The FCC's changed broadcast contest rules took effect Feb. 12, the agency said in Friday's Federal Register. "This means that, among other things, stations are now able to post their contest rules on their websites and avoid the hassle of extended on-air announcements of those rules," said a blog post on the website of Fletcher Heald.
Gray Television completed its deal to buy all Shurz TV stations (see 1602120061), the buyer said in an SEC filing Tuesday.
Brands will be forced to shift advertising from TV to mobile devices, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield wrote investors Tuesday. Although must-watch live TV events such as sports and awards shows will continue to make a strong case for live TV, “The concept of flipping through channels and watching linear, live TV will fade away for most consumers,” Greenfield said. Shifting TV ad dollars away from TV networks to mobile will benefit platforms including Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, Greenfield said. Citing enthusiasm from CBS CEO Les Moonves' prediction last week of a “substantially higher” 2016 upfront ad-selling season, Greenfield said Moonves “appears to be in full-on denial." The analyst cited a comment from CBS Chief Operating Officer Joe Ianniello on an earnings call last week, where Ianniello said the network’s All Access viewing by millennials was a “really good promotional vehicle for the catch-up,” before “they start watching back at the network.” TV network executives “keep hoping an improved TV Everywhere product can help solve their live, linear ratings problem,” Greenfield said. “Forcing consumers to watch heavy, unskippable and often repetitive ad loads is only going to push consumers even faster toward binge viewing on ad-free platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu (in addition to HBO Now, Showtime and Starz).”
The “great future for television when it comes will be in high definition, high frequency color,” Zenith Radio Founder-CEO Eugene McDonald told Variety magazine in a letter that was 70 years old to the day Sunday that LG said Friday it had unearthed from the Zenith archives. “Television will one day be a great industry,” McDonald said in the Feb. 14, 1946, letter. “There is nothing wrong with it that money will not cure but it needs a box office,” said McDonald, who was 59 then. “The advertisers, in my opinion, do not have the kind of money it needs to supply appropriate acceptable programs in quantity that will be needed to make television a great industry,” said McDonald, who also founded NAB in 1922 and was its first president.
HDTV antenna retailer Mohu joined TVFreedom, the coalition of broadcasters and allies said in a news release Thursday. Mohu is the 30th member of TVFreedom, it said. TVFreedom's membership also includes the ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC TV affiliates associations, said its website.
The FCC Media Bureau approved Gray Television's $442.5 million buy of Schurz's stations, and some related waivers of the duopoly rule, said a letter posted online Friday. Gray had asked the bureau to allow an existing joint sales agreement involving a Wichita, Kansas, Schurz station to be grandfathered until 2025 as though it hadn't been transferred. The bureau denied that request as not being in the public interest. Instead, Gray has one year to unwind the JSA. The bureau did allow Gray to hold onto a duopoly of stations in Augusta, Georgia, with the condition that Gray must sell WAGT Augusta if its license isn't surrendered in the incentive auction. The bureau also granted a waiver to allow Gray to own two stations in the Cheyenne-Scottsbluff market in Nebraska, while one undergoes a community of license change proceeding to be moved into the Denver market. The bureau also granted a failing station waiver and a satellite exception.
Univision said it and Republican presidential contender Donald Trump settled litigation over the company's decision to stop broadcasting the Miss Universe and Miss USA beauty pageants. Terms weren't disclosed in a Univision news release Thursday, and Trump's company had no immediate comment. Trump and Univision CEO Randy Falco mentioned their yearslong business relationship in the statement. The broadcaster reportedly dropped the pageants last year over Trump's derogatory remarks about Mexicans.
Multichannel video programming distributors' complaining about retransmission consent matters doesn't reflect an unbalanced marketplace, merely "that they are finally feeling the pain that competition can bring," CBS CEO Leslie Moonves and other top executives told FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler and General Counsel Jonathan Sallet, according to a CBS ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 15-216. At the meeting, CBS said Moonves urged the FCC to end its consideration of changes to the totality of circumstances test of good faith negotiating, saying MVPDs will use the open proceedings as an excuse not to negotiate in good faith with broadcasters "in the hopes that the government will rescue them from an experience that is new to them: The rough and tumble of the marketplace." The only leverage broadcasters have is "desirable, high quality content," CBS said, saying broadcasters "should not be penalized or handicapped because they invest billions of dollars in creating and acquiring programming that MVPDs desire." Meanwhile, given broadcast and over-the-top distribution platforms, it said, "the content is never 'blacked out' completely." According to CBS, Moonves said the totality of circumstances proposals -- along with the FCC proposal regarding the network nonduplication and syndicated exclusivity rules -- will result in "precious agency resources [spent] in oversight and enforcement of negotiations that are best left to the marketplace."
PMCM plans to pursue its must-carry complaint against Time Warner Cable "until we are universally carried on Channel 3 throughout the New York market," CEO Robert McAllan said in an email Tuesday in response to a TWC opposition to the complaint in docket 16-27 (see 1602090043). McAllan said TWC's carriage of WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey, is problematic because it's carried only on its starter tier and not on every other tier like every other commercial station in New York. He also said TWC's program and system information protocol/over-the-air arguments in the opposition were inconsistent and "if PSIP is our 'channel' then the FCC has to deal with the pesky prohibition in the Spectrum Act that specifically prohibits involuntary changes in 'channels.’”
Starting March 31, stations can no longer use the Children's Television Online Filing System (KidVid) for filing or amending children's TV programming reports, and instead must use the FCC's Licensing and Management System (LMS), the agency said in a public notice Tuesday. The link to filing KidVid reports will be disabled, it said. The KidVid change is part of the FCC updating application filing systems, it said.