free State Foundation event that Internet stakeholders should lobby the other ITU member nations to oppose any proposals that would create international rules for the Internet during the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in December.
The amount of TV ads large drug companies buy has been dropping with a wave of patent exclusivity expiration washing over the drug industry, and is expected by industry officials to continue falling sharply, putting hundreds of millions of dollars of annual TV revenue at risk. So-called blockbuster drugs such as Plavix, Lipitor, Singulair and Seroquel have either lost their exclusivity or are about to. Historically, drugmakers stop advertising treatments up to a year before they expect to face competition from generics.