The FCC critical information need (CIN) studies are an initiative to “thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country” wrote Commissioner Ajit Pai in a Wall Street Journal editorial (http://on.wsj.com/1ogUBkc). The studies, of how news organizations gather information and serve their local populations, could allow the FCC to meddle in news coverage, Pai said. Though participation in the study is voluntary, “the FCC’s queries may be hard for broadcasters to ignore,” Pai said. “They would be out of business without an FCC license, which must be renewed every eight years.” Pai compared the CIN studies to the FCC’s now-defunct fairness doctrine, which required broadcasters to give air time to opposing points of view, before being taken off the books in 2011. “The demise of the fairness doctrine has not deterred proponents of newsroom policing, and the CIN study is a first step down the same dangerous path,” Pai said. His comments echo a letter sent to the FCC by Republicans in Congress, which also compared the CIN studies to the fairness doctrine (CD Dec 11 p11).

A broadcaster channel-sharing pilot program will “arm” the FCC with the information needed to create a “productive” channel-sharing system, CTIA told an aide to Commissioner Ajit Pai in a meeting Friday, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/LQw8mh). The Association of Public Television Stations and staff from pilot sharing stations KJLA-TV and KLCS, both Los Angeles, were also involved in the meeting, the filing said. The sharing project will be facilitated by equipment and consulting services provided to the stations by CTIA, and will yield “critically important data,” the filing said.

Proposed closed caption quality standards that would require content previously captioned using real-time captions to be provided with higher quality captions on rebroadcast would have a “disproportionate impact” on education and public affairs content, said Media Captioning Services in an FCC ex parte filing in docket 05-231. “Closed Caption Quality” is listed as an agenda item for the commission’s February meeting. NCTA also opposes the commission’s “unduly limiting the circumstances in which programmers could use real-time captioning,” said NCTA in its own ex parte. The FCC should “adopt an approach in this proceeding that did not interfere with programmers’ editorial discretion,” said NCTA. NCTA also endorsed the creation of a system of “best practices” for captioning video, a concept echoed by NAB in its own filing. Broadcasters need the ability to use electronic newsroom technique in medium and small markets, NAB said. Electronic newsroom technique involves generating captions using the script, rather than transcribing what is happening on screen. “We propose that the Commission adopt a ’safe harbor/deemed in compliance’ model similar to that implemented in the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act,” said NAB.

Comments on consumer groups’ petition for reconsideration of the FCC’s new accessibility rules for user interfaces and programming guides are due Feb. 18, the Media Bureau said in a public notice Friday. Replies are due Feb. 25. The petition for reconsideration was filed last month by several consumer groups representing the hearing impaired, including the National Association for the Deaf, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and the Technology Access Program at Gallaudet University (CD Jan 24 p12).

Lack of choice in on-screen movies is driving demand for legal and illegal film downloads, the European Commission said Thursday. Almost 70 percent of Europeans download or stream movies, and 40 percent of smartphone users and more than 60 percent of tablet owners watch on their devices, its audience behavior study found. That’s unsurprising, the EC said, because the public is very interested in films in general, but the nearest cinema is often some distance away and the choice of movies is limited. The findings suggest that Europe’s film industry could boost revenue by exploiting different kinds of profit-making online platforms to make movies more available and reach new audiences, it said. The study relied on research, analysis and interviews with audiences in the U.K., France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Croatia, Romania, Lithuania and Denmark. Around 5,000 people ages 4-50 were asked about their movie habits and preferences. Other findings included: (1) Europe produces about 1,000 films per year, most seen only in the country where they are made. (2) European movies are considered original and thought-provoking, but audiences complained about “slow or heavy” story lines. (3) Ninety-seven percent of Europeans watch films at least occasionally. (4) Sixty-eight percent of those polled download movies for free and 55 percent watch free streamed films via computers or handheld devices. Free downloaders tend to be young, urban, educated and keen viewers who are frustrated by the cost and limited catalogs of legal offers, the EC said. The study divided audiences into five groups: hyperconnected movie addicts; rushed independent movie selectives; mainstream blockbuster lovers; occasional hit grazers; and movie indifferents. European film-lovers mainly fell into the first two groups, the EC said. Filmmakers should make the most of funding provided through the Creative Europe initiative, said Education, Culture, Youth and Multilingualism Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou.

Recent increases in retransmission consent fees are a sign of market success, and not a failure, said Fred Campbell, executive director of the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology. The increase is the natural consequence of the increase in competition among video service providers (VSPs), he said in a CBIT blog post (http://bit.ly/1eqos75). “As a result of increasing competition among VSPs, broadcasters are finally in a position to negotiate fairer prices for their content.” Now that there are competitive VSPs in most markets, “cable operators have something to lose from a blackout too -- their subscribers,” he said. The premium paid by VSPs for their own content reflects the economics of the video programming market, he said. Though VSP competition has increased, “there is still significantly greater concentration and market power in the video distribution market than in the video programming market,” Campbell said. “It should be no surprise that, as competition among VSPs has increased, the price of retransmission consent has increased with it."

The FCC on its own initiative extended by a week the reply deadline to March 5 on whether to require video clips be captioned when the content is shown via Internet protocol, said an agency notice that was slated for Thursday’s Federal Register (http://bit.ly/1bvo6Jx). The deadline for original comments was extended a week to this past Monday, at NAB’s request, said the notice signed by Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake. “Granting NAB’s request is necessary to facilitate the development of a full record.” Some stakeholders expect the agency to move to require IP video clips be captioned (see separate report above in this issue), as groups representing the deaf and hard of hearing sought such an order (CD Feb 5 p10).

Nielsen Holdings completed the tender offer to buy all outstanding shares of common stock of global market research firm Harris Interactive Monday, completing its deal to buy Harris, Nielsen said in a release (http://bit.ly/1bnOwNv). Harris will now become a wholly owned subsidiary of Nielsen and its shares will cease to be traded on the NASDAQ, the release said. Harris will be integrated into Nielsen’s Buy business segment, which provides information to manufacturers and retailers, though Nielsen will retain The Harris Poll brand.

Broadcaster conduct in retransmission consent negotiations “cannot be squared with the outcomes that would occur in a genuinely competitive marketplace,” representatives of the American Cable Association, Charter Communications, DirecTV, Dish Network, New America Foundation and Time Warner Cable told staff from the FCC Office of General Counsel in a meeting last week, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1el6piA). It said the multichannel video programming distributors and NAF highlighted broadcaster sharing agreements and “brinksmanship tactics” as examples of anticompetitive conduct. Broadcasters’ abilities to coordinate retrans negotiations and to engage in blackouts drive up the price for retrans to “unreasonable levels,” they said. The commission should enact rules to prevent coordinated negotiation during retrans disputes, require interim carriage during disputes, repeal its network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules and adopt “dispute resolution mechanisms” for retrans battles, they said. Those should include a “cooling off period,” a non-binding mediation system and procedures for commercial arbitration, said the filing. Pay-TV companies and public interest groups have been asking the FCC to crack down on what they call retrans abuses, including broadcaster sharing agreements, and Chairman Tom Wheeler may circulate a draft to make joint services agreements attributable for calculating ownership ceilings (CD Feb 3 p11).

The European Commission began a European regulators’ group for audiovisual media services. The high-level panel of representatives of national independent regulatory bodies will advise the EC on how to implement the EU audiovisual media services directive in a converged media age, said the commission Monday. As content becomes increasingly distributed and viewed across borders and created, distributed and viewed online, it raises regulatory challenges which make it more critical that national authorities work together and with the EC and EU countries, it said. The group meets for the first time March 4, it said.