Monty Tayloe

LAS VEGAS -- Industry perception that the FCC Enforcement Bureau has become more active and more willing to slap offenders with heavy fines is an outgrowth of process reforms within the bureau, Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc said during an NAB Show Q&A session Tuesday hosted by former Enforcement Bureau Chief David Solomon. The bureau no longer treats every complaint as a potential case, but focuses on larger matters where it can make the most impact and act quickly, LeBlanc said. “We are thinking beyond just ‘is this a rule violation?’” The bureau’s older methods led to backlog and inaction, he said.

LAS VEGAS -- Broadcasters need to move to the next-generation ATSC 3.0 in order to succeed after the incentive auction, NAB President Gordon Smith said in his keynote at NAB Show Monday. Since a successful incentive auction will leave 80 percent of current full-power stations and only 60 percent of the current broadcast spectrum, TV broadcasters have to learn to “do more with less,” Smith said. A move to ATSC 3.0 would allow them to do so, he told us after the speech. “There’s no question broadcasting will survive after the auction," but moving to ATSC 3.0 "will allow it to thrive,” Smith told us.

LAS VEGAS -- The FCC may not prioritize low-power television or TV translators in the post-auction repacking process, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake said during an LPTV panel at NAB Show. The commission can’t prioritize everything, and “maybe the best answer is not to prioritize any of them,” Lake said. The panel dealt with several plans for helping soften the impact of the incentive auction on LPTV and translators. The FCC very clearly recognizes the value of LPTV and translators,” Lake said, but the commission is bound to consider them secondary services. One LPTV broadcaster summed up the FCC’s view as “tough luck.”

An FCC proposal to make effective competition a “rebuttable presumption” for cable systems is endorsed by cable trade groups but opposed by local franchising authorities (LFAs), NAB, Public Knowledge and groups that advocate for public, educational and government (PEG) channels, according to comments in docket 15-53. The FCC overstepped its bounds in trying to apply a provision in the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization (STELAR) intended for small cable systems to all cable systems, opponents of the proposal said. “An automatic, nationwide grant of effective competition to cable operators in thousands of communities would be contrary to congressional intent and against the public interest,” said the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable (MDTC).

In the runup to the NAB Show next week, numerous broadcasters and broadcast attorneys told us there has been little change in the industry’s relationship with the FCC and Chairman Tom Wheeler since the 2014 show, when many expected him to get booed during his speech (see 1404090023). That didn't happen. But the FCC’s actions on joint sales agreements had injected uncertainty into a broadcast transaction process that had been in place for 20 years, said Gray Television Senior Vice President Kevin Latek.

NAB’s planned new headquarters on Washington’s Capital Waterfront in southeast could cost more than $36 million, according to rough estimates from commercial real estate brokers. The planned 120,000 square foot structure will be located on what's considered increasingly desirable real estate, said CBRE Executive Vice President Manny Fitzgerald, who's involved with the transaction. The area around the future HQ is transitioning to a “24/7 neighborhood” with a mix of retail, residential and commercial uses and easy access to Capitol Hill, Fitzgerald said.

NAB will build a new 10-story headquarters in Washington's Capitol Riverfront area and move in by fall 2018, the association said. It said the new building's price is expected to be financed by the sale of NAB's current Dupont Circle headquarters. The new HQ is a mile from the Capitol and less than two miles from the FCC, making it much more accessible for legislators than the current building, an NAB spokesman told us. The new headquarters would likely cost about $300-$350 per square foot to build -- excluding the ground cost -- in the location named by NAB, a commercial real estate industry official said.

Pay-TV services, online video distributors (OVDs) and programmers don’t agree on whether an FCC proposal to adjust the meaning of the term multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) to include over-the-top (OTT) video providers is good for online video, according to reply comments filed Wednesday in docket 14-261. “No commenter has identified any evidence of a problem in the OTT ecosystem that could warrant regulatory intervention now,” said AT&T, echoing Amazon and MLB Advanced Media. Extending MVPD status to OVDs would “facilitate online providers’ ability to gain access to video programming and enable the Commission to address practices by programmers that stymie greater video competition,” countered Verizon, echoed by online TV service FilmOn and the Tennis Channel.

Charter Communications is buying Bright House Networks in a $10.4 billion deal that's contingent on the approval of the Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal being approved, Charter said in a news release Tuesday. The deal will add 2 million video subscribers and some contiguous markets to Charter’s footprint, and solve an “attribution problem” involving Bright House in the Comcast deal, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said on a press call after the announcement. Despite the sale’s dependency on the Comcast/TWC transaction, it isn't expected to have much of an effect on that deal’s approval, several communications attorneys told us.

Cable companies’ retransmission consent negotiating positions would be improved by a proposed FCC rule change making it a “rebuttable presumption” that all cable companies face effective competition, said Womble Carlyle cable attorney Mark Palchick and American Cable Association President Matt Polka in interviews Monday. Palchick and Polka agreed with broadcast industry officials (see 1503270047) that because rules requiring local broadcast stations to be offered on the basic tier are tied to rate regulation, and cable companies ruled to face effective competition don’t face rate regulation, the basic tier requirement therefore wouldn’t apply if the FCC approves the rule change proposed in its recent NPRM (see 1503260037). Polka and the ACA lobbied for the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization provision that triggered the FCC NPRM, and Palchick represented cable companies challenging the commission’s retransmission consent rules in 2010.