LAS VEGAS -- Mobile video products won’t attract viewers without some form of free content, panelists at the Consumer Electronics Show said late Thursday. Viewers want to have the same experience on their handsets as they have in the living room, and that includes free access to some of their favorite programming, said Diane Jovin, vice president of corporate marketing and business development for Telegent Systems, a mobile TV chipmaker. “Subscription fees can work for premium content, but it needs to be bundled with other types of content,” she said. The lack of free content is part of what doomed Qualcomm’s MediaFLO service, panelists said.

FCC action in developing rules for efficient use of V-band spectrum will help allay the shortage of feeder link spectrum for broadband use but it should move forward with a “light hand,” the Satellite Industry Association said in comments on the FCC’s proposed rulemaking for the band. The FCC is working toward making rules meant to increase the sharing of 37.5-42.5 GHz spectrum by terrestrial and satellite services. The agency should “embrace a flexible regulatory approach that does not impinge unnecessarily on satellite operators” that are designing systems to work with international and FCC spectrum frameworks, said SIA.

LAS VEGAS -- There is “strong support” from other federal agencies for efforts to free up spectrum for wireless broadband, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said at the Consumer Electronics Show. He told reporters he remains confident that 115 MHz can “readily” be freed up within five years, with more to come after that.

LAS VEGAS -- Incentive auctions to free up spectrum for wireless broadband “are a test of whether the U.S. can make the right strategic choices in a complex and fast-moving digital economy,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in the text of speech to have been delivered after our deadline Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show. He said freeing up spectrum “is not just a real issue for the future of gadgets; it’s a vital strategic issue for the future of our economy and job creation."

LAS VEGAS -- The net neutrality rules adopted by the FCC last month read like something out of George Orwell’s 1984, full of “doublethink and newspeak,” said Neil Fried, chief counsel to the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. On a panel late Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show about the order, he cast FCC in the position of the novel’s Ministry of Truth, tasked with determining what actions of network operators will be deemed reasonable. “We don’t want to anyone to decide who has permission to innovate, so instead we're going to have to go to the government for permission,” he said. “It’s very troubling."

Among the many conditions that an FCC draft order seeks to impose on Comcast’s planned purchase of control in NBC Universal are several that deal with Internet content and broadband, agency and industry officials said this week. Some of the proposed conditions would require what the companies have recently proposed to the commission, and others appear to go beyond the offers. Included in the draft are requirements that Comcast not treat Web content affiliated with the combined company differently from unaffiliated content, agency officials said. Broadband deployment and selling what’s sometimes called naked, or unbundled, service are dealt with, too.

Key parts of the National Broadband Plan still require action by Congress. A potential roadblock for the commission as it implements the plan remains that the commission cannot control if or how quickly Capitol Hill moves forward on its parts.

LAS VEGAS -- Rather than killing TV, new technology is creating its second “golden age,” Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said at a CES keynote also featuring Verizon Chairman Ivan Seidenberg. Partly because of new ways of watching TV, he said, viewing, subscriptions, advertising and programming budgets are up, Bewkes said. “This is a very healthy business. … Its role in our lives has never been bigger."

Republicans introduced legislation to strike down FCC net neutrality rules Wednesday, the first day of the new Congress. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn, introduced the Internet Freedom Act providing that only Congress can make rules for the Internet. Meanwhile, House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said his top priority is reversing the commission’s rules, under the Congressional Review Act.

Revisions to a draft Comcast-NBC Universal FCC order await the return of commissioners from CES in Las Vegas, agency officials said. They said edits to the draft, which circulated Dec. 23, still will probably be made next week (CD Dec 28 p2). Commissioners and their aides have been reading the draft and starting to think about changes, but they haven’t formally proposed any yet, agency officials said. The draft would require the combined company to carry out public-interest proposals that the companies offered when the multibillion agreement for Comcast to buy control of NBC Universal was announced in December 2009 and since, commission and industry officials said. The proposed order would impose additional requirements on the companies, with many lasting seven years, they said.