Sixteen hurricane-damaged TV stations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands want the FCC to let them accelerate their post-incentive auction repacking plans, said a letter Tuesday. The stations want to build their new facilities as they rebuild from Maria, rather than have to duplicate construction to rebuild facilities for their pre-auction channel and then switch to the new one. An early switch also would allow the stations to take advantage of repacking reimbursement funds in their rebuilding process, the letter said. Most of the stations are assigned to phase three of the repacking and wouldn’t be able to switch to their reassigned channels until 2019, they said. All the stations are running on generators at reduced power and reduced operating hours, and are likely to do so for months because of the damage to power facilities in the areas affected by the storms, the outlets said. “The conditions are ripe for an early transition while stations are much more flexible, accustomed to or planning on alternate operations.” Because of the geography of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, an early transition wouldn’t interfere with other stations, though they may also need the agency to be flexible with granting special temporary authority during the process, they said.

Twelve months is enough time for Sage Alerting Systems to create software upgrades that will allow its customers to use the proposed Blue Alert emergency alert system code (see 1706220045), Sage President Harold Price said in response to questions from FCC Public Safety Bureau staff Monday, said an ex parte filing posted the next day in docket 15-94. That’s also enough time to integrate the code into equipment that hasn’t been sold or manufactured, Price said.

The draft media ownership order on reconsideration is an “abuse” of FCC rules for recon orders because it relies on “no new evidence,” the United Church of Christ Communications Office (UCC OC) said in meetings and calls last week with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and to Commissioners Brendan Carr, Mike O’Rielly, Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, according to an ex parte filing in docket 14-50. “Wholesale reversal” on media ownership will “only encourage waste of Commission resources as every disappointed commenter seeks to reassert the same facts and arguments previously raised in repeated petitions for reconsideration,” UCC OC said. Reversing the rules for “temporary political purpose” will damage the "finality" of future rulemakings, the filing said. The draft order ignores repeated directives from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to base such decisions on data and analysis, and information in the record on likely consequences from eliminating the cross-ownership rules and eight-voices test, UCC OC said. The recon order may be difficult to challenge, attorneys have said (see 1710310067)

“Few regulations are more disconnected from today’s realities than the F.C.C.’s media ownership rules,” said Chairman Ajit Pai in a New York Times commentary Thursday on proposed elimination of the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule. The rule is outdated and has harmed newspapers and broadcasters, while internet news outlets are unaffected, Pai said. "This rule thus singles out struggling news outlets for stringent regulation while leaving the biggest players untouched.” Though Pai conceded some believe eliminating the rule will allow too much consolidation of media voices, he said regulations barring broadcasters from owning more than two stations in a market still will preserve outlet diversity. “I understand that point of view and recognize that some limits are needed,” Pai said. In communities where grandfathered combinations of newspapers and broadcasters have been allowed, “we generally see news outlets that have been able to better serve the public,” Pai said. “The print newspaper business is dying, and for some papers, this rule has probably hastened their demise.”

The FCC Media Bureau approved Entercom’s all-stock buy of CBS Radio, said an order Thursday. The deal is expected to close Nov. 17, Entercom said. The combination will have 235 stations, “with coverage of close to 90% of persons 12+ in the top 50 markets,” the release said. To comply with ownership rules, the deal includes divestiture of 19 stations and six associated booster stations to a trust that will be charged with selling them within six months of the completion of the deal. The deal also includes six-month temporary waivers of the radio/TV cross ownership rules to allow temporary directors to oversee the transition in the San Francisco and Miami markets. Entercom reached a consent decree with DOJ last week (see 1711010050).

The FCC Media Bureau initiated a proceeding to revoke the license of Cortaro Broadcasting’s KCKY(AM) Coolidge, Arizona, over almost $70,000 in unpaid delinquent regulatory fees, said an order to pay or show cause released Wednesday. The delinquent fees are from FY 2008 and 2011-15, and Cortaro hasn’t responded to repeated requests from the FCC, it said. The bills were sent to the Treasury Department for collection, and Cortaro has 60 days to show the fees are paid or it could lose the license. The Media Bureau deleted KCKY's license and call letters over the unpaid fees, but restored them in response to a petition for reconsideration by Cortaro, said an order on reconsideration also released Wednesday. The deletion was premature, the bureau ruled, though it affirmed staff rejection of Cortaro's renewal petition. “The Commission considers outstanding debts owed to the United States Government, in any amount, to be a serious matter," the order said.

The draft ATSC 3.0 order “continues a troubling pattern of indifference at the FCC towards consumer privacy,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., in a letter to Chairman Ajit Pai. “Although privacy concerns were raised in the record, it was not addressed at all in the draft order released by the Commission,” she said. The word ‘privacy’ is not even mentioned a single time in the entire draft order.” The new standard could include targeted advertisements, which raises questions about how demographic data will be gathered, Dingell wrote. She asked Pai how the FCC would coordinate privacy protection for 3.0 users with the FTC, how the technology involved collects data, whether it will require consumer consent, and how that data will be protected from hacking. Dingell highlighted 3.0’s lack of backward compatibility: “We should be having a robust dialogue about the privacy implications of this new standard as well as ensuring we are doing everything possible for consumers in any transition.” Commissioner Mignon Clyburn tweeted that Dingell's letter raised "important questions" about the draft order. "Many questions remain unanswered as @FCC contemplates moving forward," Clyburn said. An FCC spokeswoman told us the agency has received the letter and is reviewing it.

The FCC has the authority to modify the national broadcast ownership cap, and public interest groups lack standing to challenge the agency’s decision to resurrect the UHF discount, the agency said in a brief (in Pacer) filed Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The brief was the FCC’s response to challenges of the discount’s reinstatement. Free Press, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Common Cause and several other public interest groups argued that the FCC lacks the authority to change the cap. That argument should be rejected because in prior filings supporting the removal of the UHF discount, those groups said the FCC does possess such authority, the brief said. The FCC can alter the cap because Congress has passed up previous chances to take that power away from the FCC, instead ordering the agency to revise the cap, the brief said. The FCC “has ample discretion to reverse course” on the discount, and the prior FCC’s decision to do away with it “was itself arbitrary and capricious,” the FCC said. The challenges from the public interest groups are also invalid because they haven’t shown the reinstated cap causes them any injury, the FCC said. “The Commission has now reasonably determined that because the discount and the cap are interrelated, they should be analyzed in tandem,” the brief said. Senior FCC officials said the agency will take up the matter of the national cap before the end of 2017 (see 1710260049).

Broadcasters preparing to file biennial ownership reports in December can now start signing up for restricted use FCC registration numbers, the Media Bureau said in a public notice Tuesday. Broadcasters can register for the numbers using CORES, the commission’s registration system. The window for biennial ownership reports is Dec. 1 to March 2.

The FCC should reform its “broken” process for authorizing TV satellite stations, former Commissioner Robert McDowell, now at Cooley, told an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai Monday, said a filing in docket 17-105. The process has been made “ad hoc” since the digital transition, his client Gray Television said. For existing satellite stations, the review should be automatically satisfied for stations that have been in operation for eight years, Gray said.