The surge in types of video available online and in the sheer amount of it offer opportunities for broadcasters, cable operators, DBS providers and newer Internet and other new-media companies, executives from those industries said on a panel Friday. Executives from Disney and the NCTA said they see such trends as adding to the total amount of time consumers spend viewing video, not subtracting from it. “We view it as an opportunity for established media companies,” and Google TV represents one such product, said Johanna Shelton, the company’s senior policy counsel. An underlying concern expressed by some at the event organized by the Media Access Project is that “disintermediation” of content bundling could threaten the business models that pay for high-quality content.

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., “will remain active” after he departs the Congress at the end of the year, he said in an interview last week. “I'm 64 but I feel pretty young … and I think I'm good for another 20 years doing something.” The outgoing House Communications Subcommittee chairman hopes Congress next year will finish bipartisan work he started on privacy, incentive auctions and a revamped Universal Service Fund.

The FCC should revise its order on the Sirius XM channel set-aside to more directly promote the intended diversity of the 2008 order approving the deal, the Minority and Media Telecommunications Council said in a petition for reconsideration filed Thursday night. The group has said the recent implementation order undermines FCC Diversity Committee efforts to come up with a definition that promotes diversity without relying on race classifications. The diversity committee released its report soon after the latest order came out. MMTC President David Honig was on that committee. Concerned with constitutional issues, the commission revised the original condition on XM’s purchase by Sirius that had required a set-aside for minority-owned companies.

House Commerce Committee Republicans are circulating a “short and sweet” letter telling the FCC there is bipartisan agreement that net neutrality must be resolved by Congress, a House GOP staffer confirmed Thursday. The letter comes as rumors continue to swirl at the FCC and in the industry that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will ask commissioners to vote on net neutrality as early as the Dec. 15 meeting.

Let broadcasters sell their underused spectrum in the secondary market, not through a staged FCC incentive auction, economist Jeffrey Eisenach proposed Thursday at a Georgetown Center for Business & Public Policy event. Eisenach said the commission under Julius Genachowski deserves credit for taking up the question of how to deal with lightly used broadcast spectrum. But its proposed solution of an incentive auction may not be the right one, he said.

A rulemaking notice on emergency alert system (EAS) gear certification, in the wake of a new standard from the federal government on protocol for transmitting such warnings, should be ready to circulate by year’s end, a career FCC official working on the draft said Thursday. The notice on applying Part 11 rules to radio and TV station and cable operator gear using the new Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is being wrapped up now, Chief Tom Beers of the Public Safety Bureau’s Policy Division told an FCBA brown bag lunch. Also there, the FEMA official overseeing the integrated public alert and warning system said that agency hopes to have a nationwide EAS test, possibly in the next two years, something an NAB representative in the audience said broadcasters likely would support.

The House cleared a bill Thursday that will expand access to telework among the federal workforce and ensure accountability. HR-1722, introduced by Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., first passed the House in July and passed with amendments from the Senate in September. If fully integrated, the bill “can save taxpayers money by increasing efficiency, reducing federal office space and improving employee retention,” Sarbanes said. The legislation includes requiring the Office of Personnel Management to issue telework guidelines and compile government-wide data on telework. It also requires agencies “to develop a telework policy for their employees,” he said.

Legislators from both parties doubted a Capitol Hill deal on net neutrality is possible in the near term. But the lawmakers from the House and Senate were upbeat on spectrum and privacy action, at a Politico forum Thursday. Spectrum and privacy are also priorities for President Barack Obama, said U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra.

Netflix plans soon to offer in the U.S. a streaming-only service like its $7.99 monthly offering in Canada, CEO Reed Hastings said. Hulu Plus will probably compete with Netflix, but “that’s probably healthy for us,” he said late Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. “There’s going to be a whole lot of players, not only us.” Hastings expressed confidence that data networks will keep up with video’s demands. “Technology will keep making bandwidth faster and cheaper, essentially following Moore’s law.”

The bankruptcies of S-band licensees DBSD and TerreStar and potential FCC action opening the spectrum to increased terrestrial service could mean several S-band satellites will be for sale in coming years. Currently, the two companies have a total of three satellites. Each has one geosynchronous in-orbit satellite and TerreStar has another nearly completed satellite on the ground. While much depends on how the FCC decides to handle the spectrum, TerreStar’s grounded satellite is likely more valuable than the in-orbit ones, officials said. The FCC isn’t expected to decide on the 2 GHz band spectrum for at least a year (CD Oct 27 p9). ProtoStar, which auctioned its two in-orbit satellites to Intelsat and SES as part of its bankruptcy last year, was able to raise some $395 million for its satellites, though the satellites had much broader uses.