"Futurecast,” the technology that LG, Zenith Labs and GatesAir submitted to the Advanced TV Systems Committee as their proposal for the “guts” of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system (CD April 9 p15), will be showcased in a demonstration in the wee hours of Oct. 22 in Madison, Wisconsin, at Quincy Broadcasting’s WKOW, Futurecast’s backers said Friday. WKOW will transmit Futurecast-modulated advanced TV signals to specially designed receivers, but Futurecast transmissions can’t be received by current DTV products, and the station will be able to transmit Futurecast only from 1 to 4 a.m. that day, they said. As one of the proposed ATSC 3.0 physical layer technologies, Futurecast’s “flexible parameters allow broadcasters to mix diverse services within a single RF channel with maximum efficiency,” the backers said. Next-gen broadcasting services enabled by Futurecast “range from deep indoor handheld reception to high-speed mobile reception to Ultra HDTV for the ultimate home entertainment experience, all within a single 6 MHz TV channel,” they said.

Not putting a cap on the amount of population served that a broadcaster can lose as a result of the incentive auction repacking “would be a plain violation of the Spectrum Act,” said NAB in a meeting with FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Oct. 7, according to an ex parte filing posted online Friday in docket 12-268 (http://bit.ly/1yWXSgi). FCC predictions that TV stations after the auction will receive no more than 2 percent interference are “underestimates” NAB said. “For some reason, the staff elected not to take into account that more than half of all stations will move, and thus arrived at a smaller per station percentage,” said NAB. If the commission stands by that figure, it should institute a 2 percent cap, NAB said, though NAB has previously asked for a 1 percent cap, the ex parte filing said. The FCC should “foster confidence” among broadcasters by “providing them the certainty they need through capping the amount of new losses in population served they can receive,” NAB said.

Android Wear smartphone owners will soon be able to control music from the iHeartRadio streaming app from their wrists, iHeartMedia said Thursday. Users who sync an Android Wear smartphone -- including the Samsung Gear Live, Moto 360 and LG G Watch -- with a compatible Android phone will be able to access the iHeartRadio app via voice activation, iHeartMedia said. Features that will be available through Android Wear integration, effective Oct. 15, include voice search, access to favorites, customized recommendations and a thumbs up/thumbs down feature, the company said. IHeartRadio also has announced integrations with Amazon’s Fire Phone, Amazon’s Fire TV, Android Auto, Apple’s CarPlay, Chromecast, Qualcomm’s AllPlay, Samsung’s Gear 2 Smartwatch and auto partnerships with AT&T Drive, General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia, Subaru and Volvo, iHeartMedia said.

A waiver of newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership (NBCO) rules was granted to Fox Television Stations by the FCC Media Bureau without considerations of the many objections filed against it and will last long after the commission completes its 2014 quadrennial review, said the United Church of Christ (UCC) and Rainbow PUSH Coalition (RPC), represented by the Institute for Public Representation and Free Press in an application for review filed Wednesday. The temporary waiver (http://bit.ly/1uwy44J) was granted in August (CD Aug 11 p14) to allow Fox to continue to own WWOR-TV Secaucus, New Jersey, and the New York Post, in spite of an extant petition to deny from UCC and RPC and petition for reconsideration from Free Press, said Wednesday’s application for review. By denying the petitions against the waiver without any analysis or discussion, the bureau failed to follow its own policies, the application said. Granting the waiver also violates “longstanding Commission policy of not granting waivers of the NBCO rule because of the pendency of a rulemaking proceeding,” it said. “Because the Bureau has effectively overruled a key Commission ownership rule even though it lacks the authority to do so, the Commission should reverse the Bureau’s decision to grant Fox a contingent waiver.” Fox declined to comment.

Fox Television Stations (FTS) acquired Bay Area stations KTVU Oakland and KICU-TV San Jose as part of a swap agreement with Cox Media Group (CMG), FTS said in a release. “With the addition of the San Francisco-Bay area stations, FTS now includes duopolies in seven of the top 10 U.S. markets,” FTS said. In exchange for the newly acquired stations, FTS transferred to CMG two owned-and-operated stations, WHBQ-TV Memphis and WFXT Boston, the release said. Both stations will remain Fox affiliates.

The Copyright Royalty Board should “start anew” in setting licensing fees for broadcast radio streaming services so the rates reflect a “willing buyer and willing seller” standard, said NAB in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/ZRpxjB). The CRB requested comments on rates and terms for webcasting statutory licenses to be set for Jan. 1, 2016 to Dec. 31, 2020. The comments were due Tuesday. Because many broadcasters don’t make money from streaming services, a “significant rate reset is necessary so that streaming can be a viable business that will allow broadcasters to provide streaming services to the audiences that rely on them and benefit from them,” said NAB in comments (http://bit.ly/1vRoFH6). “SoundExchange is seeking an increase in the per-performance rate, as well as a rate structure that requires services to pay the greater of that per-performance rate or a flat percentage of revenue,” it said in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1yNGzOS). “Streaming is becoming the preferred path to access music, and webcasting rates must reflect this market and economic reality,” said SoundExchange CEO Michael Huppe in the release.

The FCC Media Bureau dismissed in part and denied in part an application for review by Beach TV, formerly The Atlanta Channel, concerning its Class A station WTHC Atlanta. The Atlanta Channel filed the review application after the bureau dismissed the station’s statement of eligibility for Class A TV status, the bureau said in an order (http://bit.ly/1ndgy6e). The petition repeats arguments the FCC already has considered and relies on new arguments “that either could have been raised earlier or fail to establish any material error or omission in the order on review,” the bureau said. The channel’s statement included no certifications on whether WTHC met any of the Class A programming and operational qualification requirements, and “no explanation as to how it was eligible for Class A status under the alternative public interest standard,” it said. The bureau rejected the channel’s claims, including that failure to grant Class A eligibility would result in an “impermissible taking” and that the FCC improperly relied on the finding that the station wasn’t continuously in compliance with the rules applicable to full-power stations.

The FCC Media Bureau admonished KOB-TV for violations of rules on commercial content in children’s TV shows and its website address rules at three of its stations in New Mexico, said an order released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1xmh3vt). KOB Albuquerque and satellite stations KOBF Farmington and KOBR Roswell displayed the website www.lazytown.com during the closing credits of the kids’ program, LazyTown, the order said. “While the commercial matter may have been inserted into the program by the Stations’ television network (NBC Network) or programming source (Sprout), this does not relieve the Stations of responsibility for the violations.”

The FCC Media Bureau proposed a $16,000 fine against Studio 51 Multi Media Productions, licensee of WMNO Bucyrus, Ohio, said a notice of apparent liability released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1vLap1T). WMNO filed a license renewal application late, operated without a license after its authorization expired, late-filed children’s TV reports for eight quarters, didn’t report the late filings in its renewal application, and didn’t file its 2011 biennial report “in a timely manner,” the NAL said.

Despite FCC release of market-by-market price estimates for broadcaster licenses, it’s unlikely that “strategic commercial broadcasters” will participate “meaningfully” in the incentive auction, said Wells Fargo in an “Incentive Auction Guide” emailed to investors Tuesday. That’s because the estimates are “highly variable” and could be too high, Wells Fargo said. Though there are stations in smaller and mid-sized markets “where the spectrum value perhaps could exceed enterprise value,” the auction’s unclear tax implications could be “a complicating factor for those broadcasters that have a large capital gain,” Wells Fargo said. The AT&T-based $1.50 per MHz POP estimate used to make the estimates is a “reasonable assumption,” but the amount of spectrum changing hands in the FCC model is “optimistic at this point,” Wells Fargo said. Wells Fargo said “$45 billion is a fairly hefty number for what is essentially a four player world (five, if we include DISH).” The lack of certainty about broadcast participation makes it hard to predict how much wireless companies could spend in the auction, a problem exacerbated by possible auction delays that could be caused by the court challenges to the auction from NAB and Sinclair, Wells Fargo said. “It is difficult to predict the financial flexibility of all four carriers two years from now, given the changing competitive dynamics."