SEATTLE -- YouTube is not a credible replacement for a dedicated public, educational and governmental (PEG) channel, activists told a city advisory board Tuesday night. They were protesting Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s proposed 2011-2012 budget, which would slash funding for PEG by 85 percent, to $100,000 a year. The decision was defended by the city’s chief technology officer given the availability of low-cost Web streaming. Several content producers for the nonprofit Seattle Community Access Network (SCAN), whose 10-year city contract to run channels 23 and 77 ended in December, suggested ideas for expanding access but said the bulk of their viewers wouldn’t migrate online.

Two House Republicans think that two bills to scale back FCC authority over the Internet are better than one. Reps. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., each introduced a bill last week opposing the FCC’s recent net neutrality order. A Blackburn spokesman said Wednesday that multiple bills may be necessary to get their point across to the FCC. Meanwhile, former Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he doesn’t believe the GOP’s related Congressional Review Act effort is likely to succeed.

FTC enforcement action is coming under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), including enforcement based on the collection of information about kids through mobile applications, a commission lawyer indicated Wednesday. “Our enforcement efforts continue” under COPPA, “so stay tuned for the next set,” said Phyllis Marcus, a senior attorney in the advertising practices division. And broadening the definition of protected personal information online “is a very interesting area that is ripe for potential development,” she said on an American Bar Association webcast about marketing to children.

GENEVA -- U.S. plans to make available 500 MHz of spectrum for wireless broadband in the next 10 years shouldn’t depend on L-band frequencies considered crucial for weather and space agencies, the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites wrote Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. The Jan. 3 letter was sent on behalf of NOAA, NASA and 13 other meteorological and space agencies in the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites.

The Local Community Radio Act doesn’t favor low-power over translator stations in the FM band, said the NAB and the owner of several hundred translators. Their filings and one from a provider of engineering data to low-power FM (LPFM) stations were posted to docket 99-25 Tuesday and Wednesday. Those filings and ones last week (CD Jan 11 p8) from a group representing LPFM stations and a dozen broadcasters seeking FCC permission to operate more translators come after a commission official encouraged comments on how the act applies to a translator auction. President Barack Obama signed the act this month.

LightSquared’s plans for mobile satellite services/ancillary terrestrial component spectrum is a cause for concern by government users but doesn’t face insurmountable problems, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling wrote FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in a letter Wednesday. Strickling said LightSquared’s proposed use of terrestrial spectrum “would create a new interference environment and it is incumbent on the FCC to deal with the resulting interference issues before any interference occurs.” LightSquared is seeking FCC approval for a business plan that could allow for purely terrestrial use of spectrum now allocated for MSS use (CD Nov 29 p2). The FCC asked for the NTIA’s thoughts about giving LightSquared a waiver of MSS/ATC rules, the letter said. LightSquared’s request amounts to a reallocation of spectrum and should receive much more testing before the FCC approves it, according to GPS interests, who say approval of LightSquared’s application threatens serious spectrum interference.

TORONTO -- Less than eight months before Canada’s DTV transition is to occur, it looks as if many Canadian households may lose TV service because their local over-the-air stations will go dark, they won’t have digital sets or set-top boxes equipped to receive DTV signals, or they just won’t know what’s happening. Like the FCC in the 2009 U.S. full-power broadcaster digital switch, Canada’s Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission has taken a number of steps to coordinate and ease the Aug. 31 DTV transition. The CRTC has in recent months set deadlines, identified mandatory markets for conversion, spelled out alternatives to offering digital service in smaller markets and sought a government-funded and coordinated national public awareness campaign.

NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling Tuesday asked the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee to refocus its efforts on helping the agency identify spectrum to meet the administration’s goal of providing 500 MHz for broadband in 10 years. At the final meeting of the current CSMAC, the group also approved final versions of two sometimes controversial reports on “incentives” for getting more government spectrum into play for commercial use and on the benefits of unlicensed spectrum.

Five public interest groups led by Free Press said the FCC should investigate MetroPCS’s recently announced low-cost data plan, which would apparently preclude users from using Skype, Netflix and other popular services (CD Jan 5 p1). But customers would be able to watch YouTube videos. The Center for Media Justice, the Media Access Project, New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative and Presente.org signed the letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

The FCC should dismiss a Nexstar and Mission Broadcasting emergency petition that asks the FCC to bar Time Warner Cable from importing distant signals into some upstate New York markets during a retransmission-consent dispute with Smith Media (CD Dec 30 p2), TWC said in an opposition filed with the FCC this week. Beyond failing in its arguments, the petition is moot because TWC stopped importing the distant signals and reached a carriage agreement with the Smith stations, it said. Furthermore, “TWC’s importation of those distant signals did not violate any Commission rule (and, contrary to Nexstar’s suggestion, was expressly authorized under TWC’s retransmission consent agreement with Nexstar),” TWC said.