As we wrote on Friday, the Senate has passed the Bill that would extend from February 17 to June 12 the deadline for full-power television stations to transition to digital operations.  This leaves the House of Representatives to once again consider the matter - supposedly in committee on Tuesday and perhaps by vote of the full House as early as Wednesday.  In preparation for that consideration, there have been conflicting letters released by Congressmen supporting the bill and those who are oppose.

The press was abuzz yesterday with the news that Julius Genachowski is apparently the pick of the Obama Administration for the position of FCC Chairman.  Mr. Genachowski was at the FCC during the Reed Hundt Administration, and has since worked in the private sector in the telecommunications industry, including work with Barry Diller and running a DC-based venture capital fund.  From the positive reactions that the appointment has received from all quarters, the choice would seem to be a great one.  But, in looking at some of the reactions, you have to question whether everyone has to be reading what they want to see into the new Commission. 

As the Obama administration fills its top level government posts, all eyes are now turning to the next levels of government appointments which, at some point, will include a new Chair of the FCC and potentially other new FCC Commissioners. We wrote about our hopes for an Obama administration at the FCC immediately after the election, and now other voices in Washington are weighing in. And, as one might expect, with so many different perspectives, the advice is far from consistent. As we wrote in our analysis, the appointment of the FCC Chair is crucial as it is the FCC Chair, far more than the President or the White House, who sets the tone for Communications policy.

There's a new top-level domain name ("TLD") on the block, and broadcasters and other media companies will want to protect URLs that include their call signs, unique slogans and positioning statements or other registered marks or names.  The new TLD will be ".tel."  Unlike .com, .net, .org, and other current TLDs that link to websites, the new .tel TLD is designed specifically for access by mobile devices such as the Blackberry and iPhone and will access to the contact information of the holder of the .tel URL without the need for a standard website.  The theory behind the .tel TLD is to allow instant access to contact information without having to access a registrant's website.  When contact information is accessed via mobile devices, the telephone numbers will appear as "hot links" that will dial those numbers upon touch or selection. 

With Barack Obama's historic victory just sinking in, all over Washington (and no doubt elsewhere in the country), the speculation begins as to what the new administration will mean to various sectors of the economy (though, in truth, that speculation has been going on for months). What will his administration mean for broadcasters? Will the Obama administration mean more regulation? Will the fairness doctrine make a return?

Both the House and the Senate have now approved the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008, which will become law when it is signed by the President. Just what does this bill do? It does not announce a settlement of the contentious Internet Radio royalty dispute, about which we have extensively written here. It does not change the standard for judging Internet radio royalties, as had been proposed in the Internet Radio Equality Act, introduced last year and now seemingly dead in the waning days of this Congress, and in the Perform Act, about which we wrote here (the IREA and the Perform Act proposed different standards – the first more favorable to webcasters and the second more favorable to SoundExchange).

The FCC has released a Public Notice announcing its approval of the XM and Sirius satellite radio merger. The public notice is only two pages long, with a four page appendix providing very brief summaries of the conditions imposed on the two companies which a majority of the Commissioners found sufficient to protect consumers from harm from the merged entity. The full text of the decision, providing the full reasoning of the Commission on its approval, has not yet been released. Until it is, the impact for broadcast ownership and the treatment of broadcast consolidation set by the precedent of this decision remains unclear.

The appeals of last year's Copyright Royalty Board decision on the royalties paid for the use of sound recordings by Internet radio stations continue on, and one recent filing raises interesting questions of whether or not the CRB was properly appointed. Last week, the Department of Justice, which represents the CRB in defending its decision in the Court of Appeals, filed its brief in opposition to the briefs of the webcasters, which we summarized here. The DOJ brief essentially argued that the webcasters' briefs were insufficient to satisfy the requirement for a successful appeal - that the CRB decision was arbitrary and capricious or otherwise contrary to law.

Website operators who allow the posting of user-generated content on their sites enjoy broad immunity from legal liability. This includes immunity from copyright violations if the site owner registers with the Copyright Office, does not encourage the copyright violations and takes down infringing content upon receiving notice from a copyright owner (see our post here for more information). There is also broad immunity from liability for other legal violations that may occur within user-generated content.

While US webcasters may think that they have legal issues - whether it be the Internet radio music royalties that have been such a concern (see our coverage, here) or the copyright and other liability issues that surround user-generated content on various websites (see our story here), they face nothing like new rules that were recently adopted for webcasters in China. The new rules require government permits from two separate Chinese government agencies before webcasting operations can begin. In addition, the rules appear to require ownership and control of webcasting operations by state-owned companies. A memo on these new rules, prepared by attorneys from Davis Wright Tremaine's Shanghai office, can be found here.

Under the compulsory license for the use of sound recordings - the license which allows Internet radio services to use all legally recorded sound recordings by paying a royalty set by the Copyright Royalty Board - the designated collection agency can, once each year, audit a licensee to assess its compliance with the royalty requirements. Under the law, when the collective decides to audit a company, it must notify the Copyright Royalty Board, who then gives public notice of the fact that an audit is to take place. The Copyright Royalty Board has just announced that SoundExchange has decided to audit Last.FM.

In recent weeks, Low Power Television stations have been the center of attention in Washington in connection with the Digital television transition. While all full-power television stations are set to convert to digital operations less than a year from now, ceasing analog operations at the end of the day on February 17, 2009, there is no specific deadline for LPTV stations to convert to digital. As the NTIA rolls out its coupon program for the purchase of converter boxes that will take digital signals of over-the-air television stations and convert them to analog for those who do not have digital television receivers (see our summary here), LPTV advocates noted that many converters do not pass through analog signals.

The FCC has announced that on January 24 it will begin a new round of testing of wireless devices that will work in that part of the communications spectrum currently reserved for television station operation. The idea, about which we wrote here, would be that these devices could operate at low power, on channels not used by television stations in a particular market (the so-called "white spaces"), without creating interference to television stations. Proponents (mostly tech and computer companies) claim that these low power devices could be used for wireless broadband and other communications devices, while opponents (principally television broadcasters, but also and wireless microphone companies which operate in the television spectrum) fear that the devices, when released into an unregulated, real-world environment, will create damaging interference to the new digital television operations that begin in February 2009. The Commission's tests will attempt to resolve this controversy.

As 2007 wound to an end, advertising issues figured prominently on the agenda of Washington agencies, including both the FCC and the FTC. While the FCC is looking at specific regulatory requirements governing broadcast advertising, the FTC is investigating the privacy issues raised by advertising conducted by on-line companies. In November, the FTC held a two day set of workshops and panels where interested parties discussed issues of behavioral advertising - advertising that can be targeted to individuals based on their history of Internet use, and whether or not regulation of these practices was necessary.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration ("NTIA") now has made available the coupons for consumers to use to buy converter boxes that will allow analog television sets to pick up the digital signals of television stations. We have written about the NTIA program before, here. Digital signals are now available in most markets, and these signals will be the only signals available from full power television stations after the February 17, 2009 digital conversion deadline. The coupons, valued at $40, will be available until they run out (and, by most estimates, Congress has not appropriated enough money for every household to get coupons).

On the last day of 2007, the FCC released a 108 page order detailing its rules for the final stages of the transition of US full power television stations from analog to digital, a transition that is to be completed in less than 14 months. The Third Periodic Review, as the order is titled, covers in detail the timing of required construction of the final facilities for each full power television station, as well as various details on other transition issues. While we will prepare a more detailed summary of the order, some of the more significant issues that the Commission addressed include the following:

The FCC has released its agenda for its December 18 meeting - and it promises to be one of the most important,and potentially most contentious, in recent memory. On the agenda is the Commission's long awaited decision on the Chairman's broadcast multiple ownership plan relaxing broadcast-newspaper cross-ownership rules (see our summary here).

The FCC's Emergency Alert System ("EAS") is the bane of many broadcasters. Failing to have operational EAS equipment, or otherwise failing to comply with the requirements of the rules, including failures to conduct the mandatory tests of the system, are among the most common causes of a fine following an FCC field inspection. To help ensure compliance with the EAS rules, the FCC has issued a series of booklets outlining the EAS obligations not only for broadcasters, but also for cable systems, satellite radio and wireline video providers.

With a possible decision looming on December 18 on the Chairman's proposal to loosen the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules (see our summary here and here), the FCC this week granted two applications involving the sales of the Tribune Company and of the Clear Channel television stations, where the decisions focused on the application of the multiple ownership rules - and where the Commission granted multiple waivers of various aspects of those rules - some on a permanent basis and many only temporarily. And, in the process, both of the Commission's Democratic Commissioners complained about the apparent prejudgment of the cross-ownership rules and one complained about the role of private equity in broadcast ownership. Both decisions are also interesting in their treatment of complicated ownership structures and, at least under this administration, evidence the Commission's desire to stay out of second guessing these structures.