Broadcasting&Cable

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights—whose over 200 members include the Communications Workers of America, the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League—has written Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to express concerns about his early actions as chairman. Those included rescinding the eligibilities of most of a dozen new Lifeline subsidy applicants and withdrawing the March 2014 guidance on review of joint sales agreements. They said given those decisions, and Pai's dissent from the FCC's attempt to lower prison phone rates, they requested a meeting with the chairman to express their concern in person, adding that they were encouraged that he had said he was interested in hearing from those who disagree with him.

"While we appreciate your announced intentions to address the digital divide and to proceed in a more transparent manner, your recent decisions on Lifeline, Joint Sales Agreements (JSAs), and inmate calling rates are of profound concern to The Leadership Conference and its Media/Telecommunications Task Force, organizations that are dedicated to ensuring affordable broadband, increasing media ownership diversity, and ending predatory prison phone rates," they wrote.

A new study by Common Sense Media found that while young people value news media, they say they are often fooled by fake news, which may account for the fact that only a quarter of them put a lot of trust in the information they get. The study found that young people 10-18 don't feel the news covers things they care about or misrepresent them when they are part of the story.

According to the survey, 70% of the respondents said that the news makes them feel smart and knowledgeable, but 63% also said that what they see is disturbing and causes them to feel afraid, angry or depressed. Only 44% of them said they can tell fake news stories from real ones, and almost a third who have shared a news story online in the past six months (31%) said they had shared a story they later found out was wrong or inaccurate.

Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) has introduced a bill to boost the Barack Obama Administration era Global Connect Initiative, including through additional funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and with the goal of boosting access to broadband in developing countries. The DIGITAL AGE (Driving Innovation and Growth in Internet Technology And Launching Universal Access to the Global Economy) Act would include encouraging global "dig once" policies, spectrum re-use and promoting various internet values like lower costs, a free and open internet and nondiscriminatory access. The bill would direct the State Department, USAID and other relevant agencies—that would include the Federal Communications Commission—to work with other government, financial institutions and private industry to expand broadband development.

The House Communications Subcommittee is postponing its planned March 8 Federal Communications Commission reauthorization hearing at which all the commissioners had been expected to testify. The hearing was scheduled to deal with budget issues, spectrum auctions and FCC process, among other things.

Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has said her priorities are reauthorization of both the National Telecommunications & Information Administration and the FCC. Her first oversight hearing was on NTIA. “I’m looking forward to having new FCC Chairman Pai and Commissioners O’Reilly and Clyburn testify before the subcommittee,” said Blackburn in announcing the hearing in Feb. “It will provide our members the opportunity to learn more about the final stages of the broadcast incentive auction, Chairman Pai’s agenda, and FCC reauthorization.” That hearing was to have been one of two hearings with the FCC commissioners, the other being a Senate Commerce Committee oversight hearing, which is still scheduled for 10 a.m. on March 8.

A broadcaster witness representing the National Association of Broadcasters told a Senate panel that broadcasters still don't think the 39-month timetable for repacking TV stations after the incentive auction and the $1.75 billion relocation fund will be sufficient. That came at a spectrum hearing in the Senate Communications Subcommittee, where numerous senators praised the medium and urged that neither it nor the viewers that depended on broadcasting be adversely affected in the repack. Pat LaPlatney, president or Raycom Media, who has testifying on behalf of NAB, said 22 of his stations alone would have to move, including a couple that would require putting new antennas on existing towers weighing thousands of pounds more than the previous antenna. He said broadcasters would work collaboratively and make the transition as quickly and efficiently as possible but that it was a complicated process.

Ranking Member Sen Brian Schatz (D-HI) said he was concerned that viewers could lose access to local news during the transition and asked if there was not a way to balance the desire for faster broadband with the need to protect access to local news. Sen Schatz got the commitment from Scott Bergmann, VP of regulatory affairs for CTIA, that he would work collaboratively with Congress and broadcasters to insure a smooth transition, but Bergman included the caveat that 39 months was an eternity to wait for the $20 billion worth of broadcast spectrum bought in the auction and said he thought the FCC could hold to that timetable.

Broadband got a lot of attention from the Senate March 1 at an infrastructure hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee, including calls from a transportation official to protect the connected-car spectrum cable operators are convinced can be shared with their Wi-Fi offerings. The almost three-hour hearing dealt with infrastructure broadly, including roads and bridges, but even the roadways issues dovetailed with broadband, including pitches for dig-once policies in which dark fiber or at least conduit are part of road projects.

The broadband provider witness, Shirley Bloomfield, CEO of NTCA-The Rural Broadband Association, was busy during the hearing answering a host of broadband-related questions and offering her input on the best way to make broadband part of any infrastructure buildout. She said the best approach would be to work through the FCC's Universal Service Fund broadband subsidy program by fully funding it and targeting the money to people "who know what they are doing," a point she made repeatedly and which translated to the smaller operators she represents who already have broadband boots on the ground.

President Donald Trump says that he tweets to "get around the dishonest media," and if he felt all or most of the media were honest, he wouldn't do it. Asked if there was a method to his tweeting or whether he was just letting off steam, the President suggested it was neither. "No method, really. It's just—it's not venting either…" he said. "But it does allow me to go around dishonest media. I don't have to go around you folks. I don't have to go around a lot of the media. But I do have to go around some media. And it does allow me to do that because the following is so large, between Twitter and Facebook and all of the different things. I have so many millions of people, it allows me to give a message without necessarily having to go through people where I'm giving them a message and they're putting it down differently from what I mean."

Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) laid down another marker on the issue of broadband privacy, headlining a press conference with privacy groups vowing to fight Republican efforts in Congress and at the Federal Communications Commission to roll back FCC broadband privacy rules. Sen Markey said that Democrats would wage a historic battle to preserve the rules, as well as the Open Internet order to which it is linked. He called Internet service providers gatekeepers and said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was doing their bidding by trying to roll back the rules, starting with data security protections. He said that would allow ISPs to ignore best practices and make sensitive information more vulnerable.

“Without the FCC’s broadband privacy rules, broadband providers will be able to sell dossiers of the personal and professional lives of their subscribers to the highest bidder without their consent.‎ We cannot allow the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans to put corporate interests before consumer protections. I will oppose any effort to roll back these important broadband privacy rules, either by Congress or at the FCC,” Sen Markey said.

The Government Accountability Office has been asked by House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) to study the status of broadband privacy regulatory authority over both Internet service providers and the edge. Rep Pallone points to the bifurcated oversight of Internet service providers (the Federal Communications Commission) and edge providers (Federal Trade Commission) and the "fluctuating state of the law and underlying threats to individuals' privacy and security online." Those include that a court case has brought into question the FTC's ability to regulate edge provider privacy if that edge provider is owned by a common carrier—such as Verizon buying Yahoo—and the fact that the FCC's broadband privacy framework is under review by current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

In a letter to comptroller general Gene L. Dodaro, Rep Pallone asks for GAO to study and report back to the committee, pointing out that "[w]ith the near universal use of the internet, and the rapid expansion of connected devices, corporations now have more information about American consumers than ever before."

The American Cable Association, joined by some independent programmers, told the Federal Communications Commission in reply comments that forced bundling of channels is the biggest obstacle to a thriving and diverse program marketplace. They pointed out that if a pay-TV wants to carry a desirable channel from the nine largest media companies, they would have to carry a minimum of 65 channels to get them. The cable operators argue that it is clear from the record that addressing that problem is a prerequisite to the competition that the FCC is trying to promote. That includes package deals in retransmission agreements, ACA says. "At a minimum, the FCC should eliminate bundling from the list of conduct that is presumptively consistent with good faith conduct in broadcast carriage talks. This practice has real, anti-competitive implications, making it more difficult for channels not affiliated with a top-rated broadcast station to obtain carriage," said ACA president Matt Polka.