Recent meetings between programmers and eighth-floor officials suggest the FCC is proposing a new, apps-based set-top plan, intended to be more acceptable to content companies than previous approaches, according to several recent ex parte filings and pay-TV industry officials. In meetings documented in docket 16-42 with 21st Century Fox and Disney and a similar meeting with CBS, FCC officials including Chief Technology Officer Scott Jordan and aides to Chairman Tom Wheeler told content companies they were considering a “revised” set-top plan that would allow all programmer content to remain in pay-TV apps and therefore within the bounds of existing contracts between carriers and programmers, the ex parte filings said. Neither content company officials nor the FCC would comment Thursday.
Other satellite-industry companies see problems with OneWeb's proposed satellite constellation, according to comments filed in the proceeding by Monday's deadline. Companies such as SpaceX, ViaSat and SES expressed concern about spectrum efficiency, how OneWeb's proposal would interact with other satellites, what the effect of planned new rules for non-geosynchronous orbit constellations would be, and about waivers OneWeb has requested. “OneWeb’s system would not only make inefficient use of the spectrum it seeks to use, but may also prevent other NGSO/FSS [fixed satellite service] systems from efficiently sharing the available spectrum,” SpaceX said.
Broadcasters in the incentive auction have no ability to influence prices they get for their spectrum in the reverse auction, an Incentive Auction Task Force spokesman said in an interview Friday. Since the reverse auction closed at a stratospheric $86 billion, some auction watchers have been suggesting that price was partially caused by broadcasters holding out for big numbers. That's not the case, according to the FCC, explanatory blogs about auction mechanics and a tweet from broadcast-side auction consultant Preston Padden using the term “uninformed blather” to describe quotes in a recent article (see 1607200072).
The FCC voted 3-2 along party lines to approve a media ownership order Wednesday that, as expected (see 1608080051), largely resembles its 2014 NPRM, industry and agency officials told us. An spokesman confirmed the item had been voted, but details of the voting breakdown and the text of the order weren't released. FCC and industry officials told us the item was approved by all three Democratic commissioners and opposed by both Republicans, and keeps most ownership rules in place and resurrects joint sales agreement (JSA) ownership attribution rules that were vacated by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
A now abandoned eighth-floor proposal to relax newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rules limiting common holdings of daily newspapers and radio or TV stations in the same market was connected with discussions about whether such NBCO relief would come with long-sought diversity studies, informed sources including industry officials said. The idea to eliminate the NBCO isn't being pursued because Commissioner Mignon Clyburn wanted the FCC to conduct such studies if it pursued cross-ownership deregulation, some said. Chairman Tom Wheeler had been seeking ways to get a unanimous vote on the draft media ownership order, officials told us. Now, some say, a 3-2 vote to approve the order is the most likely outcome.
Support on the eighth floor for a compromise media ownership order that would have eliminated newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership (NBCO) rules has collapsed, and a draft order that keeps the provision in place is seen as nearly certain to be approved 3-2, FCC officials told us Monday. The alternative draft order to eliminate NBCO was seen as having support from Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel (see 1607290063). Their support was conditioned on the item also being backed by Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, current and former FCC officials told us.
Pay-TV officials don't expect the FCC eventual final set-top box order to be much influenced by the letter from the Copyright Office released last week (see 1608040062). They expect the FCC to offer some compromise, drawing from multiple proposals, but it likely will include aspects of the content “unbundling” that were criticized in the CO letter, the pay-TV officials said. Proponents of the FCC original plan also expect a compromise solution, they told us Friday. Members of the Consumer Video Choice Coalition said the eventual order must allow for third-party boxes to have their own channel guides for navigating multichannel video programming distributors content, which is one of the concepts the CO said violates copyright. In a news conference Thursday, FCC Chairman Wheeler repeatedly said the eventual FCC plan would comply with copyright law.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler phoned CEOs of content companies to try to win their support for the set-top rulemaking days before the Copyright Office issued a letter slamming the FCC plan, content company officials told us. CO opinion undermines Wheeler's efforts and backs up criticisms of the FCC plan from content companies and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel (see 1607120078), content company officials told us. Advocates of the FCC plan urged the commission to reject CO's position, but Commissioner Ajit Pai said in a statement Thursday that the critique should be “the final nail in the coffin” for the FCC proposal. Wheeler said Thursday in a news conference after commissioners' meeting that the FCC plan wouldn't violate copyright law, and many of the suggestions in the pay-TV backed apps proposal would be “adopted" in the final order.
The FCC Media Bureau received more than 243 applications July 29 from AM stations looking to relocate FM translators within a 250-mile radius, a Media Bureau spokeswoman told us. That's down from the 412 applications received on the first day of the window for smaller Class C and D stations in January, though the applications for Class A and B stations represent bigger stations with larger coverage areas and heftier budgets, said Patrick Communications Media Broker Gregory Guy. “It's got less quantity and more quality, in the sense these are bigger stations.” The windows come amid FCC efforts to revitalize AM.
Industry discussions around proposed FCC rules for set-top boxes are focused on apps-based proposals, though pay-TV carriers and proponents of the NPRM disagree what that proposal should be. “It is possible for there to be an app-oriented approach that would achieve the Commission’s goals,” said Public Knowledge in an ex parte filing in docket 16-42 Friday. “The current iteration of the MVPD app proposal is not it.” Meanwhile, multichannel video programming distributor officials have told us the apps-based proposals from PK and Incompas would create the same problems for content security as the NPRM.