Nexstar will buy video advertising infrastructure company LKQD Technologies for “approximately $90 million cash,” Nexstar announced Thursday. LKQD’s video advertising platform has “the largest reach in the US to viewers across digital devices,” about 115 million U.S. online video viewers over desktops, “mobile-web, mobile-app and connected TVs,” Nexstar said, letting the TV station owner's ad clients target customers. The deal is expected to close late in 2017 or Q1 2018.

FCC elimination of the main studio rule takes effect Jan. 8, according to a document to be in Friday's Federal Register. The order does away with the requirement stations keep a staffed main studio in their community of license. It was OK'd 3-2 at October's commissioners' meeting (see 1710240062).

Local TV will have the second-largest share of national local advertising revenue​ in 2018, said BIA/Kelsey in a news release on its forecast. Direct mail will be the largest share at 25 percent of the projected $151 billion market, but local TV will have 14 percent, or $20.8 billion, with mobile No. 3 at $19 billion. "The strong economy and the expectation of highly-competitive statewide political races next year reinforce our outlook that local advertising revenue will show strong growth in 2018 ... higher than we've seen for five years," said Mark Fratrik, chief economist. Local TV will continue to be the biggest component of the local video ad market, the firm said. “Revenue growth within the total local video advertising segment will come from local mobile video (growing to more than $1 billion) and local online video (increasing to more than $2 billion).” For the mobile ad market, geofencing, click-to-call and click-to-map and such will grow, with the category expanding more than 6 points to 19.2 percent by 2022, BIA said.

Correction: The effective date of an order letting Gray Television substitute Channel 7 for 5 for KYES-TV Anchorage would be Thursday, the planned day of publication of an FCC Federal Register correction (see 1711160016).

The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate joined an advisory committee for the Advanced Warning and Response Network, the AWARN Alliance said Wednesday. AWARN said the Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, National Weather Service and APCO remain on the committee. DHS will “leverage its social science and other expertise to help us design the most effective warning messages,” said alliance Executive Director John Lawson. The group will begin developing “an end-to-end AWARN technical solution” with input from the panel in 2018; a beta version is planned for 2019, it said.

Sinclair's buying Tribune is "a historic opportunity to advance minority ownership and diversity,” said minority-owned broadcaster Howard Stirk Holdings in a letter posted Wednesday in FCC docket 17-179. Howard Stirk is affiliated with Sinclair and has sharing arrangements with the broadcaster. Divestitures from the deal that may be required by DOJ or the FCC could provide ownership opportunities for prospective minority owners, the smaller company said. “It is critically important, however, that the Commission appreciate this unique opportunity and make clear that it would expeditiously review for approval any spin-off assignment to a minority owned entity.” Shared service agreements and joint sales agreements help minority broadcasters get access to capital, the filing said: The FCC “should do all it can” to insure the deal happens and “remove any impediments which might derail this."

The full FCC approved a $100,000 settlement with Florida TV licensee Budd Broadcasting, which owned a station that went off the air for long periods without authorization, violated numerous online public file and children's TV rules, and didn’t have a signal strong enough to reach its community of license, said an order and consent decree released Wednesday. The order also approves the sale of Budd’s stations WFXU(TV) Live Oak, Florida, and WUFX-LD Tallahassee to Gray Television, which will in turn have to abide by the conditions of the consent decree. The order also grants Gray a failing station waiver to allow that transaction to proceed. Under the consent decree, the licenses for the stations are renewed for two years, and they must be operating at correct power levels and following FCC rules within 30 days.

The FCC Media Bureau Audio Division issued a license renewal and $4,000 notice of apparent liability to an FM translator for originating programming, said a Tuesday order. The programming complaints against Tea-Visz’s translator W272AY Park Falls, Wisconsin, were in a petition to deny the renewal filed by Wisconsin small-market broadcaster Heartland Communications, which the order rejected. Tea admitted the violations, saying they stem from territorial restrictions that bar the translator from rebroadcasting its usual partner WIMI(FM) Ironwood, Michigan, when the station airs Green Bay Packers games. “According to TEA, its engineer wanted the Station to be capable of airing emergency announcements during this time,” and “without the prior knowledge of TEA-VISZ, improperly wired [the Station] to air music rather than be silent,” the order said. The error was quickly corrected, Tea-Visz told the agency. “TEA’s attempt to minimize this mistake by emphasizing the limited occurrences and fact that the licensee was unaware of programming originating on the Station, does not absolve it of this transgression or nullify the rule violation,” the order said. The bureau said the violation wasn’t serious enough to merit a hearing, and isn’t a pattern of breaking rules.

The second window for AM stations to apply for FM translator licenses is Jan. 25-31, said the FCC Media Bureau in a public notice in Tuesday’s Daily Digest. It's open to any AMs that didn’t file in the previous windows to relocate or build new translators. The bureau announced a Jan. 18-31 freeze on requests for modifications to existing translators. The FCC treats translator windows like auctions, so broadcasters should be aware of rules on prohibited communications, Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford blogged. “Applicants need to read this notice very carefully to avoid traps -- traps which include having conversations with mutually exclusive applicants outside a future settlement window when engineering solutions to resolve conflicts between applications filed in the window will be allowed."

Reston Translator, which broadcasts Russia-funded radio station Sputnik, registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), said the FARA website. Reston Translator’s managing member John Garziglia, a broadcast attorney with Womble Bond, also had to file a registration form under a provision of the act that requires officers and directors of registered companies to do so. In the company’s registration statement, Garziglia argued DOJ was wrong to require registration. “Reston Translator LLC is not an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal,” the form said. “Reston Translator LLC does not qualify for registration under the Act, but is doing so at your direction. We do so because we have been directed to do so, not because it is required by the law.” Neither DOJ nor Garziglia commented.