Monty Tayloe

The 2021 nationwide emergency alert system and wireless emergency alert tests appeared to go smoothly in some places but faced reception and transmission difficulties elsewhere, according to anecdotal evidence and early reports from EAS officials. Numerous stations that received their EAS feed from iHeart subsidiary Premiere Radio Networks broadcast a message without an audio alert, several State Emergency Communications Committee chairs told us. “It didn’t go very well,” said Kansas SECC Chair Roy Baum. Reception of the opt-in only WEA test appeared to be inconsistent, but it’s difficult to know if those who didn’t get the message had their phones correctly configured to do so, said Alaska SECC Chair Dennis Bookey.

Gray Television said the FCC’s $518,000 notice of apparent liability against it last month (see 2107070066) creates a new rule against affiliation sales without notice and impermissibly regulates the broadcaster’s content choices. The comments came in Gray’s 55-page NAL response filed Monday. The FCC’s notice was 10 pages.

Automotive advertising could take a while to recover from vehicle supply shortages and may never return to the prior position as a category, said broadcast executives in Q2 calls last week. “We don’t see it getting back” to being 25% of Nexstar’s ad business, said Chief Operating Officer Tom Carter. This was echoed by Gray Television co-CEO Pat LaPlatney and others.

The FCC will continue to allow employees to telework “at least” through September, acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told reporters Thursday afternoon and in an email sent to staff Thursday that we obtained. The FCC submitted a reentry plan to the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force last month, but the rise of the delta variant of COVID-19 caused the agency to “reassess,” Rosenworcel said.

CEO Chris Ripley criticized the market’s valuation of Sinclair and touted its planned direct-to-consumer sports offering, but said little about ATSC 3.0 progress, on a Q2 call Wednesday. When Sinclair's assets beyond stations and regional sports networks are considered, the stock should be worth double the current price, said Ripley. “It is becoming painfully obvious the market doesn’t understand Sinclair.” Shares closed 4.1% higher Wednesday at $29.43. The additional assets include a stake in gambling company Bally’s and Sinclair’s licensed spectrum, which Ripley valued at $1.7 billion based on the prices from the broadcast incentive auction. Sinclair’s DTC sports service is to launch in the first half of 2022 and gives the company the opportunity to create a “metaverse” around sports, Ripley said. Sinclair is well-positioned for the service because it owns a panoply of sports rights and its many channels give it access to a large potential subscriber base, he said. The rise of DTC sports offerings and consolidation among the RSNs have “just massive industrial logic,” Ripley said. Sinclair is pursuing financing for the project. It expects any “cannibalization” of MVPD subs from the DTC offering will be “low,” said the CEO. The service is expected to appeal to “a younger cohort,” he said. It would allow targeted advertising and other revenue opportunities around sports gambling, Ripley said. If 5% of RSN customers also subscribe to the app, that's 4.4 million households -- a "very achievable” number, he said. Sinclair launched 3.0 through July in 17 cities, including Baltimore, Grand Rapids and Little Rock, said the company. Total ad revenue for Q2 was $491 million, up 109% from a year earlier, due to the general recovery of the ad market from the pandemic and the resumption of professional sports, said Chief Financial Officer Lucy Rutishauser.

Large indoor industry conventions will be high-risk situations if the ongoing rise of the delta variant of COVID-19 continues, said infectious disease doctors in interviews. Further complicating matters, they said it's unclear what the landscape of variants and vaccinations will be by October's NAB Show and Incompas Show.

A draft NPRM on largely administrative changes to broadcast political advertising rules isn’t considered controversial and will likely be unanimously approved at or before commissioners' Aug. 5 meeting, said FCC officials and broadcast attorneys in interviews. The draft seeks comment on proposals to formalize policies about filing political ad information that the Media Bureau had long conveyed to licensees informally, attorneys said. “Some of it was already required, so I’m not sure that it makes much of a difference,” said Fletcher Heald's Anne Crump.

A Florida broadcaster asked a federal court to prevent the FCC from auctioning his FM construction permit in the ongoing Auction 109, arguing it owed him extra time to complete his construction permit in 2014 after it reinstated a previous definition of an eligible entity in 2016. “The plaintiff’s construction permit will be wrongfully auctioned off to a third party bidder,” said the complaint (docket 1:21-CV-02050) filed in U.S. District Court In Washington Thursday by William Johnson, managing member of Florida-based Urban One Broadcasting Network. The company doesn’t appear to be connected to Maryland-based broadcaster Urban One, but neither company nor Johnson responded to requests for comment. Johnson’s filing lists him as representing himself. The complaint repeatedly warns the auction will start imminently and is dated July 24, but Pacer records it as having been filed Thursday. Auction 109 started Tuesday (see 2106030078). Johnson argued his company qualifies as an eligible entity under the revenue-based eligible entity definition, and he should have had additional time to complete construction on an FM station in 2013. Instead, the agency ruled the permit expired in 2014, the complaint said. Johnson filed petitions for stay in 2016 and a petition for declaratory ruling in June, after the Supreme Court’s Prometheus reinstated the eligible entity definition. Auctioning his permit will do “irreparable injury,” the filing said. Johnson wants the court to issue an injunction against the auction, order the FCC to withdraw the permit from the auction, and to act on Johnson’s pending filings. The agency didn't comment.

The full FCC voted to impose a per station penalty of $512,228 against 14 broadcasters and a reduced $30,000 penalty against another over violations of good faith negotiation rules in retransmission consent negotiations with AT&T and subsidiary DirecTV. The 4-0 heavily redacted forfeiture order was released Wednesday afternoon.

DOJ will require Gray Television to divest stations to Byron Allen’s Allen Media as a condition of approving Gray’s proposed $925 million buy of Quincy Media, an arrangement that mirrors the divestiture plan Gray announced in April (see 2104290067). DOJ’s announcement Wednesday is likely a sign that the Quincy acquisition will close in the coming days, said an informed broadcast lawyer. “Without the required divestitures, Gray’s acquisition of Quincy threatens significant competitive harm to cable and satellite TV subscribers and small businesses that advertise on broadcast television,” said Antitrust Division acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Powers. DOJ filed a civil antitrust suit alongside its proposed settlement in U.S. District Court in Washington. Without the divestiture plan, the transaction “would enable Gray to blackout more Big Four stations simultaneously” in the overlapping markets “than either Gray or Quincy could blackout independently today,” DOJ said. Powers said the divestitures are “a complete resolution” of DOJ’s concerns and praised the broadcasters involved as acting in “good faith.” The 10 divestitures involve seven markets: KVOA Tucson; WKOW Madison, Wisconsin; WSIL-TV Harrisburg, Illinois, and its satellite station KPOB-TV Poplar Bluff, Missouri; KWWL Waterloo, Iowa; Wisconsin's WXOW La Crosse and satellite WQOW Eau Claire; Wisconsin's WAOW Wasau and satellite WMOW Crandon; and WREX Rockford, Illinois. Neither Gray nor Allen Media commented Wednesday. Gray said in April the arrangement was intended to facilitate regulatory approval of the Quincy deal, which will send 11 stations to Gray. The divestitures don’t include the CW and MeTV programming streams broadcast on the digital subchannels of the stations, the DOJ proposed final judgment said. “Defendants’ retention of those CW and MeTV programming streams will not prevent the divestiture buyer from operating the Divestiture Stations as viable, independent competitors.”