The contract dispute between Dish Network and LIN TV continued Monday for a third day. The DBS company and broadcaster couldn’t agree to a new retransmission consent deal after the previous one for 27 stations in 17 markets expired Friday night. Some had anticipated LIN’s stations would be pulled from the DBS provider after they blamed each other for contractual differences (CD March 7 p3). The FCC is continuing to keep tabs on the dispute, and continues to signal to the parties it hopes there will be a settlement, agency and industry officials said. “We continue to monitor this closely,” an FCC spokesman said Monday, declining further comment.
The FCC has been seeking to avert the cutoff of 27 TV stations owned by LIN in 17 markets to subscribers of Dish Network, agency and industry officials said Friday. At 11:59 p.m. Mountain time that day, the stations which include affiliates of the four major broadcast networks, were scheduled to go dark on the DBS provider unless the two sides agree to a retransmission consent contract extension. Career agency officials have been signaling to both sides that they'd like them to work out a deal, whether it’s a new, long-term contract or a brief extension, FCC and industry officials said.
Interoperability is not a “naturally occurring state” and will require a big push from the FCC, Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett said Friday at the start of a bureau forum on technical specifications for a national public safety broadband network. Other speakers at the day-long event agreed that the decisions made in coming months will determine whether the network succeeds or fails.
The Rural Utilities Service is accepting applications for its $25 million Community Connect grants to offer broadband access in unserved rural communities, RUS Administrator Jonathan Adelstein said during a conference call Friday. Emphasis will be placed on bandwidth when the applications are scored for the “community-oriented connectivity benefits derived from the proposed services,” said the Notice of Solicitation of Applications (NOSA), published in the Federal Register.
Following its acquisition of Genesis Systems last year, Global Crossing is promoting its fiber network for more video transport services, executives said. The company hopes to work with pay-TV programmers and distributors for fiber-based distribution of video from pay-TV networks to cable operators and from field producers to main studios. Within a few years some pay-TV networks may even abandon satellite distribution to reach pay-TV headends, said Mike Antonovich, managing director of Genesis Solutions. As more pay-TV distributors build out their fiber facilities for ingesting content, and because of years of consolidation among cable operators, some pay-TV networks may decide it’s not worth the cost of satellite distribution to reach smaller cable operators who aren’t connected to fiber, he said.
Efforts by a clothing distributor to win its toll-free number back may have trouble overcoming language in a pre-hearing agreement that prevents the company from appealing an FCC decision in the case. Dallas-based Staton Holdings lost the number in 2001 after MCI accidentally disconnected it and handed it to Call Interactive. Staton said that it’s since discovered “new” evidence that MCI “routinely” handed numbers to different companies without checking and Staton is entitled to have the number restored.
Even historically nonpartisan telecom issues have become political in an increasingly divided Congress, and it’s become increasingly difficult to pass substantive legislation, former Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said in an interview Thursday with Communications Daily. The Commerce Committee alum urged the FCC to complete what Congress couldn’t: an overhaul of the Universal Service Fund. Dorgan blamed radio talk show hosts for politicizing the net neutrality debate, but he predicted demise for Republicans’ effort to overturn the FCC’s December order using the Congressional Review Act.
A key and closely watched question was added by FCC members during the final stages of drafting a notice on retransmission consent, and it was unanimously approved at Thursday’s commission meeting. The rulemaking notice now asks whether the commission can require binding arbitration or carriage when either TV stations or subscription-video providers are found by the regulator to have not negotiated in good faith for a retrans contract, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake told us at a media briefing. Chairman Julius Genachowski and the other commissioners styled the notice as a way to see if the FCC can take more measures within the authority it already has under the 1992 Cable Act when talks over carriage deals for TV stations on cable, satellite and telco-TV systems break down.
The FCC unanimously adopted a rulemaking notice Thursday that begins the process of overhauling the Lifeline/Link-Up programs. Chairman Julius Genachowski said the two programs had grown in recent years but were too full of waste, fraud and abuse that threatened to undermine the Universal Service Fund reforms he’s championing. “Increases in the contribution burden are particularly concerning for the tens of millions of Americans at or near the poverty line who pay for phone service but don’t participate in Lifeline,” the chairman said. Thursday’s notice includes proposals that would cap the fund, allow the poor to buy bundled services with their monthly subsidies and create a separate “National Accountability Database,” administered by separate officials, to make sure customers receiving the monthly stipends are actually qualified to receive them.
Big ISPs are reluctant to help House Republicans scrambling to find industry support for overturning FCC net neutrality rules with legislation, said telecom industry officials. The House Communications Subcommittee on Thursday said it will have a legislative hearing Wednesday next week, but it remains unclear who will agree to testify. Republicans attempted to rally industry lobbyists in a closed-door meeting Wednesday (CD March 3 p1).