IHeartMedia created and launched a programmatic and automated advertising buying platform for its broadcast radio stations, it said in a news release Wednesday. It's powered by cloud-platform provider Jelli, iHeartMedia said. The platform will let iHeartMedia offer ad inventory to advertisers and agencies interested in improving the buying process and reducing administrative delays, it said. Through the platform, iHeartMedia will use data sets to target ads, including music-based psychographic groups, weather and traffic patterns, purchase behavior and other trends, it said. IHeartMedia said its Katz Media Group, a national sales firm representing radio broadcasters, also launched Expressway from Katz, a programmatic buying ad exchange for radio, using the same technology.

Time Warner Cable deployed converged cable access platforms for both data and video in the New York City market, making it the first cable operator to do so, said a blog post from Ronald Da Silva, vice president-network engineering, architecture and technology, on TWC's website Wednesday. The company is continuing to transmit digital video over cable using older technologies as well, he said. CCAP will minimize TWC's use of power, space and facilities, Da Silva said.

Technicolor teamed with Sinclair to successfully demonstrate the world's first live broadcast transmission of Ultra HD with high dynamic range using technologies that have been proposed for ATSC 3.0, the companies said Thursday in a joint statement. The series of broadcasts, integrated into Sinclair's experimental OFDM transmission system and transmitted under real-world conditions outside a lab, delivered "high-quality" HDR content broadcast at HD and 4K/UHD resolutions in a single-layer with backward-compatible standard dynamic range, they said. Both HDR and legacy devices, including fixed-position TVs and mobile devices, “were all able to receive and display the broadcast signal,” they said. "We're building a path toward new broadcast TV services that are appropriate for UHD and HDR," said Vince Pizzica, Technicolor senior executive vice president-corporate development and technology. "We're excited to reach the first milestone in our testing of real-world, challenging environments. This latest series of over-the-air tests confirms that Technicolor's HDR video solutions support broadcast at HD and 4K resolutions, as well as for standard dynamic range and mobile devices, presenting a whole new world of opportunities for broadcasters." Technicolor is a founding member of the UHD Alliance, which advocates open HDR standards, as is Dolby Labs, which has its proprietary Dolby Vision HDR system. Sinclair has advocated speedy deployment of a next-gen broadcast system, even if it’s a proprietary Sinclair system it thinks can reach market faster than ATSC 3.0 (see 1405080082).

Nexstar Broadcasting is expanding Tactive Digital's market reach by establishing offices in 18 markets, a Nexstar news release said. Tactive Digital is a digital marketing agency and division of Nexstar Broadcasting. Its initial service rollout will be in Hagerstown, Md./Washington, D.C.; Salt Lake City; Las Vegas; Jacksonville ; Memphis/Jackson; Fresno; Scranton/Wilkes-Barre; Little Rock; Green Bay; Springfield, Mo.; Rochester and Syracuse; Bloomington/Peoria and Champaign; Fayetteville, Ark.; Evansville, Ind.; and Lubbock and Wichita Falls, Tex., the release said.

CBS reached agreement with the CBS affiliate board for its digital subscription service, All Access, the network said Thursday. In a news release, CBS said it has secured early deals with a number of affiliate partners, including Dispatch, Graham Media, Gray, Hearst, Lilly Broadcasting, Meredith, Morgan Murphy, Morris Network, Neuhoff Media, Nexstar, Raycom and Withers, with more expected. The live linear feeds in many of the 12 affiliate groups' markets will begin rolling out this month, CBS said. The new option is a VOD and Nielsen-measured live streaming service, CBS said. It said the ability to live stream local CBS stations through CBS All Access is provided by Syncbak, in which CBS has a minority investment.

The FCC should consider new ways to combat "the scourge that is pirate radio" stations, Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said in a blog post Wednesday. The commission could offer broadcasters a new right to use the legal process to "go after" pirate stations and find violators, he said. This has been done outside spectrum policy, for combating email spam, he said. The NAB's Broadcast Leadership Training Program approach can be used to prepare underrepresented populations for ownership positions in broadcasting, he said. "Those truly interested in operating a legal broadcast station can seek to participate in the Commission’s July 2015 auction," where 131 FM construction permits will be made available, with many in smaller markets, he said. O'Rielly isn't advocating increased lawsuits or class action suits, or for allowing a station's listeners to file lawsuits, he said. A more targeted private right of action by broadcasters can combat pirate stations, he said. O'Rielly said he isn't discussing the commission's proposal to reorganize and close FCC field offices, which mentioned pirate radio, he said.

Sling TV will add HBO to its programming next week, Sling said in a news release Wednesday. Sling TV customers can access HBO's linear channel and on-demand content for $15, when they sign up for the $20 Best of Live TV core package, it said. With this addition, Sling TV will be the only streaming service that offers ESPN and HBO, it said.

Placing even a few TV stations in the wireless band would “dramatically affect” the amount of spectrum available in the forward auction, NAB told an aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a meeting Monday, according to an ex parte filing posted online in docket 12-252 Wednesday. “If the FCC places even a handful of stations in the wireless band, it may consequently be restricting the forward auction to two or three blocks of paired spectrum available in the Northeast corridor,” NAB said. The FCC also has made “broadcaster costs an after thought” in the repacking process, NAB said. The commission staff “has yet to produce any data suggesting that, by optimizing repacking moves earlier in the auction process, it will be handcuffed from its goal of repurposing spectrum for the wireless industry,” NAB said. The agency also should modify its white spaces rules to require white space devices to include “geolocation capability” to make falsifying their location more difficult and an enforcement system that “imposes responsibility on database administrators who fail to correct false information in the database,” NAB said.

EchoStar will become a shareholder in SmarDTV, a subsidiary of Kudelski Group that offers advanced set-top boxes and conditional access modules, EchoStar said in a news release Tuesday. EchoStar's operations in Steeton, U.K., and Madrid, Spain, will be transferred to SmarDTV, it said. SmarDTV will facilitate joint commercial activities and deliver consumer devices to TV broadcasting and broadband markets, it said. The devices, including conditional access modules, gateways and set-top boxes, will use Kudelski technologies for security, middleware and user experience, it said.

Noncommercial broadcasters in both TV and radio weighed in against an FCC proposal to issue FCC Registration Numbers (FRNs) that would allow users to be uniquely identified without using their full Social Security numbers, said comments filed in docket 07-294 Monday. The only support for the proposal came from a joint filing from a coalition of public interest groups including the United Church of Christ, Common Cause and the Prometheus Radio Project. The public interest groups said the proposal would enhance the FCC’s ability to collect the ownership data required to enact policies to increase diversity in broadcast ownership. “The broadcast ownership data must be accurate and comprehensive in order to accomplish the FCC’s goals of studying and analyzing ownership trends,” the joint filing said. The Association of Public Television Stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio and several organizations representing noncommercial college broadcasters said the proposal would be an outsized burden for noncommercial stations with boards of directors instead of owners. Requiring even partial SSNs and name and address information for those serving on NCE station boards would have “a significant negative impact” on stations’ ability to recruit volunteers for their licensee boards, a coalition of public broadcast licensees said. “Not only would the proposal not improve the quality, usability, and reliability of the Commission’s broadcast ownership data, it would in fact diminish those qualities in the data,” said a joint filing from APTS, CPB and NPR, pointing to the differences between commercial broadcast ownership and the nonprofit model. “Any policies introduced by the Commission to enhance the diversity of commercial station ownership based upon this data would almost certainly be misplaced in the context of public broadcasting,” the public broadcasters said. Prospective public broadcasting board members “do not have a financial interest in the station and many would not want to reveal private personal information as a consequence of volunteering to serve a community’s public service broadcaster,” the APTS joint filing said.