HC2 completed the $35 million sale of three full-power TV stations and one low-power TV translator to a company apparently associated with Weigel Broadcasting, according to an HC2 news release Monday and the FCC consolidated database system. HC2 said the deal was for translator KEJR-LD Phoenix and KAZD Dallas, KYAZ Houston and KMOH-TV Kingman, Arizona. The FCC database shows the buyer as TV-49, which shares the same Chicago address and president as Weigel. Proceeds will reduce HC2’s debt, the seller said. Weigel and HC2 didn’t comment.

The COVID-19 pandemic and lack of funding limited FCC implementation of the Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement (Pirate) Act, said the Enforcement Bureau in the agency’s first report to Congress under the statute (see 2012170060). Pirate radio investigations require field agents to “engage in significant, in-person activities to gather evidence,” and the agency has limited such investigations, the report said. It lists four enforcement actions against pirates in 2020. Implementing the act would also cost $11 million, which wasn’t appropriated, and the law didn’t exist when the FCC’s 2021 budget was created, EB reported. The act requires the FCC to do “sweeps” of markets with the most pirate activity and create a public database of licensed stations, but neither was done, it said. The agency has begun studying which markets the sweeps should cover, but doing them and developing the database won’t happen until funds are appropriated, EB said.

The FCC Media Bureau approved Estrella Broadcasting’s request for a declaratory ruling allowing it to be over 25% foreign owned, said an order Thursday. Estrella, formerly Liberman, requested the ruling in 2019 as part of a bankruptcy reorganization and was given the nod by NTIA in 2020. Under the bankruptcy reorganization, several interrelated companies, some of which are based in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, France and Canada, would hold partial interest in Estrella. France-based company Axa “would hold indirectly an aggregate equity interest and voting interest of approximately 24.25% in Estrella," the order said. Estrella’s petition didn’t receive substantive objections and was found to be in the public interest, the order said.

Thursday is the last day to access content from November’s SMPTE 2020 virtual conference, emailed the society Wednesday. Participants who complete the conference evaluation survey can qualify to win a $100 Amazon gift card, it said. Though the virtual meeting rooms within the exhibit booths are disabled, there’s still time to visit exhibitors, watch their videos, download resources and leave a message in the chat, it said.

Eleven TV stations in Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands will have their licenses expire Feb. 1 unless a renewal application is filed by midnight that day, said a public notice Wednesday. Among the affected stations are Nichols Broadcasting’s WEWA-LD Wewahitchka, Florida, and Caribbean Broadcasting's DWSJX-LP Aquadilla, Puerto Rico. The stations were required to file applications for license renewal Oct. 1, the PN said.

E.W. Scripps’ sale of WPIX New York to Nexstar sidecar Mission Broadcasting has closed, said Scripps in a news release Wednesday. Nexstar divested WPIX to Scripps as part of its buy of Tribune but kept an option to buy back WPIX. The option was to expire at the end of 2021. Nexstar assigned that option to Mission, which has now purchased the station. Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said on an investor call in 2019 that Nexstar's buying back WPIX would require a “triggering event” such as a rule change (see 1909200048). Scripps “intends to use cash from the sale to help finance the acquisition of ION Media,” said the release. That deal is expected to close in early 2021, the release said.

NAB hasn’t adequately explained the rule changes it seeks in a recent petition for rulemaking on clarifying ATSC 3.0 rules (see 2012280049), and the FCC should respond with a notice of inquiry rather than an NPRM, said the American Television Alliance in comments posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. “We are not sure that we fully grasp the parameters of NAB’s proposed rulemaking,” ATVA said. “We remain uncertain as to exactly what sort of arrangements and combinations NAB is asking the FCC to bless and cannot identify the public interest justification behind any such arrangements and combinations.” The NAB proposal could be read to allow broadcast stations to get around ownership and simulcast rules with different arrangements of ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 multicast streams, ATVA said. The proposal could create “a potential sea change in broadcast regulation,” which is why an NOI is the correct next step, ATVA said.

The FCC’s proposed rules for foreign-sponsored programming are too broad and threaten “to interfere with core First Amendment activities,” said NPR in comments posted Tuesday in docket 20-299 (see 2010260052). The NPRM “would appear to require everyone involved in funding, producing, acquiring, distributing and broadcasting programming” to research potential financial supporters and providers of content “on a routine basis no matter how innocuous the putative ‘sponsor,’” NPR said. The proposal assumes identifying foreign-sponsored content is easier than it really is and all foreign government-sponsored content is political, NPR said. It also should clarify that sponsor identification isn’t required “when a broadcaster exercises sole and independent editorial control” over content. “Unless expressly limited, these facets of the NPRM’s expanded sponsor identification obligation would pose significant obstacles to broadcasters like NPR,” the filing said. The agency should reconsider whether such rules are needed or limit their scope, NPR said.

Numerous broadcast interests backed NAB's petition to clarify how multicast streams of TV stations simulcasting in the ATSC 3.0 transition will be treated under FCC licensing rule (see 2011100067). Public TV participation in next-generation broadcasting has been hampered and public stations might not get all the public interest benefits of ATSC 3.0 due to a problem with the 2017 ATSC 3.0 order, PBS and America’s Public Television Stations said Monday in docket 16-142. Public stations shouldn't have to choose between continuing to broadcast their existing multicast streams and taking part in next-gen key deployments, they said, backing NAB's petition for clarification on multicast streams and simulcasting. Those NAB-sought clarifications are needed so stations can "allocate scarce spectrum resources to meet consumer demand" during the years of transitioning to ATSC 3.0, Gray Television said. It said if not by clarification, the FCC should establish by rulemaking that a station transitioning to ATSC 3.0 can partner with one or more stations to host its multicast channels in ATSC 1.0 even where it won't simulcast all of those channels on its ATSC 3.0 signal. Those also filing comments in recent days backing NAB included Graham, Pearl and E.W. Scripps.

Waiving the nine-year-old freeze on rulemaking petitions from full-power television stations requesting channel substitutions, the FCC Media Bureau granted Sander's petition to move KGW Portland, Oregon, from channel 8 to channel 26, says Monday's Federal Register. The bureau said the substitution "will permit the station to better serve its viewers, who have experienced reception problems with VHF channel 8."