MediaBiz

• Spectrum: The reallocation and re-purposing of spectrum envisioned in the State of the Union address was promoted today by the President in a speech at Northern Michigan U. in Marquette: $10.7B for interoperable 1st responder networks, $7B for building them and $3.2B to reallocate 700 MHz Block D spectrum and $500M for R&D; $5B for rural wireless broadband re-purposed from the USF; and $9.6B for deficit reduction. “Voluntary Incentive Auctions” would raise the money ... with a projected $27.8B “left over” after compensation for broadcasters and others was paid.

• Analyze This: AllThingsDigital reports Facebook - at a $60B valuation - is "exploring permitting a tender offer for a billion of employee shares here. --- Citadel’s Shing Yin has Verizon ‘neutral’ ... but suggests “rising smartphone penetration should drive higher wireless ARPU and (in the longer term) margins.” --- Lionsgate lost $6M, or -4¢/share compared y/y to -55¢/share, on revenues of $422.9M in Q3. --- Arris reported unaudited ’10 revenues of $1,087.5M compared to ’09’s $1,107.8M. --- As Cisco stock dropped in after hours trading yesterday, we wondered when the Federal budget cuts will impact more stocks ... and which ones? --- Alcatel-Lucent is back in the black thanks to US wireless buildouts and smartphone growth reporting Q4 net profit of $465M up more than 10X y/y. --- 140 = $10B? That’s the latest Twitter valuation rumor. Best line about that is Joe Flint in the LA Times this morning: “Ryan Leaf had a lot of potential too.” --- BCE’s Q4 net earnings were up 25.4% to C$439; wireless gross additions were 552.7K. --- Bloomberg reports News Corp will pay $125M to settle a suit over in-store ad wars. --- Macquarie’s Andrew Kim rates Scripps Networks Interactive ‘neutral’ but notes “solid” ’11 guidance. --- Bernstein Research’s Craig Moffett keeps Sprint at ‘underperform’ but does note, “ ... the company has at last achieved post-paid and total subscriber growth, customer service levels have improved, churn rates have been brought under control, and revenues were up 7.0% YoY.” The question, though, will Sprint dump WiMax for LTE? --- WSJ reports Google is "close to acquiring video site Next New Networks for tens of millions.

• Rules & Regs: The Association for Public Television Stations wants them to lobby against the 6 bills in Congress it says would kill or reduce public spending for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; details here. --- About that Nat’l Broadband Plan and all the grants: today, Eagle Comm. Prez Gary Shorman testified before the House Subcte. on Communications and Technology about the grant from RUS to Kansas’ Rural Telephone Service Co. (RTS) of $101M ... which will fund RTS’ planned overbuild of Eagle ... Shorman noted that, while the grant might fit the technical requirements of the Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP), it sure “violates the spirit and the intent of both Congress' Recovery Act broadband provisions and BIP’s own rules.” More on funding and fulfillment problems are coming; take a look at the Lake County, MN problems here. --- FCC will look at finalizing pole-attachment rules in April.

• Comment: Don’t underestimate Mark Rosenthal and Current TV.

• Folks: Former CT Sen. Christopher Dodd is the consensus front runner for the MPAA job.

• Online: Wealth TV has a number of its 3D titles now available via Roku.

• Heads-Up: Coming in the next edition of Fortune is an in-depth look at the Conan/Team Coco move from NBC to TBS and more; click here for Douglas Alden Warshaw’s Conan 2.0. There are real life media lessons in this.

• Programming: 3net - from Sony, IMAX and Discovery - will launch Sunday in 3D on DIRECTV. --- Allbritton’s channel 8 called TBD will be Newschannel 8 in DC again. --- Al Jazeera English is also available on GlobeCast’s World TV via DBS in the US; details here. --- The History Channel will “celebrate” the 150th anniversary of the start of the War Between the States with the documentaries Gettysburg and Lee & Grant. (Comment, not sure that ‘celebrate’ is the right word to recognize the start of any war.) --- Current TV says it wants to be the “real” reality channel.

• Up, Over & Down There: The News Corp phone hacking scandal is growing again in the UK.

• Mobile: The Verizon iPhone is now on sale ... so where are the lines? BTIG's Walt Piecyk took pix at the Apple store in SF ... no lines, no door and nobody at the Starbucks booth. --- Alcatel-Lucent’s new lightRadio architecture claims a 50% savings in total cost of ownership and energy use ... details in Telecompaper here.•