FCC program access rules withstood Cablevision’s legal challenge. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Friday denied the company’s petition to throw out the rules barring cable operators from withholding programming networks they own from competing distributors. “We will not substitute our judgement for the agency’s, especially when, as here, the decision requires expert policy judgement of a technical, complex and dynamic subject,” Chief Judge David Sentelle wrote. Judge Brett Kavanaugh dissented.

Advances in ad technology and Internet connectivity could within years bring more money into targeted advertising from major brand marketers, a category that has kept most of its major outlays with mass media outlets, a panelist said at the Media Summit in New York Thursday. “With everything IP-enabled, everything is addressable,” said Brandon Berger, vice president of digital innovation for MDC Partners, a holding company for marketing firms. “We as marketers will be able to deliver our message to the right customer in the right mindset that will get them to be an advocate and extend the brand’s value."

Media venture capital and private equity investors are still looking for deals in ad-supported media, though they're also increasingly eying investments in gaming and mobile technology, executive told a conference Thursday. “I'm a big believer in advertising-supported companies,” said Richard Bressler, managing director of Thomas H. Lee Partners, which owns part of Univision and Clear Channel. Interactive ad technology companies are also catching investors attention, Allison Goldberg, managing director of Time Warner Investments, said at the Media Summit in New York.

Industry heeded his complaints, voiced in July, that the first filings on the National Broadband Plan were a sign the FCC could be in trouble, National Broadband Plan Executive Director Blair Levin said Thursday at a conference. In the end, groups came though with filings that helped shape the plan, Levin said in what’s expected to be his last speech before release of the plan Tuesday.

New online tools allowing consumers to measure their broadband speeds and latency are aimed at educating consumers, supplying the FCC with data and encouraging better transparency in the industry, said FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Chief Joel Gurin. Broadband service providers advertise certain speeds “and most people don’t have any intuitive sense of what that performance is. [The tools] can help people really make a connection between the numerical speed and the experience their getting with broadband,” he said.

Google’s proposed acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob appeared to be drawing more regulatory scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, experts said. The agency was reportedly looking for declarations from Google rivals.

The FCC is reviewing what changes might make sense for the agency’s retransmission consent dispute policies (CD March 11 p8), Chairman Julius Genachowski told the Senate Commerce Committee. “The events of the last two or three months confirmed that this is a subject that should be looked at seriously,” he said in a hearing Thursday. He and Christine Varney, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department Antitrust Division, pledged to narrowly review on the merits Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal.

A combination with competitor Leap Wireless is appealing, MetroPCS Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter said Wednesday, providing no specifics. “Obviously, we're very interested in the combination of our companies,” Carter said at an investor conference. Many potential benefits that made a merger attractive are no longer relevant now, but there are still many positive factors, he said. “It’s important to reevaluate what your options are.” He acknowledged fierce wireless pricing competition. Carter declined to comment further on whether the companies are in talks. Leap and MetroPCS dropped negotiations in 2007 after they couldn’t agree on price. Analysts had said a deal wouldn’t face significant regulatory hurdles but there would be significant regulatory, business and technology obstacles if one of the major national carriers agreed to buy Leap (CD Feb 3 p5).

An Oklahoma proposal for a statewide toll-free calling plan is “fundamentally flawed” and should be set aside in favor of a “more targeted solution,” Verizon said in preliminary comments to the Corporation Commission. The plan proposes to ban “an entire class of competitors -- interexchange carriers -- from serving an admittedly competitive market,” the company said.

Disparate reactions greeted an order proposed Monday by an administrative law judge with the Illinois Commerce Commission opposing the proposed acquisition by Frontier Communications of Verizon landlines in that state. The companies questioned the order’s logic. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Communications Workers of America, foes of the deal in Illinois and elsewhere, lauded the proposed order.