Multichannel News

Writers Guild of America, West, President Christopher Keyser, will tell the Senate antitrust subcommittee on June 24 that the proposed AT&T/DirecTV merger "threatens the progress of our most vital communication platforms and will stifle the creativity, independence and innovation enabled by online video."

The merger will inevitably lead to collusion on price, choice and service, he said, cannot be mitigated by conditions, is not in the public interest, and should be blocked. Keyser said that was coming from a group representing more than 8,000 TV and movie writers.

"The writers whom I represent have experienced two decades of consolidation, which has reduced a once vibrant market of independent producers to one in which seven companies control almost all of television," he said in written testimony for a Senate antitrust subcommittee hearing on the deal.

Mike White, president of DirecTV, says its merger with AT&T is all about competitive bundles, faster broadband, and being more competitive with cable.

That is according to his testimony for hearings in the House and Senate Antitrust subcommittees June 24. White and AT&T Chairman Randall Stevenson were preparing to take turns pitching the deal as witnesses for both hearings.

White points out that cable ads point to his company's lack of an Internet offering and cable's speed advantages. And while DirecTV plays up other advantages of satellite in its now-famous marionette ads about the lack of wires, White was conceding the disadvantages and saying DirecTV must adapt--or in this case be adopted by a broadband player like AT&T. He said consumers are increasingly demanding bundles (although at least one media research analyst--Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson, suggested what consumers really want are discounts).

"We must offer our own integrated bundles if we hope to meet this new consumer demand," he said. He also said it was "enormously" important to be able to prove over-the-top video, as well as improve its linear video given all the services and extras cable operators can offer.

The Minority Media & Telecommunications Council supports Prometheus's challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's media ownership decision and has asked the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to allow it to intervene in support of Prometheus.

Prometheus, among other things, takes issue with the fact that the FCC has yet to comply with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals' order to justify or modify the FCC's method of boosting minority ownership, or propose new measures to do so.

In deciding to combine the 2010 and 2014 congressionally mandated media ownership, the FCC deferred a decision on the minority issues.

"Taken together, we believe that Commission’s failure to address minority and women ownership as being “outside the scope of this proceeding” is clear error, and its continued “kicking the can down the road” on issues of media ownership by minorities and women is indefensible.”

The Senate's markup of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act will have to wait for another day. It was scheduled to be marked up on June 19, but was held over at the request of a Republican, according to a committee spokesperson.

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association said that the Federal Communications Commission's latest broadband speed test -- conducted in cooperation with major Internet service providers (ISPs)/NCTA members," helps to refute the unsubstantiated allegations that cable operators routinely under-deliver and are solely responsible for any deficiencies in the performance experienced by consumers."

According to legislators and others, a bill protecting e-mail privacy has enough votes to pass in the House if it is brought up for a vote. The Email Privacy Act has 218 co-sponsors, according to the Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Microsoft, Google and eBay, as well as Dish, Aereo, Sprint and T-Mobile.

Reps Kevin Yoder (R-KS) and Jared Polis (D-CO) are lead sponsors on the bill, which would change the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to require a warrant before ISP's would have to disclose the contents of e-mail communications.

“This bill would finally offer email, social messaging and other cloud-stored data the same protection as files stored inside someone’s home," said CCIA president Ed Black. "If the government agency wants to obtain cloud-stored data, it would need to go before a judge and get a warrant for that search.” "With 218 representatives backing H.R. 1852, the bipartisan 'Email Privacy Act,' the House of Representatives should seize the opportunity to pass legislation that takes a meaningful step in addressing concerns that Americans have about law enforcement access to their data," said the Information Technology Industry Council.

Rentrak has made a few key changes regarding the terms it uses to describe its TV measurement services.

Rather than continuing to refer to its national and local television measurement services as “census-like,” Rentrak will now describe those services as “Rentrak Local” and “Rentrak National,” respectively.

The terminology change comes after consultation with the Media Rating Council, which claimed that "census like" was not an accurate way to describe the TV measurement services Rentrak offers. The company's theatrical film and video-on-demand (VOD) measurement services will remain defined as "census-like."

The House Judiciary Committee has approved a bill that would make permanent the moratorium on Internet access taxes and multiple discriminatory online taxes.

The vote was 30 to 4 on the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (HR 3086), and followed the defeat of an amendment proposed by ranking member John Conyers (D-MI), that would have simply extended the moratorium another four years, and removed a provision eliminating the grandfathered taxes of seven states who had those access taxes in place before the 1998 passage of the initial moratorium.

Several Democrats argued that a permanent ban was favoring the broadband sector, was a violation of states' rights, and did not allow Congress the flexibility to review the ban periodically to see if it was still necessarily, given that it was passed when the Internet was a fledgling. They also pointed out that removing the grandfather clause could mean hundreds of millions of lost revenues in those seven states -- including over $300 million in Texas alone -- which would mean states would turn elsewhere for the money, impacting other sectors.

Bill backers countered that the grandfather clause had been a way to give those states time to transition to other sources of revenue, and they had had 16 years to do so. Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), argued that the Internet’s ubiquity was even more reason to insure that an ISP tax did not threaten its continued growth and prosperity.

In the wake of recent deals with Winston-Salem and Durham, Raleigh is the latest North Carolina city to ratify an agreement that clears AT&T to deploy “U-verse with GigaPower,” the telecommunications company’s fiber-based, 1-Gbps-capable platform.

Like the earlier deals, the one with Raleigh comes way of AT&T’s discussions with the North Carolina Next Generation Network (NCNGN), an initiative comprised of six cities, four universities, and local business leaders, that’s aimed at stimulating deployment of next-gen broadband networks in the state.

AT&T said the plan, like those others in NC, “outlines potential fiber deployments…to parts of Raleigh,” though the telco has not yet defines which parts will get access to GigaPower.

The House Judiciary Committee on June 18 is marking up the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act. As its name suggests, the bill would permanently extend a ban on local and state Internet taxes that dates from 1998.

A bipartisan group of House committee and subcommittee chairmen and ranking members had introduced the bill in September 2013. It is backed by cable and telecommunications Internet service providers (ISPs). As its name implies, it would make permanent the current 1998 law that placed a moratorium on state and local governments' ability to tax Internet access or levy multiple taxes on e-commerce.

“The House Judiciary Committee is taking the first step tomorrow morning to avoid new Internet access taxes on millions of Americans across the country," said Annabelle Canning, executive director of the Internet Tax Freedom Coalition. "The markup is the first step of many to ensure consumers, students, and small businesses are not burdened with new taxes on Internet access that could be as high as double the national sales tax rate. We applaud their efforts and hope the Senate will follow suit in moving a companion bill prior to the August recess to ensure Congress extends the Internet tax moratorium before it expires on November 1.”