The FCC should require Sinclair to provide more information about its relationships with the companies it's divesting in connection with the deal to buy Tribune, said the American Cable Association in a letter to the FCC filed in docket 17-179 Thursday. ACA opposes Sinclair/Tribune. The letter accuses Sinclair of withholding more than 250 documents about continuing agreements and disclosures connected with its divestitures. “At least some of those documents appear to contemplate an ongoing commercial relationship between Sinclair and the divested station’s new owner or to give Sinclair rights to purchase certain stations in the future,” ACA said. The FCC shouldn't let Sinclair “hide the ball in this manner,” ACA said. “No one knows what arrangements have been reached in any of these documents, and Sinclair has unilaterally decided the Commission need not review them.” The FCC can't allow the merger to proceed without examining the documents because of its unprecedented size, ACA said. The agency already has gone to “extraordinary lengths” to “defend itself from charges of partiality,” ACA said, citing a recent blog post by Commissioner Mike O'Rielly (see 1805220034). If Sinclair's arrangements with divestiture partners allow for joint retransmission consent negotiations “they would increase the already considerable harm the transaction will cause,” ACA said.

Class A licensee L4 Media agreed to a $50,000 settlement with the FCC Media Bureau over public file violations going back 16 quarters, said an order and consent decree released Wednesday. The violations, which included failing to keep and file quarterly issues/program lists and children’s TV reports, occurred at L4’s Class A KBXS-CD Shreveport, Louisiana. The station also initially failed to respond to bureau queries about the missing filings, the order said. Under the consent decree, KBXS’s license will be renewed until 2021.

CBS amended its lawsuit against controlling shareholder National Amusements Inc. to include the CBS board’s vote to dilute NAI’s stock and NAI’s amendment of the rules governing the board (see 1805180054), said an amended complaint filed at the Delaware Court of Chancery Wednesday. NAI head Shari Redstone “threatened to impose her and NAI’s will on the Company at the expense of all of the Company’s stockholders,” CBS said. The amended complaint urges the court to affirm the vote to dilute NAI’s shares and declare as invalid NAI’s amendments to bylaws to stop that dilution. CBS is also seeking an injunction preventing NAI, Redstone and affiliated parties from trying to interfere with the composition of the CBS board.

The FCC Media and Wireless bureaus received 19 complete applications for upcoming auction of 15-year-old mutually exclusive FM translator construction permits, said a public notice Wednesday. The permits in the June 21 auction -- called Auction 83 -- are those with interference conflicts that couldn’t be resolved after a 2003 filing window and have been stalled ever since (see 1801170031). The bureaus also received 11 incomplete applications, which must be resolved by May 31, the PN said. Twenty-five other applications have been disqualified for not updating their information in time, the PN said. Upfront payments for the auction are also due May 31.

Urban One will buy assets of WTEM (AM) Washington from Red Zebra Broadcasting, owned by the Washington Redskins, the parent Radio One said in an SEC filing Tuesday. Urban One reached agreement with the Redskins to broadcast all the team’s games on the station. Salem Media separately will sell KGBI(FM) Omaha to the University of Northwestern-St. Paul, Salem said in a release. Both transactions require FCC approval.

The FCC Media Bureau wants Sinclair and its prospective purchase partner Tribune to provide information on the merger’s proposed top-four duopolies “for the Commission to review the applications and make the necessary public interest finding,” said Chief Michelle Carey in a letter to the broadcasters posted Tuesday in docket 17-179. The letter was issued along with Monday’s public notice calling for comments on amendments to the deal (see 1805210056). The bureau wants the broadcasters to provide numbers on retrans revenue, retrans fees, advertising revenue and Nielsen ratings data for the St. Louis and Indianapolis designated market areas, the markets where Sinclair seeks to own top-four duopolies. “Cheers to @FCC for now seeking some retrans data/info from Sinclair in markets where company could obtain a duopoly,” tweeted American Cable Association Senior Vice President Ross Lieberman. ACA has opposed the Sinclair deal over its projected effect on retrans rates. The agency chose “NOT to request such data in its last formal request (Sept. '17),” Lieberman said.

The repacking won’t be finished till 2023 to 2025, and the FCC should allow broadcasters to receive repacking reimbursement payments beyond 2020, said tower company Stainless in a letter posted Monday. “Strict adherence to the existing timeline runs a substantial and, we think, untenable risk of giving short shrift to appropriate workforce development and the necessary and concomitant focus on safety.” Fewer than 40 high-power antennas “are on their Repack frequency or ready to broadcast,” Stainless said. Five percent of the stations that need to be repacked have done so, the company said. Many broadcasters may make the deadline only by employing “interim solutions,” it said. The “key variable” affecting the timeline is the difficulty of increasing and training tower crews that are prepared to do the kind of work needed in the repacking, Stainless said. It cited fatal tower incidents connected with the repacking -- in Missouri (see 1804190063) and Florida (see 1803270044) -- as demonstrating need for training and more time for stations. “Does it make sense for a professional tower contractor to ‘ramp-up’ for a short-term deployment strategy with limited resources and carry the burden of added financial risk?” asked the letter.

In an increasingly crowded streaming music space, there’s a “lot of room for many players to grow,” said Pandora Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra at a JPMorgan Chase investor conference Thursday. Pandora is looking for its growth from its advertising-supported business where it's investing heavily in technology and in ways to retain listeners and acquire new ones, said Chopra. That’s a departure from recent efforts under previous management to steer business toward the $9.99-per-month Premium model. User and listener hours fell some 5 percent in Q1, less than in previous quarters, and Chopra said the number “churning out” hasn’t changed much over the past 12-18 months. Recapturing previous users is “the cheapest thing to do” as they likely have the same email and app, but the company now plans to spend more to acquire new listeners to “turn around the trajectory” on monthly average users, the CFO said: “We’re definitely in the mode of let’s spend, let’s fail fast, let’s figure out what works, what doesn’t work and then just keep" on going.

The FCC Media Bureau rejected a Kentucky market modification petition from Gray Television seeking satellite carriage for WYMT-TV Hazard and WKYT-TV Lexington, due to technical and economic infeasibility and the stations being “duplicating network affiliates,” said an order in Thursday's Daily Digest. Dish Network and DirecTV carry WKYT, and adding WYMT “would circumvent the carriers’ right not to carry a duplicating network affiliate,” the bureau said. “We understand and acknowledge the desire for local programming by the residents of eastern Kentucky, as evidenced by more than 2,000 commenters that support the Petition,” the bureau said. “Unfortunately, the request pending before us simply is not permitted under the statutory scheme.”

The FCC should set the national ownership cap to 50 percent, eliminate the UHF discount and grandfather pre-existing combinations, said a filing posted Thursday in docket 17-318 from a host of TV station owners, including Gray Television, Hearst Television, Raycom and Scripps. Those actions have the best chance of letting broadcasters remain competitive, “a reasonable balance among the competing interests,” the broadcasters said. To facilitate local journalism, broadcasters “must be free to combine television, radio, print, and digital online assets in whatever fashion makes business sense to serve discrete local markets,” they said. The companies commissioned an economic study saying a 50 percent cap “would be an appropriate and reasoned exercise” of FCC discretion. A decision in favor of a 50 percent cap based on economic arguments “ought to receive deference from a reviewing court,” the station owners said. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit appeared to question FCC rationale for restoring the UHF discount in oral argument last month (see 1804200059). “The Commission should rest its decision on the need to allow for increased economies of scale and scope and the need to safeguard localism,” the broadcasters said. The UHF discount is “an anachronism” that “can no longer be justified,” they said. “It ought to be eliminated.”