Washington Watch

Powerhouse Washington law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr has tapped two veteran media lawyers to build a media-policy practice.

The firm, which successfully defended the 2002 campaign-finance-reform law before the Supreme Court, is actually best-known for securities and white-collar defense and intellectual-property and antitrust work. Now the firm wants to lure broadcast, cable and other media clients.

Former FCC General Counsel John Rogovin and ex-NAB General Counsel Jack Goodman will specialize in media law within the firm's communications and e-commerce practice. Currently, the practice's main clients are telephone companies.

Rogovin and Goodman's first assignment is to help the firm's Bell telephone clients Verizon and SBC navigate regulatory hurdles in front of their entry into the video-delivery business, but part of their charge is to recruit new broadcast and cable clients, too. “John and I hope to bring in more media-policy work,” says Goodman, who joined the firm six weeks ago. He was an NAB lawyer for 14 years. Rogovin served as FCC deputy general counsel and then general counsel from 2001 to 2005.

In his first public appearance since becoming acting president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Ken Ferree took some swipes at commercial broadcasters for offering up the programming equivalent of “fried foods and desserts.”

Non-profit broadcasters, he told a gathering of public-radio execs in Washington, offer a nutritious alternative.

“Profit-motivated, commercial media is very good at providing high-fat, low-nutrition programming [that] consumers rush to in their weaker moments,” said Ferree, who is making an earnest effort to define himself and his goals for CPB amid doubts about his commitment to public broadcasting and concerns that CPB leadership is pushing its programming to the political right.

Ferree, COO and acting president CPB since the departure of Kathleen Cox four weeks ago, denies there's an agenda to turn public stations into right-wing mouthpieces as has been suggested by Common Cause, Consumers Union and Free Press. Nevertheless, he defended a move to include more conservative voices on stations supported in part by taxpayer dollars. “I'd urge you to think seriously about diversity of opinion,” he said. “CPB, funded as it is with taxpayer dollars and guided as it is by statutory language, has special responsibilities to strive toward objectivity and balance. Our goal should be to expand and enlighten public discourse; offering a wide range of views is one way to do that.”

To alleviate Washington concerns that digital-TV buying is a nightmare, RCA has teamed with the publisher of the Dummies how-to series. The goal is to help decipher options and technical jargon that many in the industry think is scaring set buyers away from digital-TV purchases. The pocket-sizeHDTV Buying Tips for Dummies is designed to be an “an easy-to-understand primer” on common DTV connections, how to receive programming, the various display formats, and display-technology options. The Dummies series already includes a book on HDTV, but the pocket guide will be distributed by consumer-electronics retailers.

FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein isn't ready to join critics who want to make cable operators offer family-themed tiers or “à la carte” channels to protect children from inappropriate programming.

In a speech to cable-industry public-relations executives, he said cable should do more to explain how those options could drive up consumers' costs or eliminate choice by driving weaker channels out of business. “It's easy to say you shouldn't pay for channels you don't want, but the other side … deserves consideration.” Adelstein said he's not against either family tiers or à la carte but the impact on costs and viability of lower-rated channels “are counterweights that ought to be considered.”

He made his comments before the annual Washington conference of the Cable Television Public Affairs Association. The cable industry's plan to spend $250 million on a public-affairs campaign to educate parents about channel-blocking technology is “fantastic,” Adelstein said.

As cable rolls out telephone service to more local markets, the biggest operator has hired a lobbyist to handle state legislatures and regulators.

Comcast has hired Richard Schollmann, previously president of the Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association, to help the company win state approvals to roll out local telephone service and make the case against phone companies' bid for local franchise rules that would ease their entry into video service.