Matt Daneman

The FCC almost certainly will revisit the definition of multichannel video programming distributors to include one subset of over-the-top providers in the near future, cable lawyers said in recent interviews, saying they expect new rules in coming months.

As cable and satellite companies snap each other up, the programmers behind the content they carry are on buying sprees of their own -- though on a smaller scale and primarily overseas. And more mergers and acquisitions among U.S. programmers are expected by industry executives, just as experts expect more pay TV M&A following more than $100 billion in planned deals in that sector. A wave of programmer M&A in Europe may spread to America, some predicted in interviews this month.

Not many issues can get Google, Microsoft and NCTA on the same side of the table like Globalstar's proposal for the FCC to create a private Wi-Fi channel in the 2.4 GHz band. Microsoft and the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute organized a panel about Globalstar's terrestrial low-power service proposal, with the panelists each raising questions about or criticizing TLPS. "It's not that we're all convinced it won't work," said Russell Fox of Mintz Levin, counsel to the Wi-Fi Alliance. "There's been no meaningful demonstration from an engineering basis that it will work."

At loggerheads with DirecTV in retransmission consent negotiations, seven related broadcasters want the FCC to begin pushing more reciprocal disclosures of rates and terms. “An unbridgeable chasm has opened between [the broadcasters] and DirecTV on the issue of the competitive market value of the stations’ signals,” said the complaint posted Friday in docket 12-1.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau cares more about penalties and publicity than its core mission of enforcing the rules, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said Thursday in a keynote at the FCBA annual meeting that was pointedly critical of the FCC's approach to enforcement. "It's entered territory that can only could be called misguided," O'Rielly said. "The Commission seems more intent on obtaining newspaper headlines trumpeting accusations and eye-popping fines. Self-aggrandizing fanfare is a major objective. Sizzle over substance." The remarks were later posted online.

Big pay-TV companies buy in bulk, which can mean better pricing on everything from set-top boxes to channels of content. But the current slew of consolidations is less about cheaper programming costs than about getting the scope and resources needed to compete with the booming over-the-top (OTT) universe and about responding to the small but growing wave phenomenon of cord cutting, industry experts said. “In the world of delivering video, Roku is a whole hell of a lot bigger than most midsize cable operators,” cable analyst Steve Effros said. “The world is changing.”

FCC efforts to ensure satellite companies and broadcast stations negotiate in good faith aren't a government requirement that such stations have no leverage in negotiating carriage terms and conditions with satellite carriers, the NAB said of proposed rules for "orphan counties" that sit in one state but are considered part of TV designated market areas primarily based in a different state. The way satellite has operated for years “has proven noncontroversial,” but broadcasters are pushing “a far more intrusive regime,” DirecTV said in reply comments on the FCC review of Section 102 of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization (STELAR) Act of 2014. The FCC is required to approve new DBS market modification rules by September. While changing the market modification rule has broad support, how to go about doing that remains a sticking point (see 1505140054).

Broadband Internet issues -- not cable -- will be the focus of federal regulators reviewing the proposed Charter Communications buy of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, said former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth and Public Knowledge President Gene Kimmelman on the latest segment of C-SPAN's The Communicators. "It's going to get very serious review," Kimmelman said. "What happens to my cable bill? What happens to my broadband prices? Do I get better speeds? Will the Netflix, the Amazon [streaming video] products ... be more available or will this combined entity try to cut off my options? That'll be the big [regulatory] question. The cable company has an incentive to favor its own product." Furchtgott-Roth said much of the FCC and Justice Department analyses likely will involve local individual markets. "These are geographically distinct companies," Furchtgott-Roth said. "I'm not convinced they have greater market power collectively than they do individually. At least initially from the outside, it's very difficult to see that there will be substantial antitrust problems." The episode was to have been televised Saturday on C-SPAN and is scheduled for 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Monday on C-SPAN-2.

The FCC has repeatedly said the way it levies fees on the companies it regulates needs to change, but the new fee structures proposed for FY 2015 had plenty of critics. In the proposed fee structure in the FY 2015 rulemaking notice on docket 15-121 released May 21 (see 1505220050), the FCC said it expects to raise nearly $340 million in regulatory fees for the fiscal year. The agency proposed charging direct broadcast satellite (DBS) operators 12 cents a year per subscriber, while simultaneously cutting what cable and IPTV operators pay from $1.01 per subscriber to 95 cents. That was opposed by DBS operators, who argued in filings that the cost of regulating them is far less than the cost of regulating cable operators, and the FCC lacks the regulatory power to suddenly institute new regulatory fees.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau sees “genuine issues of material fact&rdquo in Game ShowNetwork’s carriage complaint against Cablevision that should be aired before a judge. In an 11-page submission posted Wednesday in docket 12-122 to FCC Chief Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel, the bureau said the summary judgment Cablevision seeks is “inappropriate” because there are factual issues to be weighed. Sippel required the response after the bureau said it wouldn't make a filing on whether he should uphold Cablevision's request, angering Sippel (see 1505200069).