John Eggerton

The Federal Communications Commission is again increasing the pace of bidding in the reverse portion of the incentive spectrum auction, with a target end date of Friday, Jan 13. So far, broadcasters have not had much luck getting wireless providers and other forward auction bidders, which includes Comcast, to collectively pay their clearing price. The reverse portion is now in its fourth round, with wireless companies not coming close to the first three price points.

Currently, there are three rounds of bidding per day, an hour per round. Starting Jan 10, the FCC will increase that to four one-hour rounds per day. At that rate, the FCC's base clock will have reached zero on Jan. 13, round 52. It could take an additional two rounds depending on whether the final bidding status of any VHF station was not settled by then. If so, the FCC will add a couple more rounds on that day to make sure it wraps up Jan. 13.

The Federal Communications Commission has moved the January meeting from Jan 26 to Jan 31. In either event, it will come after FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has left the building and the new Trump Administration has taken over. It is not clear yet which of the Republican commissioners will preside as acting chair, though it is likely senior Republican Ajit Pai. The FCC will now circulate a tentative agenda for the meeting on Jan 10 (three weeks beforehand, per custom).

The move of the meeting was to provide more time for planning following the change in administration and more time with the agenda, apparently, given that one of those Republican commissioners will almost certainly be presiding and in control of that agenda for the meeting.

Motion Picture Association of America chairman Chris Dodd congratulated US Trade Representative (USTR) nominee Robert Lighthizer on his appointment and called for working together to protect intellectual property and expand markets. The Trump Administration does not see eye-to-eye with the studios on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, however. The TPP is a historic Pacific Rim trade agreement with 11 other countries that TV and film producers had been pushing for as a way to expand trade and access to Asia-Pacific markets.

While MPAA hailed the agreement Trump has called it a bad deal that he wants out of and pledged that his negotiators will strike better ones. The USTR is the lead negotiator on such trade deals. “The MPAA congratulates Robert Lighthizer on his appointment by President-elect Donald Trump for USTR," said Dodd in a statement. "The American film and television industry is a key driver of the U.S. economy, and effective trade policies are crucial to its continued success. Our sector employs nearly two million American workers, while generating $16.3 billion in exports and registering a positive trade balance with nearly every country around the world."

The Federal Communications Commission is allowing foreign investors to own up to a 49% equity stake in TV and radio station owner Univision, including up to a 40% stake by Mexico's Televisa. That came in a declaratory ruling this week after a petition by Univision and Televisa went unopposed. The FCC said it granted the petition "because this increased level of foreign investment in Univision will facilitate investment from new sources of capital in Univision that would not otherwise be available and encourage reciprocity by foreign governments."

Televisa supplies over a third of Univision's programming and bought an equity stake in Univision in 2010 (10% equity, 14.4% voting interest). Univision and Televisa had sought the declaratory ruling in advance of an initial public offering that could increase the foreign investment beyond the current 25%. "We find that the public interest would not be served by refusing to grant Univision’s petition for a declaratory ruling to permit foreign ownership of Univision Holdings...above the statutory cap of 25% and up to 49%."

Advertising and marketing associations joined Internet service providers in calling on the Federal Communications Commission to back off its broadband privacy proposal. The Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies, American Advertising Federation, Data & Marketing Association, Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Network Advertising Initiative joined to file a petition for reconsideration at the FCC on Jan 3, the deadline for challenging the Oct. 27 order. Ad agencies had argued against the rules, saying the FCC should have aligned its regulation with the Federal Trade Commission's approach to edge provider privacy, which was more flexible and did not have an opt-in mandate for web browsing info.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) has announced the Republican membership of the committee in the 115th Congress. They are, in order of seniority: Sens Thune, Roger Wicker (R-MI), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Dean Heller (R-NV), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Todd Young (R-IN). New to the committee are Sens Young, Inhofe, Lee and Capito. Exiting are Sens Marco Rubio (R-FL), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Steve Daines (R-MT). Sen Rubio, who was instrumental in pushing for bills freeing up more unlicensed spectrum, is moving to the appropriations committee. Subcommittee members have not yet been named.

Veteran cable critics Sens Rob Portman (R-OH) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) have started out the new Congress by pressing Charter and Comcast on fees and promotions. That came in joint letters to Charter president Thomas Rutledge and Comcast president Brian Roberts dated Dec 23. Sens Portman and McCaskill head up the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which held a hearing on cable fees and customer service last year in conjunction with a report it issued at the same time. Both the report and the hearing were rough on pay-TV providers, who pledged to do better.

In a joint release Jan 3, Sens McCaskill and Portman said they were pressing Charter and Comcast over what they characterized as "the misleading placement of fees on customers’ bills, and inadequate advertising disclosure for service promotions." They want more information on both from the companies. Citing the hearing in the last Congress, they said in letters to the two companies, as they signaled in the hearing, they thought that using separate line items like the "broadcast TV surcharge" for retrans fees or "Regional Sports Network Fees" charge for the cost of that programming "obscured" the real cost of programming when it was grouped with regulatory fee line items and charges.

USTelecom has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider its broadband privacy framework order. The FCC Democrats voted Oct 27 to require Internet service providers to get their subscribers' permission (notice and choice) before sharing web browsing and app use histories with third parties for marketing and other purposes.

As USTelecom and cable operators argued before the vote, they want the FCC to "harmonize" its approach with that of the FTC. At the moment, it argues, there are at least a couple of discordant notes in the FCC's approach, which it also argues is arbitrary and capricious. First, it says, was the lack of a cost/benefit analysis of the cost of "foreclosing productive uses of information." For example, it says, the cost of requiring an opt-in regime for marketing of all web browsing info, in contrast to the FTC approach to the edge providers privacy it oversees, which allows more "flexibility" for marketing of nonsensitive information—i.e. not opt-in requirement. Second, USTelecom argues, the FCC treats ISPs as "nearly omniscient," with greater visibility into consumer data than others, a premise USTelecom calls false.

In a move that tacks on technologies that will drive deeper search and discovery capabilities into its X1 platform, Comcast has acquired Watchwith, a company that has built a video metadata platform that can decipher what’s happening inside a movie, TV show or sporting event. Financial terms of the deal, which closed last month, were not disclosed. Watchwith’s deep metadata platform can provide information about what’s occurring within the video, such as which actors are appearing on screen, the location of a given scene, or the start of a memorable scene within a movie or TV show. It does that through the blending of two tools—an editorial tool that enables producers to manually tag specific video segments and an automated media analysis/tagging tool that relies on algorithms and machine learning techniques.

It was a record year for political ad spending, according to ad trackers at Borrell Associates, up 4.6% from the 2012 presidential election to $9.8 billion, but money is shifting toward more targeted ads, with cable in on the new bounty. Broadcast TV remained the big dog at $4.4 billion, more than three times any other outlet. Borrell pointed out that represented a 44.7% share, down from 57.9% in 2012, a $1 billion decline when many were predicting a $1 billion increase. Part of that was President-elect Donald Trump's heavy reliance on earned media and digital media, but it was also because of the general shift to more targeted media. Cable, digital and direct mail gained a total $1.7 billion over 2012. Cable jumped from $891.78 million in 2012 (9.5% of the total pie) to $1,355.28 billion (13.8%), Borrell pointed out. Online and digital exploded from $159.21 million in 2012 to 1,415.38 billion in 2016.