Three petitions to deny AT&T’s plan to buy DirecTV cite implications for public, educational and government (PEG) channels, competition and the public interest. The petitions by public interest groups and groups representing the PEG community were filed in docket 14-90. AT&T again said the new company would create a stronger competitor to the cable bundle. Comments in the proceeding were due Tuesday.
Three petitions to deny AT&T’s plan to buy DirecTV cite implications for public, educational and government (PEG) channels, competition and the public interest. The petitions by public interest groups and groups representing the PEG community were filed in docket 14-90. AT&T again said the new company would create a stronger competitor to the cable bundle. Comments in the proceeding were due Tuesday.
Three petitions to deny AT&T’s plan to buy DirecTV cite implications for public, educational and government (PEG) channels, competition and the public interest. The petitions by public interest groups and groups representing the PEG community were filed in docket 14-90. AT&T again said the new company would create a stronger competitor to the cable bundle. Comments in the proceeding were due Tuesday.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai urged the commission to repeal the sports blackout rule at its Sept. 30 meeting. The government shouldn’t intervene in the marketplace “to help sports leagues enforce their blackout policies,” he said in an op-ed on Gannett-owned Cincinnati.com (http://cin.ci/1uMG6q0). He rejected arguments from rule advocates that leagues might televise their games only on cable or satellite TV, saying the leagues’ contracts with over-the-air broadcasters are enduring. By moving games to pay-TV, “the NFL would be cutting off its nose to spite its face,” he said. While leagues would remain free to negotiate deals with broadcasters and pay distributors to enforce the blackout policy without the rule, “taking the government’s thumb off team owners’ side of the scale would create momentum for a more accessible sports experience,” he said. There’s broad support for lifting the sports blackout rule, “and the FCC appears ready to accommodate that wish,” said public interest attorney Andrew Jay Schwartzman. In proposing to repeal the rule, the FCC took the view that the goal of Congress in requiring the open video systems and direct broadcast satellite blackout rules was to achieve parity with cable, he said in a Benton Foundation blog post (http://bit.ly/1uBhmmg). If the commission were to repeal the cable rule, “it would fulfill the congressional goal of parity by repealing the other two rules as well,” he said.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler isn’t seen as having made a decision on Comcast’s proposed buy of Time Warner Cable, said analysts, cable industry and public interest officials in interviews this week. Ex-FCC Chief of Staff Blair Levin doesn’t believe a decision on the merger has yet been made, he said in a conference call. The Department of Justice will decide if the deal should be approved, he said. Wheeler “may know where he’s leaning” but it’s “inconceivable” he would decide the fate of the deal before the Sept. 23 due date for Comcast and TWC’s opposition filings, said Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman. The FCC is also awaiting responses from Comcast, Charter Communications and TWC to the Media Bureau’s detailed information requests related to the deal and to Charter’s buying divested systems (CD Aug 26 p1), which were due Thursday, Schwartzman said. “Even if he made a decision, he doesn’t necessarily have the three votes” needed for a majority vote on the FCC, Schwartzman said.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler isn’t seen as having made a decision on Comcast’s proposed buy of Time Warner Cable, said analysts, cable industry and public interest officials in interviews this week. Ex-FCC Chief of Staff Blair Levin doesn’t believe a decision on the merger has yet been made, he said in a conference call. The Department of Justice will decide if the deal should be approved, he said. Wheeler “may know where he’s leaning” but it’s “inconceivable” he would decide the fate of the deal before the Sept. 23 due date for Comcast and TWC’s opposition filings, said Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman. The FCC is also awaiting responses from Comcast, Charter Communications and TWC to the Media Bureau’s detailed information requests related to the deal and to Charter’s buying divested systems (WID Aug 26 p5), which were due Thursday, Schwartzman said. “Even if he made a decision, he doesn’t necessarily have the three votes” needed for a majority vote on the FCC, Schwartzman said.
NAB’s legal challenge of an FCC Media Bureau public notice announcing processing guidelines for deals involving TV broadcaster sharing arrangements was dismissed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. NAB’s petition for review was dismissed because the PN was issued on delegated authority, and should have been challenged at the commission-level before being brought to the court, said a D.C. Circuit order. To obtain judicial review of an order issued by FCC staff pursuant to delegated authority, the association was required to fulfill the “condition precedent” of filing an application for review by the FCC of the bureau’s decision, and to wait until the FCC ruled on the application, the order said. The difficulty of obtaining judicial review of the processing guidelines was likely why they were issued under delegated authority, industry attorneys had told us (CD March 14 p9). Since the FCC has to vote to hear applications for review of bureau-level decisions, they can be indefinitely stalled, the attorneys said. NAB had argued that several letters filed with the FCC asking it to review the processing guidelines were a sufficient stand-in for an application for review (CD June 5 p16) but the court disagreed. Because of the dismissal, a motion from Prometheus Radio Project and other groups to consolidate the case with the other sharing arrangement proceedings was declared moot in the same order. Associated court challenges by the NAB to the FCC’s rules for attributing joint sales agreements and by Prometheus to the closing of the 2010 quadrennial review remain active, said Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman, who represents Prometheus.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau under Chairman Tom Wheeler and acting Chief Travis LeBlanc has shown a willingness to go after companies that violate agency rules with more aggressiveness than in the past, said agency and industry officials in recent interviews. They said LeBlanc has taken a particularly hard line, refusing to consider reductions in penalties if a company won’t acknowledge wrongdoing and declining to allow language in consent decrees that a company was making a “voluntary” contribution to the government as part of the agreement. The latter change is significant since “voluntary” contributions can often be deducted as business expenses on tax returns, but the Internal Revenue Code explicitly forbids deduction of penalties.
Common Cause said the FCC should review the Media Bureau’s decision to dismiss complaints against stations owned by Allbritton and Sander Media for allegedly identifying front groups incorrectly as the “true sponsors” of political advertisements. The commission is “shirking its responsibility to enforce the longstanding federal law requiring broadcasters to disclose the ’true identity’ of the sponsors of political advertising,” Common Cause said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1unNRU5). It’s one thing that the “congressional gridlock precludes passage of laws to right the many wrongs our special interest political culture faces,” former FCC commissioner and Common Cause special adviser Michael Copps said in the release. It’s infinitely worse “to ignore laws already on the books that enable us to tackle these problems,” he said. This year, Common Cause, the Campaign Legal Center and the Sunlight Foundation filed the complaints against Allbritton-owned ABC affiliate WJLA-TV Washington, D.C., (http://bit.ly/1oIOaDq) and Sander’s KGW-TV Portland, Oregon (http://bit.ly/1mlDLw8). The stations allegedly attributed political ads to political action committees (PACs) instead of identifying the true sponsors, the groups said (http://bit.ly/Z8JiCv). The complaints don’t provide a sufficient showing “that the stations had credible evidence casting into doubt that the identified sponsors of the advertisement were the true sponsors,” the bureau said in a letter to Andrew Schwartzman, the attorney for the groups (http://bit.ly/1waY6eM). The complainants’ theory is understandable, but “whether it is legally correct is another story,” a broadcast attorney said. While Section 317 of the Communications Act refers to “persons,” that term isn’t limited to individuals, but must also include legal entities, Fletcher Heald attorney Harry Cole said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1Abbtfm). As long as the PACs were properly identified, that arguably satisfied Section 317, he said. In tossing the complaints, the bureau didn’t address other concerns, like who is a “true sponsor” if it isn’t the entity signing the check, he said. It also isn’t clear in what cases the donors should be identified as the true sponsors “and when the PAC itself is properly identified as the sponsor,” Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1qAk2OC). The decision will likely be used as a tool to make broadcasters think twice about taking third-party political advertising money, he said.
The FCC lacks Communications Act Section 706 authority to pre-empt state laws that pose obstacles to municipal broadband projects, said groups including the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). USTelecom flipped the debate, arguing that the agency should use the pre-emption authority it does have to remove local governments’ barriers to private investment.