• B&C, Monday, January 4, 2010 10:05 PM

2010 is a busy media year, with the broadband plan impacting both broadcasting and cable (and virtually every other sector of the economy), media-ownership rules getting a vetting in the FCC and in the courts, network neutrality teed up, key court cases on content and network management, and perhaps even must-carry. Much of that action is front-loaded in January.

A federal shield law will be on the docket for early 2010. The satellite distant-signal license also lost out to the dwindling calendar, but will be back. Lawmakers will only have six weeks (until March 1) to get a bill completed or pass another extension.

Broadcasters will gather at the FCC on Jan. 12 for the year's first workshop on media-ownership rules, with hope for some movement by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. That court has given the FCC until Jan. 7 to state why it should not lift the stay on the commission's loosening of the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules.

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