April 30 FCBA Access to Government Committee brown bag with FCC New Media team, 12:30 p.m.,FCC Meeting Room -- www.fcba.org

Smaller public interest groups face new challenges in legal representation before the FCC and in court on communications issues because of the closing of the largest law practice devoted to representing nonprofits (CD April 4 p2). Industry lawyers and nonprofit officials said the immediate future of Washington representation for public interest groups without in-house lawyers isn’t bright on issues that will arise where counsel isn’t in place. Our review of the work done by other lawyers for public interest groups found nothing is making up for all of the loss of legal advice provided by the Media Access Project, closing its office May 1.

BRUSSELS -- The importance of private sector leadership, privatization, liberalization, competition, regulatory transparency and independence could be discussed in talks to revise the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) later this year, speakers said Thursday at a workshop (CD April 20 p7). Economic issues drew the strongest concerns from participants at the event hosted by the ITU and the European Telecommunications’ Network Operators Association (ETNO). An ITU Council working group meets on conference preparations the week of April 23.

Class A stations are readying responses to orders to show why they shouldn’t lose FCC interference protection and face channel changes without reimbursement or go off the air for good because there will be fewer vacant frequencies, industry lawyers and executives said. Longtime attorneys from Fletcher Heald, Wiley Rein and other law firms whose clients got Media Bureau show-cause orders met last week to try to map out strategy, some said. The bureau has continued to send letters of inquiry (CD March 21 p3) to other low-power broadcasters asking them to answer why they're qualified to keep Class A status.

The Supreme Court’s Jones privacy decision is rippling through electronic communications well beyond the GPS tracking it involved, less than two months after the ruling came down, legal experts said. The decision was “very cautious” but “very important,” leaving the court “potentially poised to change 40 years” of law on Americans’ privacy in relation to the government, law Professor Stephen Henderson of the University of Oklahoma said on an American Bar Association webcast. The court decided Jones “on the narrowest possible ground, but they certainly left the door open in the years to come” for litigation to decide profound questions concerning technologies besides GPS, said moderator William Baker of Wiley Rein.

Draft guidelines published by the Food and Drug Administration this week could curb TV ad spending by drugmakers, a lawyer who represents some pharmaceutical marketers said. The FDA proposed a set of guidelines drugmakers should follow for submitting their ads to the agency for review before they run on TV, with five categories of direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads subject to review, including new drugs and those with serious risks relative to benefits (http://xrl.us/bmx227). Although there appears to be a limited set of circumstances that would trigger FDA review of drug ads, in practice the guidance would impose a near-blanket requirement on direct-to-consumer TV drug commercials, said John Kamp of Wiley Rein, who represents the Coalition for Healthcare Communication. That may make drugmakers think twice about buying TV spots, he said.

Gregory Rohde to resign as NG9-1-1 Institute executive director after transition period … Promotions at Cox Communications: Jill Campbell to executive vice president-chief operations officer; Alexander Taylor to replace her as senior vice president-field operations … Oxygen Media names Sarah Lindman, ex-MTV, senior vice president-program strategy … Cablevision names Kelly McAndrew, ex-Viacom, vice president-corporate communications … The Hub promotions: Dan Pimentel to chief finance and operations officer; Ted Biaselli to vice president-programming … Lobbyist Registrations: Big Bend Telephone, Wiley Rein, effective Jan. 24.

The FCC’s proposed rule to require all TV stations to post online most of their public inspection files, including details on political ads, isn’t “burdensome to broadcasters,” said the author of a commission report last year on the future of the media industry. “In the long run it would likely save broadcasters time and money,” Steve Waldman said of TV public files being hosted on the FCC’s website instead of only being kept at stations in paper form. But “it made great sense to consider alternative approaches that might be even more effective,” Waldman said after his Feb. 9 meeting with a group of broadcasters, held at their request, to discuss the political file and sponsorship identification, which the agency also proposed should go online. A group of TV broadcasters proposed an alternative to putting all political files online. Instead of the FCC’s proposal, stations would post online the name of the ad buyer, the candidate for which the spot or program material was purchased and the aggregate amount paid for the spots or program material since the last online posting, according the proposal, made in a letter Wednesday to Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake. In general, the online political file would be updated weekly, and it would also be updated the day before an election. Outside the lowest-unit charge period just before elections, the file would be updated monthly, the proposal said. Under the proposal, the existing requirements for stations’ local political file would remain the same. “The reason why this proposal would better serve the Commission’s objective than requiring stations’ paper political files to be placed online as the Commission has proposed is that the latter would not readily provide the public with statistics that show how much money was being spent by each candidate on his or her candidacy,” the letter said. It was signed by Wiley Rein attorney Mary Jo Manning for Barrington Broadcasting, Belo Corp., Cox Media Group, Dispatch Broadcast Group, Gannett, Hearst TV, Meredith, Washington Post Co.’s Post-Newsweek Stations, Raycom Media and Schurz Communications. Waldman reported on conversations this week with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who was his boss when he wrote the report on media’s future that recommended public files go online, and with Lake. Wednesday’s ex parte filing is in docket 00-168 (http://xrl.us/bmr72b). The FCC may make Genachowski’s self-imposed deadline of finishing the online public file proceeding by this spring, but industry concerns have slowed down the bureau’s work toward a draft order (CD Feb 13 p5).

A small daily newspaper publisher warned the FCC against easing cross-ownership rules against one company owning a daily and a radio or TV station in the same market. Journal Publishing, which has said Tribune abuses its cross-ownership waiver in Connecticut (CD Oct 4 p19), pointed to that company in asking the agency not to expand the waiver for others to use. “This situation that has developed in Connecticut may provide a good example of what will happen nationally if the rule against cross-ownership is repealed -- less competition, less employment, less journalism, and more concentration of power,” the owner of the Journal Inquirer said in docket 09-182 (http://xrl.us/bmrxuw). “Banning cross-ownership in markets outside the top 20 ranking would be better than no ban at all, but after 12 years of waivers of the cross-ownership rule for one particular company in Connecticut, we ask the commission to prohibit further extension of waivers in this situation.” A Media Bureau rulemaking notice asks about allowing cross ownership in the top-20 U.S. markets when certain showings are made by a waiver seeker. Lawyers representing a creditor of Tribune, owner of the Hartford Courant and WTIC Hartford, separately met with bureau officials about the company’s plan to exit bankruptcy and transfer some FCC licenses. JPMorgan Chase proposes to use a subsidiary to hold “the bulk” of the bank’s stake in the reorganized company, so its executives will be “wholly unrelated to Tribune,” said a filing last week in docket 10-104 (http://xrl.us/bmrxu8). “This change in the manner in which JPMorgan intends to hold its interests in Tribune post-emergence will be described in the amendment to the pending FCC applications in this proceeding that the parties intend to file in the near future,” said the ex parte document reporting on a meeting where JPMorgan was represented by former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley and other lawyers with Wiley Rein. “Although JPMorgan had previously reported to the Commission that it held a non-attributable ownership interest of more than 5 percent of the voting stock of Gannett,” the filing said that stake is now below that threshold, at which investments can become attributable under FCC rules.

Consolidated Communications agreed to buy SureWest for $341 million in cash and stock, the companies said. The deal gives Consolidated SureWest’s 130,000 residential subscribers and 15,700 commercial businesses in the greater Sacramento and Kansas City areas. The combined companies will have about 1,775 employees. The move came less than two weeks after an analyst said Google could buy SureWest to boost its fiber initiatives. Consolidated will pay $23 per SureWest share, or an equal amount of Consolidated common stock. The per-share price represented a 47 percent premium to SureWest’s Friday closing stock price. The deal is expected to save $25 million in operating cost and $5 million to $10 million in capital expenditure, the companies said. Consolidated expects to incur merger and integration costs, excluding closing costs, of around $20 million to $25 million over the first two years after closing.