Independent TV network Veria Living has begun to air significant concerns about the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal, CEO Eric Sherman told us. He met in Washington with Justice Department officials March 10 and Democratic and Republican staff from the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday. “This was not a courtesy meeting,” Sherman said of the hour-long Justice conversation, a sentiment he repeated about his meeting in the Dirksen building with congressional staff that lasted about as long. Justice had several lawyers at the table and “a long list of questions,” he added. “They were very serious.” Sherman advocated for the position of independent networks that provide original content, with grave concerns laid out about any Comcast/TWC deal and the resulting market power concentration that would follow. He urged against the deal unless there are “carefully worded conditions” applied to it, protecting independent networks, he said. “It’s a very scary situation.” Comcast has defended the proposed deal as good for consumers and argued it merits approval from Justice and the FCC. Congressional staff asked Sherman what a consent decree in the Comcast/TWC deal should look like, he said: “They asked us to suggest language.” Sherman has offered to testify at Senate Judiciary’s April 2 oversight hearing on the deal, slated for 10 a.m. in 226 Dirksen, whether just for Veria or potentially on behalf of independent networks overall. He also recounted a “chance meeting” with Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., on the first train ride into Washington. Franken, a Senate Judiciary member and critic of the deal, warned of Comcast’s lobbying power and influence in Washington and “was sympathetic” to Veria Living’s concerns, Sherman said. “We're definitely fighting an uphill battle here, but one we need to be fighting.” Both Justice and Senate Judiciary gave the impression of welcoming other meetings on these issues, Sherman said: “They were very anxious, ‘Send all your friends our way.'”

Comments on Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization were still coming in to the Senate Commerce Committee Tuesday. That committee’s Democratic and Republican leaders had last month asked for answers to several questions on STELA reauthorization, initially setting a deadline of Monday for responses. But snow in Washington caused the committee to postpone the deadline by one day, industry and committee officials said, and several filed Tuesday. Dish and DirecTV filed and released joint comments Monday (CD March 18 p8); other commenters include the American Cable Association, TiVo, the Washington Technology Project and Public Knowledge. Those comments have not been publicly posted. STELA will expire at the end of the year unless Congress reauthorizes it.

Senators should file campaign finance reports electronically, just as House members already do, said several McClatchy newspapers and the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) in editorials Sunday and a Monday news release (http://bit.ly/1gvyPS3). “It’s so easy,” said CRP. “It’s so effective. And, thanks to a bipartisan bill that’s been introduced in the Senate, it could easily become law.” CRP referred to the Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, which Sen. John Tester, D-Mont., introduced more than a year ago (http://bit.ly/OwjmuY). The bill has 30 Democratic cosponsors, six Republican cosponsors and two independent cosponsors.

Congress must establish a new Church Committee to tackle questions about government surveillance, said 16 former staffers associated with the first Church Committee established in the 1970s and named for its chairman Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, signing a Monday letter (http://bit.ly/OpaFmz) directed at Congress. It should “create a Church Committee for the 21st Century -- a special investigatory committee to undertake a thorough, and public, examination of current intelligence community practices affecting the rights of Americans and to make specific recommendations for future oversight and reform,” the letter said. “Such a committee would work in good faith with the president, hold public and private hearings, and be empowered to obtain documents.” Surveillance now “dwarfs” that of the ‘70s, they said. Signatories included former chief counsel Frederick Schwarz. At the start of last month, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced a resolution calling for such a select committee (http://bit.ly/1dh2gao).

Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mark Pryor, D-Ark., again committed to ensuring the FCC develops wireless 911 location accuracy standards. “Thanks to my calls for action, last month the FCC approved a notice of proposed rulemaking regarding 911 calls,” Pryor told emergency responders associated with the Find Me 911 Coalition at a Little Rock, Ark., fire station Monday, according to prepared remarks. “This is a good start, but our work’s not done yet. I'll continue to work closely with my colleagues and the FCC to ensure we address this problem. I won’t give up until our neighbors and friends are able to receive the help they need in times of emergency.” Pryor mentioned a recent subcommittee hearing he held on the topic and his urgings to the FCC that the agency act: “We want our 911 systems to receive accurate location data from all callers, regardless of whether those callers place the call from a landline or wireless phone, from a rural community or urban area, or from inside or outside of a building."

The House Small Business Subcommittee on Health and Technology plans a field hearing on “Expanding Broadband Access and Capabilities to Small Businesses in Rural New York.” The hearing will be at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Orleans County Legislature, 3 South Main St., in Albion, N.Y. The hearing will “examine access to broadband in rural communities and the role of the federal government in expanding these capabilities to small businesses,” the subcommittee said. Witnesses are NTCA Assistant General Counsel Jill Canfield; Kendra Lamb, owner of Lamb Farms, testifying for the New York Farm Bureau; Mark Meyerhofer, Time Warner Cable director-government relations for northeast and western New York; and Frontier Communications New York Manager-Government Relations Craig Miller. Subcommittee Chairman Chris Collins, R-N.Y., is leading the hearing. It won’t be streamed online, his spokesman told us.

The Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act should be permanently reauthorized and include major tweaks to the video marketplace, Dish and DirecTV told the Senate Commerce Committee leadership in a letter Monday. Democratic and Republican committee leadership had asked several questions of industry in February, requesting responses no later than Monday. These two companies asked for several changes to STELA, which expires at the end of 2014 unless it’s reauthorized. Congress should ban “joint sales agreements and other collusive methods used by broadcasters” and authorize the FCC “to impose baseball-style arbitration and a standstill so the programming stays up while the parties arbitrate their dispute; or, alternatively, permitting the importation of distant signals during retransmission consent disputes,” they said, also urging Congress to prevent broadcasters from blocking online content to broadcast subscribers of multichannel video programming distributors during disputes. Encourage broadcast programming to be unbundled at both wholesale and retail levels, they added. “Broadcasters abuse their retransmission consent rights during negotiations, using brinksmanship tactics and blackouts to extract ever-greater fees from MVPDs, with no end in sight,” Dish and DirecTV said in a 94-page response, much devoted to appendices. “Blackouts happen when companies like DIRECTV and DISH try to fight back and reject broadcasters’ unreasonable price demands, which often involve rate increases of several hundred percent. Retransmission consent fees raised $758 million for broadcasters in 2009. They hit $3.3 billion in 2013. They are expected to reach $7.6 billion in 2019.” They said retrans blackouts increased by a thousand percent since Congress had passed STELA, which they called “the perfect vehicle” for making video marketplace changes. Broadcasters have long argued for a clean reauthorization of STELA that doesn’t include such broad changes to the video marketplace. Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., had introduced the Consumer Choice in Online Video Act, S-1680, last fall, and the committee leadership asked whether its elements should be considered as part of STELA reauthorization. Dish and DirecTV noted “beneficial” provisions in the bill, but “several provisions appear to impose additional, unwarranted regulation on MVPDs,” the two companies said. “One such provision would prohibit many exclusive arrangements -- even those between distributors without market power and unaffiliated programmers.” STELA must pass through the Commerce and Judiciary committees in both chambers, and the House Communications Subcommittee leadership released its first draft of legislation earlier this month.

Senators actively concerned about rural call completion issues have yet to sign on to legislation on the issue. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., introduced a bill Thursday that targets intermediate providers and would compel basic service quality standards (CD March 14 p7). S-2125, the Public Safety and Economic Security Communications Act, lists zero co-sponsors, but Senate Commerce Committee ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., who have both voiced strong concerns about rural call completion problems, expressed some receptivity to Johnson’s action. “Call completion is an ongoing problem in rural America, and the FCC is in the middle of an effort to resolve the issue by adopting recording, retention, and reporting requirements for long distance carriers to address problems with completing calls to rural areas,” Thune told us in a statement. “The FCC has also engaged in some enforcement actions on call completion, which I would like to see increase. I have made a point to reiterate these concerns personally with each of the FCC Commissioners who have agreed to step up enforcement actions, but should these efforts not prove to be effective in reducing the call completion problem within a reasonable time, I think it may be appropriate to take legislative action.” A spokeswoman for Fischer cited Fischer’s involvement in a resolution on call completion issues with Johnson and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., which passed the Commerce Committee last summer and awaits Senate action. “Senator Fischer’s focus remains on getting this resolution passed and is pleased to see Senator Johnson remains a committed partner in efforts to address these challenges,” the spokeswoman said. A spokeswoman for Klobuchar did not comment. Johnson’s bill has been referred to the Commerce Committee. NARUC state regulators “applaud Sen. Johnson for introducing legislation to address call completion problems that have plagued rural America for the last several years,” said NARUC President Colette Honorable in a statement. “NARUC has adopted multiple resolutions calling for action while several State commissions have moved to investigate and act on intrastate call-completion issues. While the FCC has proposed changes and is collecting data to better monitor the situation, this legislation would be a significant step forward in eliminating the problem.” The FCC has taken several actions recently on rural call completion, an agency spokesman said. (See separate report in this issue.)

House Commerce Committee Republican leaders are not happy with how the FCC is handling TV station sharing agreements, most recently singling out the Media Bureau public notice Wednesday that it would apply extra scrutiny to the approval of such sharing agreements (CD March 14 p9). “Coming on the heels of the House’s overwhelming bipartisan approval of the FCC Process Reform Act Monday evening, the FCC Media Bureau’s action not only flies in the face of reform, it reveals an alarming disregard for process,” said Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., in a statement Thursday. “This effort raises questions about Chairman [Tom] Wheeler’s stated commitment to process reform. This end-run around the full commission is a step back for transparency and reform.” Walden inserted language into his draft legislation of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act that would prevent the FCC from making sharing agreements attributable until the agency completes its quadrennial review. “On the [joint sales agreements], the FCC needs to follow the law,” Walden told reporters following a subcommittee hearing Wednesday. “For the life of me, I don’t understand why they can’t follow the law and finish their quadrennial review.” The agency is “disrupting a marketplace dealing with an issue that really has to deal with ownership,” Walden added. “The quadrennial review is about ownership. What we're saying is, ‘Do your job, follow the law before you go out there and picking and choosing on the JSA issue that could have enormous disruption.'"

A top Senate Democrat has gone after a billing aggregator with a subpoena over concerns about wireless bill cramming. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., issued the subpoena Thursday to Los Angeles-based Mobile Messenger, he said in a Friday news release (http://1.usa.gov/1krgieS). Rockefeller had requested information from Mobile Messenger in March 2013 and followed up on that request last November. “Unfortunately, one year after my March 2013 request, major gaps remain in Mobile Messenger’s response,” Rockefeller told what seems to be the former Mobile Messenger CEO Michael Iaccarino in a letter accompanying the subpoena. “You failed to respond to my request to identify your third-party vendors, their officers, other names under which these companies may have done business, and the total charges you helped these companies place on consumer bills.” Iaccarino has not led Mobile Messenger since 2011, according to his biography on Infogroup’s website, where he’s listed as chairman and CEO of that company (http://bit.ly/1gxq4rk). Rockefeller has addressed at least three letters to Iaccarino, listing him as the CEO of Mobile Messenger, in the last year. Rockefeller Thursday complained of heavily redacted contracts with carriers that the company had supplied. These redactions “impede” committee staff from reviewing “basic contract terms,” he said. Mobile Messenger had provided a detailed letter last May, but a case brought by the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott in November against Mobile Messenger and five third-party vendors “raised serious questions,” said Rockefeller. The Texas AG in a November court document attacked Mobile Messenger as being “involved in virtually all aspects of the [premium short messaging services]PSMS program, orchestrating and facilitating the entire deceptive scheme,” which involved the placement of “unauthorized, misleading, and deceptive PSMS charges on consumers’ mobile phone bills, a practice commonly referred to as cramming,” it said (http://bit.ly/1gjppZO). Rockefeller’s subpoena calls for “information including the identity of Mobile Messenger’s third-party vendors and the amount they have charged consumers, consumer complaints received by the company, and unredacted contracts with carriers,” and “communications related to the cramming scheme alleged in the Texas Attorney General’s action,” the news release said. Mobile Messenger and Iaccarino didn’t comment, and Rockefeller’s office didn’t immediately respond to a query on whether Iaccarino still leads the company.