The FCC Media Bureau proposed a $3,000 fine for Lincoln Broadcasting's KTSF San Francisco for failing to identify children’s programming by displaying the “E/I” symbol on the television screen, a notice of apparent liability released Wednesday said. Lincoln had argued that because KTSF is all Korean language, uses programming that originates in Korea, and the Korean language doesn't use the Roman alphabet, the E/I symbol wouldn't make sense to its viewers. That doesn't relieve the station of its duty to comply with the rules, and the correct way to address the issue would have been through a waiver request, the NAL said.

A recent FCC notice identifying “tentative winners” among mutually exclusive low-power FM applicants means those applicants not selected have 90 days to find an open frequency, Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford said in a blog post Friday. “Broadcasters need to watch these amendments, as they could pose interference issues for full-power FM stations on channels not previously proposed for use by any LPFM applicant,” he said. Full-power stations also need to be vigilant “to make sure that none of these applications (or any amendments subsequently filed by these LPFM applicants) will cause interference to their operations,” Oxenford said.

ATSC is looking ahead to 2015 "with eager anticipation, tempered with a healthy dose of cautious optimism," as the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system approaches the status of a "candidate standard" in the months ahead, ATSC President Mark Richer said in a President's Memo in ATSC's monthly newsletter, published Friday. "The process is the process, and there will need to be some give and take" as ATSC's "TG3" technology group works to make the candidate standard a reality, Richer said. The ATSC board "is urging TG3 participants to keep their eye on the prize and quickly resolve issues that arise or find ways to move forward on a path toward resolution" as the candidate standard is finalized, he said. "The eyes of the world are on the ATSC and our disciplined, inclusive, open approach to standards-setting. As such, it’s crucial that the new standard both moves ahead expeditiously and meets the varied needs of broadcasters, manufacturers and viewers in the United States and around the world."

The FCC Media Bureau dismissed must-carry complaints from NRJ TV against DirecTV. NRJ TV argued that DirecTV’s alleged refusal to carry its UHF digital channels KUBE-TV Baytown, Texas, and KTNC-TV Concord, California, violated FCC rules. The bureau is satisfied that dismissing the complaints “will serve the public interest by promoting the private resolution of disputes and by eliminating the need for further litigation and the expenditure of further time and resources of the parties and this commission,” it said Monday in letters (here and here).

The FCC set a March 16 effective date for rules for the Closed Captioning Quality Order. Record maintenance for video programming distributors' monitoring and maintenance activities, procedures for informal complaints on use of the Electronic Newsroom Technique (ENT), compliance procedures relating to ENT, and other rules will take effect on that date, the commission said Monday in a public notice. The FCC approved the order this year (see 1402210039).

Media General completed the purchase of LIN Media, the acquirer said in a news release Friday. The FCC Media Bureau recently approved the $1.5 billion deal (see 1412120052).

Journal Broadcast Group and Dish Network reached a carriage agreement for Journal's stations in all of its markets. WTMJ-TV Milwaukee, WTVF Nashville, WFTX-TV Cape Coral, Florida, and other stations will remain on Dish's lineup, Journal said Thursday in a news release.

The FCC is seeking comment on its proposed changes to rules for broadcast licensee-conducted contests, in which website disclosure will suffice instead of the now-required reading of rules over the air. Comments are due Feb. 17, replies March 19, the commission said Friday in a Federal Registernotice. The FCC unanimously voted last month to issue an NPRM on allowing broadcast stations to inform viewers about the terms of contests over the Internet rather than over the air (see 1411210044).

The FCC Media Bureau dismissed a petition asking it to deny the license renewal of a radio station owned by Redskins football team owner Dan Snyder, the bureau said in an order Thursday. The name of the team, often broadcast on WWXX (FM) Buckland, Virginia, is an obscenity, said objections from John Banzhaf, Louis Grimaldi, Jay Nightwolf and Verona Iriarte. Though the objections were outside the deadline to be considered as petitions to deny, the bureau considered them on the merits as informal objections, the order said. “Redskins” isn’t a sexual or excretory term, and so doesn’t meet the definition of obscenity or profanity, the order said. Objectors also said the word was a racial epithet, but the FCC doesn’t regulate the use of such words, the order said. The FCC doesn’t consider such words profanity “given constitutional considerations,” the order said. The order also rejected arguments that the FCC should deny the renewal because broadcasting the word means Snyder doesn’t meet the character requirements to be a broadcaster. The FCC can’t “deny renewal of a broadcast license because particular words or programming broadcast by the licensee offended some viewers,” the order said. WWXX (FM)’s license has been renewed, the order said. FCC officials on the eighth floor weren’t notified of the decision and learned of it from news reports, one official told us. The petitioners are weighing different options, Banzhaf said. One option is to make an appeal or ask for reconsideration, “arguing that they’ve read our petition incorrectly,” he said. There also are additional station licenses coming up all the time so “we can now benefit from the staff’s position, and my colleagues and I can go back and see if we can come up with even more theories,” he said: “It’s going to take the commission to do it, and not the staff.” The bureau staff misinterpreted several claims, including one of the major claims that the unnecessary and repetitious use of the word causes harm, he said. “Somehow they twisted that to be only psychological harm, but it’s not.”

PMCM pushed back against CBS and Meredith Corp., saying they haven’t attempted to show that PMCM’s WJLP-TV Middletown Township, New Jersey, caused any problems by use of Virtual Channel 3.10. Meredith Corp. and CBS issued a joint opposition to PMCM’s application for review of FCC Media Bureau orders on the proper virtual major channel for WJLP. That opposition “is essentially non-responsive” to PMCM’s application, PMCM said in its response posted Friday in docket 14-150. “Their failure even to attempt some, any, rebuttal may be seen as an effective concession of the correctness of PMCM’s arguments.” CBS and Meredith Corp. also fail to mention there are no fewer than 105 situations, already in place for years, “in which non-commonly-owned stations with overlapping service areas use identical two-part virtual channel numbers” in apparent violation of the A/65 ATSC standard, PMCM said.