As Chairman Kevin Martin promised last week, the FCC launched today a proceeding to develop new rules on video franchising. To the delight of phone companies, which have had to contend with local franchising authorities in gaining the rights to deliver multichannel video services, the FCC concluded that a provision in the 1984 Cable Act that bars cities from granting exclusive franchises gives it the authority to ensure that local governments don’t unreasonably refuse to grant competitive “cable” franchises.
Moreover, in a statement which will become clearer once the FCC releases the actual text of its notice of proposed rulemaking, the Commission also said it will look at a “broader range of behaviors” by cities that make it difficult for cable competitors to offer service. Presumably this refers to the frequent demands by franchising authorities for goodies, such as TV studios, new libraries, donations to city causes, etc., before issuing cable contracts.
While Martin and the three current FCC Commissioners support the idea of opening up the local market to competition, Democrat Jonathan Adelstein in a separate statement raised a red flag over the FCC’s legal justification for potentially usurping local authority over cable franchising.
The Commission needs to tread with caution and care before it asserts any authority to interpose itself with LFAs to the extent Congress specifically delegated power to local officials. We are going out on limb already by creating a “de facto” refusal theory and tentatively concluding that the Commission has the ability to determine whether an LFA [local franchising authority] is “unreasonably refus[ing] to award a competitive franchise.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:24 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Google kicked off its controversial Google Print initiative today with the launch of a searchable collection of public domain — i.e. not under U.S. copyright — books and reports. Every page of these books, from the collections of partner libraries at the University of Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, the New York Public Library, and Oxford, is available online.
Google’s official blog notes also that “small snippets” of copyrighted books are online, an obvious nod to the contentious debate and litigation among publishers over Google’s Print project. It’s a fun collection, albeit a “classic” collection given the age of the materials. A quick search seems to turn up the entired published works of Charles Dickens, for example, or the entire Warren Report on the investigation into the assasination of President Kennedy.
Even the “snippets” are useful because they pull up recent, copyrighted works related to the subject being searched, no doubt spurring the desire to purchase those works. For example, a search on the Edwardian writer John Galsworthy turns up not only the full public domain text of his masterpiece “The Forsythe Saga,” but also an intriguing list of copyrighted books related to Galsworthy available from rare book dealer Kessinger Publishing that I wasn’t aware existed.
If I were a book publisher, I’d think this is the coolest invention since the printing press.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:14 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Multichannel News reports that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has offered an amendment to a budget bill that would expedite the return of analog TV spectrum, setting the data at April 7, 2008, a year before the cutoff date recently approved by the Senate Commerce Committee.
In his floor comments, McCain lashed out at the National Association of Broadcasters, saying that he was “sick and tired” that the trade group continued to put the interests of “television viewers” ahead of the lives of first responders.
McCain had earlier offered an amendment calling for an April 2007 cutoff date, which was voted down in committee. Another contentious issue related to the digital broadcast conversion is the amount of set-top subsidies for low-income households, with Sen. Ensign (R-NV) expected to propose an amendment to cut $2 bil. of the $3 bil. in set-top subsidies set forth in the bill approved by the Commerce Committee.
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 9:04 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The recent spate of amazing deals and complex jockeying by top communications and entertainment giants has done little to boost the stock of old media vanguards such as News Corp. and Time Warner. Even Comcast, the nation’s top cable operator and a consistent financial success, is stuck in the stock doldrums. Why? The answer is Google and Yahoo.
As this New York Times’ piece by Geraldine Fabrikant and Richard Siklos makes clear, investors know something big is happening on the Internet that changes all the old media valuation equations, but they’re not quite certain what it is, so stocks languish.
“There is a buyers’ strike,” said Dennis Leibowitz, general partner at Act II Partners, a media hedge fund. “People are afraid to touch the old media. No matter how cheap they have gotten, people are fleeing. The environment is scaring them, and they can’t figure it out.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:06 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The Senate Commerce Committee approved a bill Wednesday that would give VoIP providers relief from the tight deadlines imposed by the FCC last May in its e911 order. The Commission’s order set a November 28 deadline by which VoIP providers must be capable of offering e911 service.
That order also imposed deadlines upon VoIP providers to disconnect customers who had not acknowledged receiving information from their VoIP providers about certain 911 limitations locations. The Senate Bill would push back the deadlines and give the FCC 120 days to devise new requirements “that are technologically and operationally feasible.”
Many VoIP providers have complained they cannot meet the e911 requirements in such a short time. The Senate bill would further waive the requirements for a full year for companies who can demonstrate, among other things, they it is not techically or operationally feasible for them to offer e911 services.
Indeed, Overland Park, KS-based Nuvio, along with three other VoIP providers, challenged the Commission’s e911 rules the DC Court of Appeals and that court has asked the Commission to respond to the challenge by next Tuesday.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:04 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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