Although Time Warner Cable and Sinclair extended their retransmission consent agreement by a day, the pact was still set to expire Saturday and the companies were bracing for a signal blackout. Sinclair wanted a longer extension, General Counsel Barry Faber said in an e-mail to reporters. “Time Warner has instead simply drawn an arbitrary line in the sand insisting that it will drop the stations if the agreement is not completed by midnight on Saturday,” he said. “Sinclair does not believe there is any realistic chance that this deadline … will be able to be met.” A Time Warner Cable spokeswoman said negotiations continue and the cable operator is working hard to reach an agreement. “We are still hoping to avoid a broadcaster blackout, but even if Sinclair pulls the plug on Saturday night, Time Warner Cable will continue to provide all available Big 4 network programming to its subscribers,” she said.

Level 3 has emerged has an unlikely -- and unwilling -- champion of Internet backbone carriers in its battle with Comcast, industry and public-interest officials told us. Level 3 was “certainly reluctant” to engage in a public battle, but “there is no way to route around Comcast,” said John Ryan, Level 3 chief legal officer. “It is not in our DNA to seek government assistance. Our strong preference is where markets exist, the markets should discipline behavior.”

New York City has made no progress putting together funding for a 700 MHz public safety network since its last quarterly report, the city said in a filing posted Friday by the FCC. The project did not receive an award from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, “which was considered the primary funding source,” the city said. Other government bodies that didn’t get BTOP grants offered similar complaints in quarterly filings required by the commission.

Republican commissioners didn’t get some briefings by FCC staffers reviewing Comcast’s deal to buy control of NBC Universal, in the months leading up to Chairman Julius Genachowski’s sending a draft order to approve the agreement to his colleagues for a vote, commission officials said. Though Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps got many substantive updates throughout the deal’s review, Commissioners Meredith Baker and Robert McDowell didn’t get them, though they did hear some more topical details such as about the review’s timing. They didn’t explicitly ask for such in-depth briefings, and they weren’t offered, some commission officials said, although all FCC members were kept updated on timing of the deal’s review.

LPTV advocates seeking to test a different broadcast technology that would let stations offer TV and broadband services simultaneously have been “blocked” from meeting with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski by Media Bureau Staff, SpectrumEvolution CEO Greg Herman wrote in an open letter to the chairman. The group’s application for an experimental license to test the technology in Portland, Ore., has been similarly blocked, he said. The application poses no interference to other licensees, he said. “Nothing could be more routine! Yet the Media and Wireless Bureaus and the Office of Engineering and Technology seem all to feel they must intercede.”

Officials at NTIA and the FCC indicated this week they're focusing on 1755-1780 MHz for possible reallocation for wireless broadband. The wireless industry has long sought the band for pairing with AWS-3 spectrum, for what would likely be one of the most-watched spectrum auctions since 2007’s 700 MHz auction.

International engagement is a central cybersecurity policy of the State Department’s Bureau of Economics, Energy and Business Affairs, said the agency’s senior advisor, James Ennis, at a meeting by the Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy (ACICIP) Thursday. Meanwhile, interagency, intergovernmental and public-private cooperation is critical to improve security and address cybercrime and privacy challenges, State Department officials said.

Industry executives and disability rights advocates should continue to strive toward consensus, as they begin work on recommending implementation of legislation signed into law last fall that updates the Communications Act to make new technologies accessible, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Thursday. “A spirit of consensus and partnership among the disabilities community and the industry” preceded passage of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, he said. “The law is not something that was done to industry, it was done as something with industry,” he told the first meeting of the Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee.

Those concerned about Comcast-NBC Universal intensified their FCC lobbying, as a nonprofit group opposed to the cable operator’s plan to buy control of NBC Universal said new pledges (CD Jan 13 p14) from the buyer fall short, filings posted Thursday to docket 10-56 show. Viacom, the largest programmer to express concerns about carriage of independent programming after the deal, teamed up with much smaller indie channel WealthTV to lobby aides to Commissioners Michael Copps and Commissioner Robert McDowell. The eighth floor continues to closely review the multibillion dollar deal, and commissioners are considering making changes to the Dec. 23 draft Media Bureau order conditionally approving the deal, agency officials said. Some said that no changes have yet been proposed by commissioners.

NTIA’s voicing spectrum interference concerns on LightSquared business plans in a letter to the FCC Wednesday (CD Jan 13 p3) may hurt the company’s ability to begin service relatively quickly as a 4G provider, said satellite industry executives. They said it’s still unclear how the FCC will handle LightSquared’s waiver request. A delayed approval could create major development worries for LightSquared, the executives said. The NTIA letter amounts to a strong brake on what has been a relatively quick regulatory process for LightSquared, they said. LightSquared is seeking FCC approval of its plan that could allow terrestrial-only service in spectrum currently allocated for mobile satellite services use.