Local TV news isn’t irrelevant, amid an onslaught of news and opinion from websites and social media run by both professionals and amateurs, the head of the FCC’s Future of Media project said. Among the myths Steve Waldman has found as he’s putting together the study is that “traditional” local TV “is going to become irrelevant,” he said. “We're getting into the homestretch of getting this report out the door,” so “I'm getting a little bit cautious about scooping myself,” he told an FCBA continuing education event.
DirecTV has starting working on contingency plans for Q3, when it typically markets its NFL Sunday Ticket, to deal with the possible NFL lockout, the company said Thursday during its Q1 earnings call. It’s too early to say exactly how a lockout would affect DirecTV’s earnings, it said. The labor dispute between NFL players and owners threatens to take away DirecTV’s popular NFL Sunday Ticket as a subscription marketing tool, though there are many scenarios over how the fight will play out, said CEO Mike White. Although about a quarter of the company’s Q3 gross-adds took the NFL Sunday Ticket in 2010, observers shouldn’t say that number of subscribers will automatically be gone if the NFL doesn’t play its season, he said. DirecTV is working on other promotions to help deal with the impact of a lost season, he said.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is a “strict liability statute,” leaving a company responsible for calls dialed by others to market the original company’s goods, said California, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio in comments with the FCC. Those states, the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department brought suit against Dish Network for TCPA violations. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Cincinnati, asked that the FCC, rather than the courts, make the first decision about whether Dish is liable for improper telemarketing calls made by contractors working for it (CD Jan 3 p5). A lower court dismissed the original claims, but the decision was appealed. The appeals court said the FCC has primary jurisdiction because the likely penalties were below the $75,000 minimum for federal courts to have jurisdiction, because the FCC has the expertise to handle it, and because an FCC decision would apply nationwide. The comments are in docket 11-50.
Time Warner isn’t interested in spinning off HBO, Chairman Jeffrey Bewkes said Wednesday during the company’s Q1 earnings teleconference. BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield had laid out a case for why the company should let HBO stand on its own. He said spinning it off could reduce Time Warner’s leverage and give HBO and Warner Brothers Studios the freedom to experiment with new business models, such as bypassing pay-TV operators.
The FCC is moving forward on drafting an order on a Universal Service Fund and Intercarrier Compensation revamp and is working on accelerating the process, said Carol Mattey, deputy chief of the Wireline Bureau, during a D.C. Bar panel Wednesday. Industry panelists urged immediate action on VoIP and a more targeted USF.
A U.K.-based TV technology vendor said it’s working with Granite Broadcasting to test an over-the-air pay TV service in the U.S. this year. Motive TV will use Granite’s KOFY-TV San Francisco to test its TV Anytime Anywhere products in a U.S. market, CEO Leonard Fertig said in an interview. “We'll set up a series of experiments with different segments of the market, to see what can be done in the U.S., using the over-the-air digital frequency Granite already uses,” he said. The test will include VOD and DVR capabilities, pay-per-view, as well as the ability to view programming on multiple Web-enabled devices in the home, he said.
Enhancing privacy legislation and combating online piracy topped the list of legislative goals for lawmakers speaking at a Washington Caucus event sponsored by the Computer and Communications Industry Association. Senators and representatives from both sides of the aisle expressed their hopes and concerns on Wednesday for the expansion of Internet technologies in the coming years.
The thousands of short filings at the FCC blasting AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile will likely get only limited attention at the regulator, based on the long history of merger reviews by the agency. The agency has posted more than 4,200 such comments, overwhelmingly opposed to the deal as of our deadline. Other high-profile deals have attracted similar numbers of filings.
A California do-not-track bill squeaked through its first test after what supporters called the country’s first legislative hearing on the subject. The state Senate Judiciary Committee late Tuesday approved SB-761 by Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, in a 3-2 vote on party lines. “Partisanship applies” when consumer protection and industry interest conflict, Director Beth Givens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse told us Wednesday.
Few media items of major import are likely to get FCC action in the foreseeable future, as the agency continues to focus on other areas, predicted all the agency and industry officials we asked. Votes on proposed AllVid and program carriage rules (CD May 3 p8) appear to be the near-term exceptions to what may prove to be the rule, they predicted. It may be a while before the commission releases a long-anticipated mathematical model showing how TV stations’ coverage areas would be affected by the repacking of TV channels the FCC seeks as part of its hoped-for incentive auction plan. Broadband, spectrum and changing the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation system likely will keep dominating the commission’s attention, said agency and media industry officials.