It’s “still too early” for the U.K. government to start the countdown toward a hard switchover from analog to digital radio, Ed Vaizey, the U.K. minister for culture and the digital economy, told the annual Drive to Digital conference Friday at BBC headquarters in London. “It might be right in a couple of years,” Vaizey said. “We are making really good progress, and 2017 now looks very likely for a time when whatever government is in power can take stock and set a timetable.” In late 2013, Vaizey laid out his conditions for starting a countdown toward a digital switchover, saying most radio listening in the U.K. needs to be digital, and that digital transmitter coverage has to match that of FM. Digital listening now stands at 38 percent and both the BBC and commercial radio stations are building more transmitters, partly with funding from the government and partly by the broadcasters, Vaizey said. “It’s a difficult and complex process,” Vaizey said of building digital transmitter coverage. The BBC is now at 95 percent coverage and should be at 97 percent by the end of this year, he said. However, the commercial and local networks still offer significantly less coverage, he said. Two-thirds of all new cars in the U.K. now come with a factory-installed digital radio, compared with 4 percent only five years ago, Vaizey said. “So we are now closer to the goal of radio switchover. But converting the existing ‘park’ of analog cars and trucks remains a challenge.” On the thorny issue of continuing to allow the sale of analog-only radios, Vaizey said: “It’s controversial and retailers who know their customers don’t want to push them away from products they want to buy. I want this to be driven by the customers. If radios can get both analogue and digital I want it to seem ridiculous not to buy a radio with digital.”

The FCC Enforcement Bureau denied Pacific Empire Radio's petition for reconsideration and upheld its forfeiture order of $25,000 for multiple violations of the public inspection file requirements, the bureau said in an opinion and order included in Monday's Daily Digest. Pacific Empire Radio “willfully and repeatedly” violated Section 73.3526 of the rules, the bureau said. The commission indicated the importance of the public file rules by recently requiring the online posting of TV broadcast licensees’ public files (see 1502060061) “to ensure greater access by the public” and proposing the extension of this requirement to broadcast radio licensees, cable and satellite-TV operators and satellite radio licensees, the bureau said. Pacific Empire Radio didn't comment.

The FCC should extend the comment deadlines for its proceeding on expanding the definition of a multichannel video programming distributor to include some over-the-top video services, NAB said. Comments are due Feb. 17, replies March 4, but NAB wants comments due March 19, replies April 3. NAB “will need more than the currently allotted time” to analyze “a variety of complex public policy, legal and regulatory matters” connected with the proceeding, the association said Friday in docket 14-261.

With the end of the AWS-3 auction, the upcoming incentive auction will be costlier, panelists at a spectrum conference sponsored by PwC said Thursday. It’s unclear how that will affect broadcasters on the reverse side of the upcoming incentive auction, said Eric Wolf, vice president of technology strategy and management at the Public Broadcasting Service. “There will be a lot more demand for spectrum,” said John Hane, a Pillsbury communications lawyer. “Another view is the AWS-3 auction is fundamentally different from the 600 MHz auction. AWS was a fairly straightforward auction -- people knew what they were bidding on. The 600 auction is very complex, even on the forward side of the auction.” The industry has “essentially forced consumers to stitch together the services that they want,” Wolf said. It can disaggregate and break up service from infrastructure, Hane said. He said he’s optimistic that ATSC 3.0 will be adopted. The “3.0 will make it a lot easier,” said John Lawson, principal of Convergence Services. “It seems like it’s happening, but there’s no structure to make these devices interoperable. We’re still in this scenario with silos.” Wolf said, “Don’t think about it as how many dollars per hertz or bits you can extract. Think about it as how can you help the consumer?” The FCC should be thinking of the consumer, too, and beyond the dollars, he said. “By 2025, I see the FCC trying to auction the T-band,” said Mike Gravino, director of the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition. “I see a constant struggle between the wireless industry and broadcast industry, even though we want to be the same, a struggle over this bandwidth.”

The FCC Enforcement Bureau refused to reduce or cancel a $20,000 penalty for General Communication Inc. (GCI) for failing to keep an antenna structure properly lit in Fairbanks, Alaska, the bureau said in a forfeiture order Wednesday. The bureau fined GCI for failing to monitor the obstruction lighting, maintain a functioning alarm system and notify the Federal Aviation Administration of the light outage, in violation of the rules, it said. GCI didn’t comment.

CEA’s “R4.0” Video Systems standards development committee formed a new working group (R4WG18) on receivers for the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast DTV standard, ATSC said Monday in its monthly newsletter. R4WG18 is co-chaired by Martin Freeman of Samsung and Peter Shintani of Sony, and its charter “is to develop standards, recommended practices and technical reports on receiver guidelines, profiles and characteristics in support of the ATSC 3.0 emission standard,” ATSC said. “A fast-track liaison process has been established between ATSC and CEA for the two-way exchange of important information between the two standards development organizations,” ATSC said. The point men on the liaison will be Paul Thomsen, a technology adviser to CEA, and Rich Chernock of Triveni Digital, who chairs the ATSC’s "TG3" technology group that’s leading the ATSC 3.0 development effort.

Nexstar Broadcasting bought digital video advertising company Yashi for $33 million, the acquirer said in a news release Monday. Yashi owns a proprietary platform for digital advertising that integrates “geographic, demographic, and other data-driven targeting tools with real-time-bidding,” Nexstar said. The deal “substantially broadens and diversifies Nexstar’s digital media portfolio” with businesses that are complementary to a focus on “multi-platform marketing solutions for local and national advertisers,” it said. Yashi will operate as a division of Nexstar.

The Media Bureau seeks comment on a petition asking the FCC to rule that broadcasters can’t use last in first out pricing against political candidates, said a public notice Thursday. It seeks comment on “whether the practice of stations of deciding that particular classes of advertising time are effectively sold out discriminates against candidates -- as candidates routinely buy their advertising time late in an election cycle,” said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford in a blog post Friday. In the 45 days before a primary election or 60 days before a general election, stations can’t charge more than the lowest price charged for the same class and amount of time to the station’s best commercial advertiser for that same class of advertising time, the PN said. The notice is a response to a petition filed in September by Canal Partners Media, which wants the FCC to issue a declaratory ruling that broadcasters must treat political candidates as being the first-in advertiser regardless of when the candidate purchased airtime, the PN said. Comments are due March 2, replies March 17.

Class A and full-power TV licensees have until May 29 to have their facilities licensed for them to be protected in the post-incentive auction repacking, said the FCC Media Bureau Wednesday night in a public notice. The pre-auction licensing deadline is also the deadline for licensees to modify their licenses to fix errors made in providing the FCC with operating parameters, and to have those modifications protected in the repacking, the PN said. Along with protection in the repacking, the licensing deadline also determines what stations can participate in the incentive auction, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Davina Sashkin on the law firm’s blog. ”What you have licensed (or have filed a license for) as of May 29, 2015 is what will be eligible for the auction, should you choose to participate.”

Level 3 Communications will provide video transport and end-to-end on-net services to NBC Sports and the NFL for Sunday's Super Bowl XLIX and related programming, using its Vyvx VenueNet+ technology, it said in a news release Tuesday. Level 3 will also carry pre- and postgame feeds to NFL operations centers, broadcast networks and satellite teleport sites, it said.