To the Editor: Recently, the FCC proposed a new rule that would have affected all TV stations, including broadcast and cable channels, owned and operated by ATVA. The proposed rule is designed to reduce the amount that broadcasters pay for spectrum licenses.
Under the proposed rule, the amount that broadcasters pay in fees for channels that are not purchased through an affiliate has been decreased. In an effort to reduce the possibility of stations being “over-regulated,” the FCC has proposed a 3. 7 percent reduction in licenses. The proposed rule would apply to the broadcast networks, cable stations, and some broadcast stations that broadcast programming on a cable system. The FCC also proposed lowering the minimum fees that broadcasters would have to pay for licenses.
The FCC has acknowledged that the proposed rule would affect some stations, but not all. ATVA has not indicated that it will oppose the proposed rule. After considering the comments submitted below, the FCC has decided to approve the proposed rule.
We are very pleased that ATVA has been included in the application of the proposed regulations. ATVA is already in the broadcasting business, and we welcome its inclusion in this discussion. In recognition of ATVA’s long history in the broadcast industry, we feel that this new regulation will have broad implications for ATVA’s operations.
The proposed rules are intended to address potential abuses in an increasingly competitive process for selecting the frequency bands and channels for the broadcast networks that is currently governed by the Commission’s Broadcast Spectrum Policy. The new rule will not significantly change the existing process, but is intended to help the Commission to better regulate the industry.
ATVA has a long history in the community of broadcasting, and we believe the Commission has taken the time to examine the proposed rules. However, we are aware that a significant number of broadcast media companies and their affiliates will not feel comfortable with this proposed rule. Because ATVA’s broadcasting operations are already in the broadcast industry, we stand behind our proposed rules. We will also continue to work with the FCC to develop additional rules that will better protect the quality of broadcasting in America.
AmeriVita Capital, Inc.
FCC recommends bailing out half a million dollars for violation of local ownership rules.
Article Title: FCC recommends bailing out half a million dollars for violation of local ownership rules | Programming.
Recommended Action: The Office of the General Counsel recommends that the FCC follow the decision of the Commission to bail out a local phone company in its violation of local ownership rules, an important local phone company, in order to avoid interfering with the ability of local phone companies to compete. The Commission’s decision to bail out a company with a history of substantial illegal political contributions has not caused harm to local phone companies in specific areas and may actually benefit them.
Local phone companies have for decades had the burden of complying with the FCC’s requirements for local phone companies (FCC Policy Requirement #1). This means that when a local phone company fails to pay a local franchise fee required as part of the Commission’s policy requirements for local phone companies, the failure can affect a number of local phone companies, although no single failure is likely to have any substantial adverse impact. It is, therefore, recommended that the Board of Commissioners of the FCC consider providing relief to a number of local phone companies that have failed to meet the policy compliance requirements in order to help promote the interests of local phone companies and avoid the burdensome requirements for compliance that the policy-specific requirements impose.
The reason for our recommendation is that the Commission should follow the decision by the FCC in its decision in New York Telephone Co. 00-723, where the Commission determined that it should bail out a local phone company in order to avoid interfering with the ability of a local phone company to compete.
In New York Telephone, a number of local phone companies (including the local phone company that was cited) were required to provide an accounting of political contributions in order to receive approval to transfer their local telephone franchise to another party. The proposed buyer had only received approval to transfer if it could satisfactorily demonstrate that the local telephone companies had made no contributions and had not made political contributions in the aggregate.
The proposed buyer offered to pay the franchise fee for the local companies that complied, but the FCC rejected this plan because those local phone companies that did not comply would have been unable to operate in the marketplace.
ATVA and the FCC.
Article Title: ATVA and the FCC | Programming.
The FCC’s decision to eliminate the ATVA program at the urging of broadcasters will increase the FCC’s reliance on voluntary licensing schemes and put a new class of broadcasters in serious jeopardy.
ATVA has been in place in a very limited way since 1992. For anyone not connected to the entertainment industry, that might sound like “the days of the dinosaurs”—or maybe it’s the days of modern-day dinosaurs. Whatever the case, ATVA was the first incentive program in the US to reward participation in “free-swinging” local programming, and it worked. And it did so in a way that required the participation of a relatively small amount of broadcasters, broadcasters that have long had the most to gain and the greatest incentives to participate.
The FCC’s decision to eliminate ATVA has caused major shifts in the distribution of broadcasting, with most of the industry’s major broadcasters either pulling their programming and production units away from the FCC, or being forced to do so by regulatory directives from agencies other than the FCC.
Because the FCC did not eliminate ATVA, it has replaced it with a program that has the same goal as ATVA but is much more limited in its reach. The ATVA-like program, which is referred to as an “enhanced ATVA”, was designed to support and reward broadcasters who participate in “free-swinging” programming. It would, in essence, provide a similar benefit to broadcasters to participate in “free-swinging” programming, which is basically all the programming that broadcasters currently air as part of the “revenues”.
ATVA and the enhanced ATVA program have their differences, but they are similar in many ways (at the very least, both are designed to increase the incentive and participation of broadcasters by requiring that they participate more in “free-swinging” programming). Both programs are designed to be “pay-for-performance” schemes, and they operate under very different legal regimes. The ATVA program is designed to be “public interest”, while the enhanced ATVA program is primarily designed to be “private interest”.
ATVA and the FCC.
Article Title: ATVA and the FCC | Programming.
The United States of America—as represented by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—have taken an unprecedented step. A decade ago, the US government took the unprecedented step of issuing an Open Meetings Act (OMA) Policy Statement in direct response to a report delivered by the Institute for Policy Studies/Committee on Economic Analysis (IPA/CEA) on what the FCC would do to prevent and remedy the practice of public meetings. Specifically, the IOPA/CEA found that meetings, regardless of format, take place for two (2) main purposes: to present technical information for consideration at meetings, or, to bring government officials to meet with the members of the public in order to inform them of government programs, plans, or policies. Because meetings have been used to advance some harmful program development, the IOPA/CEA concluded that the FCC must take steps to put an end to meetings as a result.
The OMA Policy Statement requires the FCC to adopt a set of open meetings laws to address the ongoing problem of meetings in the United States. The Commission is now working out a series of regulations that will help to ensure that meetings not only serve an effective public information mission, but also do not jeopardize public safety or public health. The FCC has been preparing to finalize the regulations for consultation with Congress. The FCC will submit its proposed rules and regulations for review to Congress over the next few weeks.
The agency’s proposed regulations represent a new direction away from the OMA Policy Statement. They provide the FCC with the resources necessary for meeting the needs of its mission to deliver technical information and to inform the public of the FCC’s programs and policies. As outlined in the Commission’s proposed open meetings rules, members of Congress will have the opportunity to review the rules prior to final adoption later this year. They will also have the opportunity to comment on the rules and to submit written suggestions for changes. Congress and the public will also have the opportunity to comment on any final rules, as well as on what additional steps are needed once the rules are adopted.
In addition to adopting the open meetings rules, the Commission plans to implement a number of other changes to the proposed rules that may help to make the rules more effective.
Tips of the Day in Programming
In Part II of my series on programming, we examined the problem of how compiler optimizations work under the hood. But there’s a deeper mystery in the implementation of some compiler optimizations, and that’s the issue of why certain compiler optimizations aren’t carried over from one compiler version to the next. It also touches on some other important issues, like why sometimes certain optimizations are carried over from one version of a compiler to the next, and why one particular optimization may work better on one compiler than it does on another one.
I’ll leave it to you to explore some of these issues on your own. I’ll just say that you should always be cautious when you’re trying to use a compiler‘s optimization, since there are many cases where not all optimizations are equivalent.
To find out which optimizations are carried over from one compiler version to the next, you’ll want to use the information in the Optimizer Performance Analyzer. This tool is great because it gives you a pretty good idea of how much optimizations are carried over from one version to the next.
Spread the loveTo the Editor: Recently, the FCC proposed a new rule that would have affected all TV stations, including broadcast and cable channels, owned and operated by ATVA. The proposed rule is designed to reduce the amount that broadcasters pay for spectrum licenses. Under the proposed rule, the amount that broadcasters pay in fees…
