Matt Daneman

A growing cable industry sense of its concerns being ignored by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has raised the likelihood that whatever rules come out of the agency regarding set-top boxes, broadband privacy and business data services almost surely will be met by legal appeals, cable executives and experts tell us. "I think everybody takes for granted that everything is going to end up in court," MCTV President/American Cable Association Chairman Robert Gessner said in an interview Friday.

BOSTON -- New advertising routes are both a challenge and opportunity for the cable industry, a number of pay-TV industry chief technology officers said on an INTX 2016 panel Wednesday. "The idea we can just interrupt your show [with a commercial message] is going by the wayside," Comcast CTO Tony Werner said. Discovery CTO John Honeycutt said he's increasingly bearish on the prospects of interactive and advanced advertising and data monetization: "I am struggling with the path. If anyone can tell me another way to make money in this business other than subscriptions and [traditional] advertising, I am all ears."

BOSTON -- Cable industry criticisms of the FCC on the set-top box, special access and broadband privacy proceedings are lobbying as usual, Chairman Tom Wheeler told a closing-day crowd Wednesday at INTX 2016. Pointing to comments NCTA President Michael Powell made Monday about the cable industry being under a "relentless regulatory assault" (see 1605160033), Wheeler said, "The way in which lobbying campaigns tend to work these days, is first you set up a scenario of 'there's too much being done, we are being persecuted,' then you talk about what I call 'imaginary horribles.'"

A 60-day clock has started for comment on the DOJ's proposed final judgment on Charter Communications' buys of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks with conditions on its treatment of online video distributors, it said in a notice published Tuesday in the Federal Register. That 60-day period isn't expected to delay the close of the deals, which Charter last week said would happen on Wednesday. The DOJ proposed barring New Charter from any contractual alternative distribution method limits on online video distributors (see 1604250039).

BOSTON -- A panel Tuesday of the FCC's four regular commissioners at INTX 2016 morphed into a referendum largely along party lines on the agency's set-top box rulemaking and broadband privacy rulemaking. Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael O'Rielly repeatedly debated the FCC's overall regulatory role. Section 222 in Title II of the Communications Act deals with telephone records, not broadband data services, so it can't be cited as a basis for broadband privacy regulation, O'Rielly said: "The words on the page [of the law] actually have to mean something." But Clyburn said "We are not in the 1800s" and it's up to regulatory bodies to interpret how older laws apply to modern technology. It's the job of the legislative branch to fix those laws, O'Rielly responded. The panel was taped as an episode of C-SPAN's The Communicators.

BOSTON -- Any number of next steps, from a report or rulemaking to "some other option," are possible after the FCC's independent and diverse programming notice of inquiry and related workshops, said David Grossman, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn's chief of staff, on an INTX 2016 panel Tuesday. Jessica Almond, aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler, said Wheeler similarly is interested in some next step in the programming NOI, but gave no details on what. Wheeler is scheduled to talk Wednesday.

NCTA Chairman Michael Powell launched the group's INTX 2016 show and exhibition with a lengthy broadside Monday against the FCC and its regulatory approach. "Most troublesome is an emerging government view that the communications market is bifurcated and should be regulated differently," Powell said. "Internet companies are nurtured and allowed to roam free, but network providers are disparagingly labeled 'gatekeepers' that should be shackled."

BOSTON -- Regardless of how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rules on the challenge to the FCC order on net neutrality, that ruling could spur Congress to work on a legislative solution, congressional staffers said Monday at INTX 2016. "This issue is not going to be settled" until Congress acts, Senate Commerce Committee GOP telecom policy director David Quinalty said during a panel Monday on congressional communications policy.

The FCC's set-top box, privacy and business data services proceedings top Chairman Tom Wheeler's to-do list of priorities, General Counsel Jonathan Sallet said at the FCBA annual seminar Friday. "Clearly the chairman's goal is to bring these -- and many other items -- home before the end of the year," Sallet said during a panel with him and former FCC general counsels.

Bemoaning a lack of openness and transparency and repeating recent criticisms about merger oversight, the FCC's two Republican commissioners -- Mike O'Rielly and Ajit Pai -- presented a litany of complaints about the agency on a panel at the FCBA annual seminar Friday. "I look forward to the next" chairman, O'Rielly said.