The FCC Media Bureau’s suspension of the Sept. 1 digital construction deadline for low-power TV and TV translator stations means licensees can choose whether to complete construction now or “wait in limbo and see how the chips fall after the repack,” said Fletcher Heald LPTV attorney Peter Tannenwald in a blog post Friday. Since the suspension doesn’t apply to Class A's, they “must get a move on it and enter the digital world by May 29 to get protection for their digital facilities” and must stop using analog by Sept. 1, Tannenwald said. Stations that go dark because of inability to complete digital construction by their deadline must “notify the FCC within 10 days of going dark, file a request for authority to remain dark after 30 days, and get back on the air no later than one year after they go dark,” he said.

BSA, the IT Industry Council and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group were among the several tech groups we polled that by and large declined comment on news reports that ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina will declare her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination May 4. The exception was CEA President Gary Shapiro who, when asked his reaction to Fiorina's impending candidacy, emailed us to say he was "initially thrilled as she is from the tech industry, keynoted CES, is a woman and has immersed herself in great charitable endeavors." However, "my enthusiasm waned dramatically as she supports patent trolls and attacked the tech industry for taking on the cause of equal treatment of gays," Shapiro said. "Not wise for any candidate to attack his or her business roots." As HP CEO, Fiorina used her January 2004 CES keynote to describe the introduction of the HP Entertainment Hub as “the central repository and distribution engine for digital content throughout the entire home,” according to a transcript of her speech that's still posted on the HP website. Within five years after being ousted from HP in 2005 (see 0502100150), Fiorina turned more political and ran an unsuccessful campaign as the Republican nominee to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. (see 1011040069). In recent years, Fiorina has become an outspoken advocate of conservative causes and chairs the American Conservative Union Foundation. In that role, she took the podium at a March 4 patent reform symposium to blast the Innovation Act as a cure in search of a disease and as a measure that would bolster big companies at the expense of small innovators, according to a transcript posted at IPWatchdog.com. Said Fiorina: “If the Innovation Act were law tomorrow, Thomas Edison would be a Patent Troll. Really? Some of our greatest inventors would be Patent Trolls under this law. Our universities would be patent trolls. We are fixing problems that don’t exist. We are boiling the ocean.” As for Shapiro’s criticism that Fiorina attacked the tech industry for its support of gay rights, that’s a reference to her calling out Apple CEO Tim Cook as a hypocrite in an April 2 Wall Street Journal interview for criticizing Indiana's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act while his company does business in multiple countries that discriminate against their own citizens or are guilty of human rights abuses. In the wake of the uproar over the Indiana law, which Fiorina has defended, Shapiro was among the more than 100 tech leaders who signed their names to a statement urging legislators to add nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people to civil rights laws, the Human Rights Campaign said earlier this month (see 1504070059). Fiorina's representatives didn’t comment on Shapiro’s remarks.

With Friday's U.S. release of the Apple Watch came an abundance of apps for the device that also made their debut Friday. In one case in point, PBS released a version of its Super Vision app, which allows parents to be involved in the time their children spend with digital media, PBS said. The free app lets parents limit their children’s screen time on pbskids.org by setting a simple play timer on Apple Watch, PBS said. IHeartRadio also introduced an app, making it one of the first streaming music and digital radio apps available on the Apple Watch, the company said Friday. The iHeartRadio for Apple Watch integration lets listeners have access to all the same features as the other app, including instant access to live radio from across the country, custom stations based on a catalog of more than 800,000 artists and 20 million songs, plus thousands of on-demand news, talk and entertainment podcasts, the company said.

Aereo reached a $950,000 bankruptcy settlement with the broadcasters whose TV signals Aereo appropriated for its streaming TV service, a motion filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York said. The broadcasters, which include ABC, CBS, Univision, WNET and numerous others, had sought $99 million in damages for copyright infringement and attorney’s fees after winning a decision over Aereo in the U.S. Supreme Court last year. In March, Aereo filed a complaint arguing that through a “tortious conspiracy,” broadcasters had kept its assets from selling for their real value (see 1503100073). Aereo’s patents were sold to RPX Corp., a company specializing in defensive patent acquisitions, for $225,000; its trademarks and customer lists to TiVo for $1 million; and portions of its equipment to Alliance Technology Solutions for $320,000, according to court documents. Under the settlement, the broadcasters' claims will be satisfied with Aereo’s payment of the $950,000, Aereo will drop its conspiracy complaint, and all outstanding court proceedings in other jurisdictions will be resolved, the motion said.

The Digital Living Network Alliance created new extensions of its VidiPath specifications that “allow for cloud delivery of commercial video content to retail consumer electronics devices,” DLNA said in an ex parte filing posted in FCC docket 15-64 Tuesday. Content using the extensions is protected using digital rights management and delivered through “standards-based MPEG-Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP,” it said. Leading desktop browsers already support the extension specifications or are planned to, DLNA said. The guidelines will let multichannel video programming distributors and over-the-top content providers offer commercial content to retail devices either using traditional content delivery mechanisms or using cloud/IP content delivery mechanisms, DLNA said. “VidiPath Cloud Extension Guidelines also support accessibility services including closed captions, emergency alert messages, and secondary audio programming.”

AT&T and DirecTV met with FCC staff April 16 to discuss substantial, direct and verifiable benefits the AT&T/DirecTV acquisition will have for tens of millions of consumers, AT&T and DirecTV said in an ex parte notice Monday. The acquisition will bring "improved bundles of services and enhanced and expanded broadband services for millions of Americans," it said. The combined company will have incentives to promote third-party online video distributor services, it said. AT&T and DirecTV urged the commission to promptly approve the transaction.

Federal and state regulators should “make a goal-line stand” and block Comcast 's planned buy of Time Warner Cable, said the Sports Fan Coalition in a news release Tuesday. The coalition opposes the deal because both companies have a track record “of acquiring and hoarding the rights to sports programming, and then restricting fans' access to telecasts of local teams,” said the group. The deal would give Comcast “the leverage and incentive” to restrict the availability of over-the-top programming from competitors, said the group. "The facts and economics clearly show that this proposed merger would empower Comcast to engage in even more of the anticompetitive behavior sports fans have faced in markets throughout the country," said coalition Chairman David Goodfriend. The Department of Justice is giving close scrutiny to the deal (see 1504200049).

There are many more narrow ways the FCC could fulfill the provisions of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization without making effective cable competition a “rebuttable presumption,” said a joint filing from NAB, Public Knowledge, Common Cause and American Community Television. The FCC could reduce the filing burden or strip away some of the required data, the groups said, or provide a shot clock for the ruling of effective competition to be granted. In a meeting with Media Bureau staff Wednesday, the American Cable Association said it supports the commission's more sweeping plan to assume all cable faces effective competition, according to an ex parte filing. Concerns voiced by NAB and others about how the FCC rule change would affect broadcasting are unfounded, ACA said. “There are a variety of factors, including marketplace forces and compulsory license costs, that make it unlikely that cable operators will reduce the availability of broadcast signals to subscribers,” ACA said.

The FCC should deny a petition for reconsideration filed by consumer groups representing the hearing impaired challenging the commission's accessibility rules for programming guides and user interfaces, CEA said in an ex parte filing posted online Friday. The consumer groups, which include the National Association for the Deaf, disagree with the FCC stance that using voice or a gesture command to activate closed captions is reasonably comparable to using a button, key or icon. A CEA-conducted poll of its TV manufacturer members received no responses indicating plans to provide access to captions only through voice or gesture commands, CEA said.

The “attention” that has ensued as new competitors such as HBO Now and Sony Vue enter the over-the-top space “is only creating a bigger ecosystem, drawing more and more people into thinking, ‘Hey I’ve got to check that out and try this Internet TV thing,'” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said Wednesday in the company’s quarterly online interview. Though “linear TV” has had an “amazing 50-year run,” Internet TV is starting to grow now, and “clearly over the next 20 years Internet TV is going to replace linear TV,” Hastings said. “And so I think everyone is scrambling to figure out how do they do great apps.” The ecosystem “will just keep getting built up and so it's a transition into figuring out the Internet,” Hastings said. “And the way people do that is to get involved with us, with our competitors, to try to start to learn what are the new patterns and modalities because Internet TV is the way that people will consume video in the future.” Netflix is “super-happy right where we are” on its pricing plans relative to the new competition, Hastings aid. “We’ve got a great mix of pricing plans and options for those who get a new 4K television and they are excited about 4K content. We are the leading service in the world for 4K and that plan is a little more expensive at $11.99. So as more 4K TV is sold, we will get people to upgrade to the $11.99 plan.” Of the company’s “total pricing structure,” Hastings said: “We couldn't be happier with the way it creates an incredible value for the consumers. It feels fair to them and it's propelling our growth.” Netflix has seen smart TVs “just continuing to grow and grow in usage and sales,” Hastings said. “Virtually every new TV sold now is a smart TV, at least at the middle and high-end, and it's natural for people to use. Now, do they also watch on tablets? Yes, and on phones. So really all those categories are experiencing absolute hours growth, but on a percentage basis, smart TV is one of our fastest-growing categories.” Netflix is “very encouraged” with the “general consumer perspective” at the FCC that “broadband access is so important that it is a utility,” Hastings said, of the commission's decision reclassifying broadband as a Communications Act Title II service. “It is like power distribution where it's a natural monopoly in the last mile. There should be one fiber or one cable going to a home with super high speed and that's the architecture of the future. So everything around it being a utility is great for Internet companies like ourselves and it's great for consumers.”