Broadcasting&Cable

Following Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler's call for a "new paradigm" in which private industry takes the lead on flexible, measurable and accountable cybersecurity standards, Comcast signaled it agreed, was willing to work with the commission, but was already hard at work protecting its network and its users.

Myrna Soto, senior VP and chief information and infrastructure security officer, for Comcast Cable, said that it already works daily to "assess, deter, and neutralize cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threats." Comcast agrees with ChairmanWheeler that the success of its business depends on a safe and secure environment.

Former National Security Agency director General Keith Alexander said that Congress needs to pass cybersecurity legislation that will make it easier for government and the communications industry to work together to combat that threat.

He said that the government needed the ability to share threat info with industry, and industry with government.

"We need cybersecurity legislation. We need to push that through." He said he was not talking about sharing personally identifiable information, but instead "malicious activity." He also said it was needed to provide protection for industry players who act on threat information supplied by the government. "If the government tells industry: 'Please block this traffic,' and [the government] makes a mistake, then industry should have some form of liability protection."

He said those are the keys to cyber legislation.

Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) outlined an ambitious agenda for spectrum reform, which includes plans to introduce three bills: The Wireless Innovation Act to free up government spectrum; a bill directing the Federal Communications Commission to conduct tests in the upper 5 GHz band and modify the rules to allow Wi-Fi so long as it doesn’t create harmful interference to vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications; and a bill to promote wireless infrastructure.

Sen Rubio, a member of the Senate Communications Subcommittee, said that there were a lot of serious policy questions about advancements in high-speed wireless, but what was not debatable was that more spectrum was needed. He said the government should not wait until the current FCC spectrum auctions are over before taking steps to free up more.

His Wireless Innovation Act:

• Reallocates 200 MHz of government spectrum for commercial use;
• Establishes an auction pipeline with staggered auctions starting in 2018;
• Incentivizes federal agencies to reallocate spectrum by allowing portions of the proceeds to be used or conducting research and development, as well as cost and technical assessments on reallocating future spectrum bands;
• Requires an analysis of requests for new or modified frequency assignments to determine whether a commercial service could be used, whether federal users can share; and
• Requires [the National Telecommunications & Information Administration] to develop a framework to determine the commercial value of Federal spectrum.

Communications Subcommittee chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) made it clear what he thought of the Federal Communications Commission's recent activity, and inactivity, on media ownership rules.

"Pretending laws designed for an era before smartphones and the Internet will get the job done is an effective death sentence for many local media outlets," he said. That came in opening statements at a hearing on media ownership rules, part of the parent House Commerce Committee's ongoing review of communications regulations, as well as a response to some current events like the joint sales agreement (JSA) ruling and the decision to role the 2010 and 2014 quadrennial reviews into one targeted for mid-year 2016.

Rep Walden said everyone was committed to the core values promoting localism, diversity and competition, but his view was that was best served by not hampering broadcasters ability to compete.

The Federal Communications Commission got hammered by Democrats over diversity at the June 11 House Communications Subcommittee hearing on media ownership.

While most of the raised eyebrows over FCC action or inaction came from Republican members, the lack of diversity in broadcast ownership -- only four African American-owned TV stations, for example -- drew outright jeers from Rep Bobby Rush (D-IL).

Rep Rush said one of the reasons he had joined the Communications Subcommittee was to help increase media ownership diversity. He said he had been disappointed for a number of years, but that the current state of diversity was the worst it has been in his 21 years in Congress. He said he did not see a "vigorous commitment" from the FCC on diversity and that he was disappointed in the continual excuse-making.

Rep Rush questioned why FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler had pulled the plug on the critical needs study which was to help determine how ownership affected diversity of voices.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has asked the Federal Communications Commission not to eliminate its Sports Blackout Rule.

That rule backstops sports league broadcast blackout policies by preventing cable or satellite operators from carrying the blacked-out games to those local markets. The FCC has proposed scrapping the rule.

In a letter to FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, the conference said the rule "serve[s] the interests of states as well as the public by [helping to promote] economic activity, civic pride and the broadcast of professional football on free, over-the-air television."

The FCC rule helps promote attendance, the conference points out, and the stadiums, whose economic activity is boosted by getting fans in the seats, are often built partly with taxpayer dollars, they point out. "Thus, states share a stake in the continued use, success and vitality of sports facilities."

[Commentary] Broadcasters recently launched a front group with the apparent purpose of attacking pay-TV providers and making enough noise to distract from reforming our broken retransmission consent system that victimizes the public.

They named their new group TVFreedom, perhaps to misdirect from the fact that for decades they’ve actually opposed freedom of choice for TV viewers.

If the basic tier mandate is so critical to public safety, where is the evidence that the lack of such a mandate for the satellite companies has led to any harms?

Broadcasters are currently squatting on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of spectrum that they’re not using other than to provide 8% of the American public with “local” TV -- if and when those users can receive a decent broadcast signal. And local television isn’t even local anymore. Only one out of two TV stations actually shows local news. Further, 50% of the money collected in retransmission consent fees goes back to New York City to pay for expensive network programming, which is the exact opposite of what retransmission was supposed to do.

The broadcasters cannot -- and should not be allowed by the media -- to get away with claiming that retransmission consent amounts to the free market at the same time they fight to protect the government requirement that cable and telecom providers carry certain broadcast TV channels. Nor should they be able to claim retransmission consent is the free market when they tie carriage of the expensive cable channels they own to the local TV stations.

The basic tier is a relic of a bygone era when broadcasters were the only game in town. New technologies have disrupted this monopoly and now broadcasters are fighting to save a dying business model. Protecting an archaic monopoly is never good public policy.

[Frederick, PhD, is spokesman for the American Television Alliance]

The newspaper unions and ownership are definitely of different minds on lifting the ban on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership. That is according to testimony for a June 11 House Communications Subcommittee hearing on the Federal Communications Commission's media ownership rules.

While Newspaper Association of America (NAA) senior VP Paul Boyle tells the subcommittee that the ban is outdated and hurts investment in local journalism, Bernard Lunzer, president of the NewsGuild-CWA, asks Congress to "maintain the status quo on Cross Ownership between print and broadcast" and says that claims that combinations will allow for more coverage is "just not the case."

House Commerce Committee Democratic leaders have asked their Republican counterparts, who control the agenda, to hold hearings on the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV mergers, and a Sprint/T-Mobile deal if that ever materializes.

That request came in a letter from Reps Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA), the ranking members of the full committee and Communications Subcommittee, respectively, and Rep Doris Matsui (D-CA), to full committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR).

The Federal Communications Commission has told the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit that it must dismiss the National Association of Broadcasters petition for review of the FCC's "staff-level" public on how the Media Bureau will vet TV station deals involving sharing arrangements.

NAB says the guidance functions as a "categorical presumption" against such deals -- shared services agreements, joint sales agreements, and others -- which "adversely affects" NAB and its members by rendering such previously allowed deals invalid.

The FCC says the guidance is to give broadcasters notice that TV station sales involving sharing agreements with associated financial arrangements like an option to purchase a station or guaranteed financing would get heightened and likely time-consuming reviews in case they wanted to rethink those given that guidance. Commission lawyers argue that the Media Bureau guidance issued in the March 12 public notice is not a final order -- NAB argues it is a final agency action -- and since the court's jurisdiction over FCC decisions extend "only to final orders," the court does not have jurisdiction to review it.

“Congress did not intend that the court review a staff decision that has not been adopted by the Commission itself," the FCC said, quoting the DC court itself from a previous opinion. They also point out the appeals court has previously found that petitions for review filed after a bureau decision but before a final commission resolution are "incurably premature."