FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai touted the FCC’s rejection of an attempt by Media Action Center to shut down two Wisconsin radio stations as a First Amendment victory and the end of the Zapple doctrine. The cancellation of the FCC’s critical information needs studies also is a victory for the First Amendment, he said. Americans made clear that “the government has no place in the newsroom,” and that the American people, not the FCC, should decide what information is important, he said in an opinion article on the RedState blog (http://bit.ly/1iAzpAq). Media Action Center made a complaint based on the Zapple doctrine, against two Wisconsin radio stations, accusing them of giving more airtime to Republican supporters of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker than they did to his opponents (CD May 12 p14). That doctrine required stations to provide similar airtime to supporters and opponents of a political candidate. In rejecting the request, the commission “finally confirmed that the Zapple Doctrine is indeed dead,” Pai said. If the 1987 marketplace was diverse enough that the Fairness Doctrine was no longer justified, “there is no way that the Zapple Doctrine could survive in today’s marketplace -- a marketplace in which countless viewpoints are only a tweet or blog post away,” he said. Policies like the Fairness and Zapple doctrines suppress public debate, he said. The way outlets cover stories is driven by consumers and “shouldn’t be second-guessed by a majority of FCC Commissioners or a minuscule but vocal minority trying to cast heckler’s vetoes,” Pai said. The end of the Zapple doctrine presents an important lesson that “there will always be someone eager to manipulate the levers of government to serve a political end,” he said.

If the FCC requires video clips transmitted over the Internet to be closed captioned, it should allow a grace period of several hours for excerpts from live or near-live shows, representatives of various CBS entities told FCC staffers according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1wmDqll). Without the grace period, CBS would have to wait until such clips are captioned, creating an opening for a third party’s uncaptioned clip of the same event to go viral, CBS said. Not allowing the grace period could discourage programmers from posting clips that would otherwise be made available, CBS said. The networks also requested an exemption for advance promotional clips, the ex parte filing said.

Consumers spend most of their viewing time on free broadcast and subscription TV -- 11 percent on each -- but they spend four hours a week on average viewing user-generated content, said a survey by Arris, released Wednesday. Respondents spend seven hours each on on-demand or “TV catch-up” services and on Internet TV without a set-top box, and they spend five hours a week viewing streamed content from a paid TV service, Arris said. For streamed content, the laptop remains the preferred viewing device, with 55 percent of respondents using one, followed by a desktop PC at 53 percent, Arris said. Smartphones are the third most viewed device for streamed content at 42 percent, while 33 percent of respondents reported using a tablet. Some 28 percent of respondents said they used a connected TV to stream entertainment, and standard TVs and gaming consoles were both used by 16 percent of those surveyed. Set-top boxes provided by an ISP were used by 15 percent, a Blu-ray player by 9 percent and set-top box with subscription-based DVR 7 percent of respondents, it said. The number of consumers who owned a connected TV jumped from 16 to 35 percent between 2012/2013 and 2014, said the report, while the number of people who owned a disc player fell from 65 percent to 55 percent. The percentage of those who owned a smartphone rose from 60 to 71 percent, it said, and the percentage owning a tablet from 26 to 44 percent. The penetration of streaming media players remained in the single digits of respondents, growing from 5 percent in 2012/13 to 8 percent in 2014, Arris said. The report surveyed 10,5000 respondents from 19 countries, including 1,000 respondents from the U.S. and 1,000 from China, with an equal number of males and females ranging from 16 years old to over 65.

Technical papers are due June 20 for the Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition of the Society of Motion Picture & TV Engineers, the group said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1mzqG5A). The conference, which opens Oct. 20 for a four-day run at the Loews Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles, covers current and future developments in media technology, content creation, image and sound, over-the-top and related arts and sciences, SMPTE said. Papers are sought on topics such as 4K and 8K Ultra HD, content for second screen and the Internet of Everything, cinematography and image acquisition, content security, display technology and new audio technology, SMPTE said.

"Public Knowledge [PK] urges the Copyright Office to consider tools” like “sustainable statutory licenses and reasonable collective licensing to encourage new market entrants while ensuring artists are compensated for their work,” said Jodie Griffin, PK senior staff attorney, in a release (http://bit.ly/TR797r) Tuesday highlighting PK’s comments (http://bit.ly/Ry9qSX) for the office’s music licensing study, which were due Friday. “Antitrust oversight is vital to the functioning of a mass market in music,” and “there is a continuing need for mass market licenses,” said the release. “The blatant abuse of market power means negotiations between ‘Willing Buyers and Willing Sellers'” isn’t feasible, it said. “The monopoly power of copyright gives the rights holders the ability to dominate, control or extinguish new distribution models,” it said.

CEA President Gary Shapiro’s blog post slamming broadcasters (http://bit.ly/1tpgoIb) for “squatting” on spectrum and opposing innovation is a “silly and misguided missive” akin to a child’s spilling his chocolate milk for attention, said NAB Executive Vice President Strategic Planning Rick Kaplan on the NAB’s blog (http://bit.ly/1jLoA3P). Kaplan rejected Shapiro’s contention that the NAB is fighting the auction and steering broadcasters away from participating in it. “Indeed, he does not, and cannot, point to a single instance where NAB has attempted to delay the auction,” Kaplan said. The broadcast response to the auction, blackouts and the ongoing lawsuit against Aereo are indications that broadcasters aren’t considering the public interest, said Shapiro’s blog post. “Broadcasters have by action and word abandoned their commitment to provide free content to the local public they are supposed to serve,” said Shapiro. Stations applying for license renewal should have to show they operate in the public interest before receiving approval, he said. “If CEA really cared about the public interest, it would lean on its wireless carrier and device members to take the simple step of unlocking the FM chips already in their phones,” Kaplan said. The NAB post is an attempt to “correct the record,” Kaplan said, though he also worried it would encourage further attacks on broadcasters. “NAB has an unofficial internal rule that we only respond to Mr. Shapiro’s comments once for every three or four of his outbursts,” said Kaplan’s post.

TV Everywhere sites and apps supplement TV viewing and add value to pay TV, a Viacom study said. Viacom used digital online journals, focus groups and ethnographies in New York and Chicago, it said Thursday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1nvRfIf). There also were online surveys with more than 1,300 Viacom viewers age 13-49 and more than 600 participants age 2-12, it said. Sixty-four percent of respondents reported watching more TV overall since they began using TV Everywhere, Viacom said. This finding is even stronger among millennials, with 72 percent watching more TV, it said. “For those using TV Everywhere, the television is still the go-to source for TV shows and watching live.” Nearly 99 percent of users claimed that TV Everywhere adds value to their pay-TV subscription, it said. Content, the flexibility of watching shows when viewers want to watch them and accessing shows on a range of devices are key drivers of TV Everywhere use, it said. For non-users, lack of perceived need, hidden cost concerns and lack of awareness are the biggest barriers to adoption, Viacom said.

The American Cable Association and NAB said AT&T’s proposed buy of DirecTV should be examined closely. The deal “demands a hard look in an increasingly consolidated broadband and pay television marketplace,” NAB said in a statement Monday (http://bit.ly/1kmiUMe). “It is hard to see how decreasing competitors in the pay TV marketplace -- while increasing regulatory restraints on local TV stations -- truly benefits consumers.” AT&T agreed to net neutrality commitments, expanding broadband to rural communities and other conditions if its acquisition of DirecTV is approved (CD May 20 p1). ACA is troubled “by the consolidation wave within the video subscription marketplace,” highlighted by Comcast agreeing to buy Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV, said President Matt Polka. The latter “merits the closest scrutiny” by the Department of Justice and FCC, he said in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1k36ucP). Congress and the FCC need to take a comprehensive look at the market that will exist if the deals are approved, and “decide whether existing rules that govern the current market are sufficient for the new industry order,” he said.

Comments are due July 7, replies Aug. 4 on the FCC 2014 quadrennial review (QR) of media ownership rules, diversity rules returned to the agency by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a potential disclosure requirement for TV-station shared service agreements (SSA), said an agency notice in Tuesday’s Federal Register (http://1.usa.gov/1j5QZLV). It said comments on the Paperwork Reduction Act aspects of information collection requirements associated with the proposed rules are due July 21 to the Office of Management and Budget. A party-line FCC voted March 31 on a further NPRM beginning the new QR, incorporating a never-finished 2010 QR and proposing to require disclosure of SSAs (http://1.usa.gov/1j5QZLV) (CD April 1 p4). The FCC separately said Tuesday a rule also adopted at that commissioner meeting, requiring ownership quota attribution of TV-station joint sales agreement, takes effect next month. (See separate report above in this issue.)

It could be a decade or more before Major League Baseball games are shot and broadcast in 4K, Joe Inzerillo, chief technology officer-MLB Advanced Media, said at the Appnation Cross Platform Summit in New York Tuesday. Ultra HD “economics are dubious right now,” he told us. About 2,500 MLB games are broadcast each year and some games are still broadcast in standard definition, said Inzerillo. It will be at least “10 years down the road” before all MLB games are shot and broadcast in Ultra HD, he predicted. MLB hasn’t made any announcement on Ultra HD rollout plans, he said. One major issue is the lack of broadcast standards, he said. “We'll get there,” Inzerillo said of MLB games in 4K, saying some major markets will get the format before others. MLB has experimented with Ultra HD, shooting a few games in 4K, said Inzerillo. There hasn’t been a way to broadcast them, he said. Many consumers can’t even tell the difference between HD and Ultra HD, he said. The TV is “ultimately not a platform for innovation,” he told the summit. TVs aren’t updated and enhanced as quickly as other devices that consumers can view TV content on, he told us later. TVs also don’t provide as “compelling” a user experience as mobile devices and Xbox consoles, he said. There is also a wide disparity between what different types of viewers consider the “best” screen to watch TV content on, he told the summit. Twelve-year-old kids might consider an iPad to be the best screen, he said.