The FCC is looking to revive some media ownership rules approved during Kevin Martin’s chairmanship, while ending a bar on one company holding radio and TV stations in the same market. A rulemaking notice that circulated Friday afternoon for the quadrennial review (CD Nov 7 p19) proposes to reinstate some cross-ownership rules approved 3-2 in 2007.

Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn urged critics of the recent Universal Service Fund changes not to take their claims to court. “Instead, I ask that we work together to complete and perfect these reform efforts,” Clyburn told an audience Tuesday in Boston for a broadband conference. “By doing so, we can ensure that the transition of the fund from voice to broadband opens the door for every citizen to become a part of our digital economy. When that occurs, the decade-long struggle to achieve these reforms will have been well worth the effort.”

Democratic support appears thin in the Senate for a joint resolution of disapproval to void the FCC’s net neutrality rules from December. But with debate set to start Wednesday and a vote Thursday, many on the SJ Res 6 supporters’ hit list are keeping mum on how they will vote. Assuming all 47 Republicans unite behind the resolution, four Democratic votes are needed to pass it. The White House on Tuesday threatened a veto if it’s passed.

The Recording Academy, sponsor of the Grammy Awards, asked the FCC to allow the sale of non-commercial broadcasting stations only to entities that plan to offer local programming to the original area of license. In an ex parte filing, the organization also requested a review into ownership and control of non-commercial broadcast stations as part of the FCC’s review of media ownership rules. While the issue of local programming is important to public broadcasting and the FCC adopted proposals to ensure that programming serves the needs of local communities, some broadcast policy experts said RA’s request could be seen as asking the commission to interfere with a station’s programming decisions.

A coming review of satellite export control changes by the U.S. departments of Defense and State is the necessary next step before legislation on the same issue makes headway, said industry and government officials. While HR-3288, introduced by House Foreign Affairs Ranking Member Howard Berman, D-Calif. last week (CD Nov 3 p13), created a vehicle for such a change, the final Section 1248 report will be a necessary step, they said. The bill would give the Executive Office of the President back the authority to remove commercial satellites and components from a munitions list closely regulated by the State Department.

Univision’s Los Angeles and Miami TV stations will participate in the Mobile Content Venture’s (MCV) Dyle mobile DTV service next year, Univision and MCV said Tuesday. “Univision in L.A. and Miami are not only going to be upgrading their stations to broadcast in mobile, they'll be encrypting the mobile signal in the format that’s compatible with the application we're developing,” said MCV co-General Manager Salil Dalvi said. He’s also senior vice president of mobile platform development at NBCUniversal Digital Distribution.

Space technology such as GPS is increasingly important in people’s daily lives and the space industry is one of Europe’s “great success stories,” said Jacqueline Foster, vice president of the European Parliament Sky & Space Intergroup, Tuesday at a Brussels conference on EU space policy. Despite Europe’s financial woes, EU lawmakers support a “robust space program,” she said. Satellite-enabled communications can play a key role in delivering very high-speed broadband and other goals of the digital agenda, but the industry must be taken more seriously in policy decisions, a representative from the commercial sector said.

Supreme Court justices showed significant concern over the possibility of Orwellian ramifications concerning warrantless tracking using secretly installed GPS devices, during oral argument in Jones v. U.S. Tuesday. The high court is deciding the constitutionality of the practice under the Fourth Amendment. The issue was raised in the investigation and trial of Antoine Jones, who was suspected of dealing cocaine and was tracked with GPS for a month without a valid warrant. Much of the hearing focused on the “reasonable expectation of privacy,” as defined by Katz v. U.S., and the effect of changing technologies on police surveillance.

The special master overseeing discovery on the various court challenges to AT&T/T-Mobile ordered Sprint Nextel to give AT&T various internal documents it has requested by Nov. 21. AT&T filed a subpoena for the Sprint documents Sept. 26. Last month, Special Master Richard Levie noted in the order, AT&T narrowed its document request to those necessary to refresh the record in the case. In a filing with the U.S. District Court in Washington last week, AT&T listed 47 continuing areas of interest, including whether Sprint has plans for a “business combination” with T-Mobile if the AT&T/T-Mobile deal is blocked in federal court.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s staff cancelled a meeting with industry that was supposed to have been convened to discuss the pending broadband outage reporting order (CD Nov 7 p2), commission and telecom officials told us Monday. Nearly 30 executives from industry -- including executives from USTelecom, CTIA, NCTA and the VON Coalition -- were to have sat down with Genachowski’s special assistant, Josh Gottheimer, Tuesday to lay out their concerns about the order. It was canceled because of a “scheduling conflict,” Gottheimer said in an email Monday.