The draft market competition report doesn’t sufficiently spell out the level of competition radio faces, Connoisseur Media filed Thursday in FCC docket 18-227. The report doesn’t include statistics showing a decline in radio ownership or enough information on competition over advertising between radio and online providers, the radio-station owner said. “Contrary to the implications of the draft Report, there are no longer silos between over-the-air, satellite and online audio offerings.”
Ion wants the FCC to change the DTV table of allotments to alter the community of license for its WPXH-TV from Gadsden to Hoover, Alabama, said a petition for rulemaking posted Tuesday. Hoover “is a much larger community than Gadsden and the reallotment would provide the larger community of Hoover with its first local full-power television service,” the company said. Ion also asked to change the community of license for WNPX-TV Cookeville, Tennessee, to Franklin for the same reason.
The FCC posted an online guide to rescanning TV sets for consumers affected by the post-incentive auction repacking. “If you watch free over-the-air television with an antenna, you will need to rescan your TV set each time a station moves to a new frequency to be sure your TV recognizes the new frequency when you tune to that channel,” the page says. Though the agency has other online rescanning guides, the new page was released to coincide with the beginning of repacking's phase 2, which began Saturday.
Scripps completed its $150 million purchase of Triton, Scripps said Monday. The deal for the audio streaming and advertisements insertion provider was announced Oct. 17 (see 1810170037). All of Triton's 145 employees will remain (see the personals section), a Scripps spokesperson told us.
IHeartMedia creditors support the radio broadcaster’s bankruptcy reorganization plan, the company announced Monday of the 90 percent-plus of the votes by creditors and shareholders who participated. Yes votes exceeded the amount needed, it said: The reorganization will reduce iHeart’s funded debt by “approximately $10.3 billion -- to $5.75 billion” and separate the company’s radio and outdoor advertising businesses. “Final voting results will be filed with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, prior to the hearing to confirm the Plan,” the release said. The company expects to exit Chapter 11 in early 2019.
Comparing their goal to the same local targeting capabilities TV broadcasters will see from ATSC 3.0, radio technology interests met with an aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and with Media Bureau representatives to push for an NPRM for an update of radio rules. The sought-after FM booster rule change was subject of a 2012 Geo Broadcast petition for hyperlocalized broadcast content like advertisements or weather. The company and others pushed geo technology for simultaneous transmission of different content to different parts of a station's license area through a network of synchronous boosters. They noted field test results that indicate it wouldn't require amending or waiving interference regulations. Also represented were BIA Advisory Services and Goldman Engineering, said the docket 17-105 post Friday.
FCC commissioners dismissed a “petition for clarification” by the Daytona Beach Broadcasting Association appealing orders dismissing the association’s appeals of FCC rejection of a low-power construction permit (see 1808010067), said an order in Thursday’s Daily Digest. The FCC treated the petition for clarification as an informal reconsideration petition and rejected it as “untimely.” The FCC directed the Media Bureau to summarily dismiss future pleadings from DBBA on the matter: “The Commission and Bureau have spoken clearly and uniformly with regard to the matters DBBA raised in this proceeding and determined that DBBA failed to timely file a covering license application and that reinstatement of the Permit is not warranted.”
The FCC Enforcement Bureau is creating an online portal for public safety and commercial entities to report interference issues, Field Director Charles Cooper said Thursday in an FCBA presentation. The “interference portal” will make it easier to report such complaints, and is expected to go online by Q1, Cooper said. Much of the bureau’s work on interference complaints involves public safety frequencies, many of them Coast Guard emergency frequencies, he said. The bureau gives public safety issues highest priority, Cooper said.
Eliminating rules requiring licensees publish application notices in local newspapers will lead to information being disseminated less widely and to less transparency, said the Public Notice Resource Center and the National Newspaper Association in a Nov. 13 meeting with the FCC Media Bureau, said a filing posted in docket 17-264 Wednesday. “Requiring licensees to publish notices in local newspapers is the only present mechanism preventing them from conducting the entire process largely outside of public view." Under current rules, notices are posted online and in newspapers, since most papers post notices from their print edition on the web, the groups said. “If providing increased notice to the public via the internet is one of the goals of the Commission’s 'media modernization' efforts, eliminating newspaper notice is clearly not the way to do it.”
NAB lobbied again for its proposal the FCC make a slight change to the national TV-station ownership cap, posted Monday evening in docket 17-318 on a Nov. 21 meeting between NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan and Matthew Berry, chief of staff to Chairman Ajit Pai. Preserve the 39 percent cap and give all TV stations a 50 percent discount, similar to the current UHF discount but applying to both UHF and VHFs, NAB said. “The premise underlying the national audience reach cap -- that stations reach all the TV households in the [designated market areas] in which they are located -- is a fiction.” The proposal to “account for both UHF and VHF stations at half their theoretical audience reach still overstates their actual marketplace reach,” NAB said. The record doesn’t show any harms caused by the current cap, NAB said. Several mid-size broadcasters seek a 50 percent cap advanced Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcast want a total removal of the cap. No cap move is expected in what remains of 2018 (see 1811010041), as the agency apparently hasn't acted because there’s not enough industry consensus behind any recommendation.