Brad on Broadcast

Over the last several weeks I’ve detected an increase in the noise being raised about content ownership. Sure, we’ve all been following the battle between Murdoch and Cablevision. FOX programming has been pulled from some East-Coast Cablevision cable systems because of deadlocked retransmission negotiations. more

A union familiar to many broadcasters is demanding $100 million from Comcast should NBC and Comcast receive approval to merge. The union, Writers Guild of America East, has written a letter to FCC chairman Genachowski requesting the agency fine the merged company “at least $10 million per year for 10 years.” The total of $100 million would be managed by a nonprofit corporation similar to CPB. The money would be used, in the union’s words, “to produce truly independent content.” more

In early October, the Phoenix Center released a study, “Communications policy and employment effects in the information sector,” that claims the FCC’s policies are killing jobs. The analysis suggests that the agency’s regulations could result in job losses exceeding 300,000 for a 10 percent decline in capital expenditures. Phoenix Center’s analysis states, “That 10 percent negative shock to capital expenditures in the information sector results in an average loss of about 130,000 information-sector jobs per year in the following five years. Including indirect jobs, the job loss could be as high as 327,600 jobs, noted the research. more

A story in last week’s Broadcast Engineering “3-D Technology Update” e-newsletter reviewed new research on the popularity of the technology with viewers. May I summarize? No thank you to 3-D. more

On Oct. 8, the president signed into law a far-reaching bill that will result in new mandates for broadcasters, cable systems and program networks to implement video captioning and video descriptions. The Senate adopted the bill in late September. While the bill is based on previous FCC authority, certain provisions are expanded and now require Internet capability. more

Earlier this week, Qualcomm announced the shuttering of its FLO TV delivery service. According to the website, paidcontent.org, president of MediaFlo and FLO TV Bill Stone told his staff the company would cease operations by year’s end. A specific date was not given. more

Just as broadcast networks conclude their upfront advertising season, two new content delivery networks are knocking on the doors of viewers’ homes. And because these new networks don’t plan on paying the content owners for their shows like cable and satellite do, the networks are up in arms. more

On Thursday afternoon, Sept. 30, FEMA officially adopted the new Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) message format. The agency’s adoption of the message format represents a significant step toward implementing a nationwide warning system that extends across multiple platforms.

According to FEMA, “This open standard will enable alert messages to be easily composed by emergency management officials for communication with citizens using a much broader set of devices to reach as many people as possible.” Not stated, but important for broadcast and cable companies, is that this action starts a 180-day clock to complete upgrades to facility EAS equipment. As a part of the FCC EAS order in 2007, the commission mandated that all EAS participants must be able to accept CAP-based EAS messages within 180 days from the time that FEMA publishes the applicable standards for CAP.

more