Univision will receive about $376 million in incentive auction proceeds, while Raycom didn't announce its monetary gains but said it will be relinquishing spectrum in the Cleveland market. Univision's gains are on the higher end of the results announced by major broadcasters. Fox and Sinclair were each over $300 million, Gray Television announced a yield of $90.8 million, and Tribune Media $190 million (see 1702100064). CBS and Scripps didn't sell any or much spectrum in the auction, they said. Raycom Media “strategically evaluated opportunities that could bring value to the company yet not compromise our core mission to serve our local communities,” Raycom's news release said. Its WUAB Lorain “will relocate to another broadcast channel per published FCC timelines,” Raycom said.
The FCC should eliminate its newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule, said the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which represents black-owned media companies, in a letter in docket 14-50. Media is no longer dominated by TV networks and large metropolitan newspapers, it's dominated by even larger internet entities that aren't under FCC jurisdiction, NNPA said. Powerful online news aggregators such as Facebook are “a real threat" to local journalism, and those smaller, local entities shouldn’t be hampered by FCC regulations, NNPA said. “Today’s challenge is to ensure that these trusted community voices remain strong and economically viable against their unregulated rivals.” Cross-ownership rules restrict investment in media outlets and prevent them from innovating or upgrading their businesses, NNPA said.
IHeartCommunications opposes AM revitalization proposals that would ”add interference into the AM band” said iHeart representatives in a meeting Tuesday with aides to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, said an ex parte filing in docket 13-249. The radio station owner opposes proposals that would reduce interference protections for AMs.
Cayman Islands-based Corvex Master Fund will be allowed to buy up to 14.99 percent of Pandora, the FCC Media Bureau said in a declaratory ruling Tuesday. “The public interest would not be served by prohibiting the proposed additional foreign ownership of Pandora Media by Corvex.” Corvex's request was unopposed, the bureau said. Corvex is based in the Cayman Islands but controlled by U.S. citizens. It asked the FCC to preapprove up to 14.99 percent, though it's only currently seeking 9.99 percent ownership (see 1608120061). A declaratory ruling that allowed Pandora to buy KXMZ(FM) Box Elder, South Dakota, included a condition that the FCC must grant approval for foreign entities that want to acquire more than 5 percent of the company, and requires Pandora to seek FCC permission to go above 49.99 percent foreign owned. Another Cayman-based company, Matrix Master Fund, is also seeking a stake in the music streaming company (see 1612210063).
The FCC “and other stakeholders” should “work together to ensure the hasty deployment of [incentive auction] spectrum so that consumers and the entire economy can reap the benefits as quickly as possible,” said Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Telecom Policy analyst Doug Brake in a statement Monday. “While the $19.63 billion bidding total might not be as eye-popping as some had imagined, this auction was a success and transferred a significant amount of spectrum to highly valued mobile broadband services.” To reap the benefits of the auction, broadcasters have to be repacked, and “the faster this repacking process takes place, clearing this fresh spectrum to be put into service, the sooner we see the true benefits of this historic auction,” Brake said.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's alacrity in decision​-making may mean a ruling will come soon on the petition to create a new class of FM stations, said a Fletcher Heald blog post. The proposal, which Pai spoke in favor of while still a commissioner, would create a new FM C4 class, at a power level between the current FM Class A and the C3 class. The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council and SSR Communications CEO Matthew Wesolowski filed the petition in 2013 proposing the new class. MMTC President Emeritus David Honig recently asked the FCC to issue an NPRM on Class C4 FM. “Given the speed at which Chairman Pai is making decisions, we should know soon what the state of this petition is,” said Fletcher Heald, which has broadcast clients.
NAB lawyers met with Media Bureau front office and other staff to press for FCC ownership deregulation. "Expeditiously reinstate the UHF discount," which was "arbitrary and capricious for the Commission to eliminate," representatives including General Counsel Rick Kaplan told acting bureau Chief Michelle Carey and others, according to the association. That discount may soon be brought back (see 1701110067). The broadcaster group also sought grant of its petition for reconsideration of media ownership rules (see 1702060053). "Remove the eight-voices test from the local TV rule and reform the top four prohibition by allowing a single entity to own up to two of the top four-ranked stations in a local market; reverse the joint sales agreement attribution and shared services agreement disclosure requirements; and eliminate the newspaper/broadcast and radio/television cross-ownership rules," NAB said in a filing posted Thursday in docket 14-50. Others oppose such deregulation (see 1701260018).
The catalog of potential costs that will be incurred by broadcasters in the repacking has been finalized, said the FCC Incentive Auction Task Force and Media Bureau in a public notice Thursday. The catalog of reimbursable expenses is largely unchanged from the version originally proposed by the FCC, though it will include prices annually indexed to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index, the PN said. The IATF and Media Bureau rejected several requests from broadcasters for additional expenses to be added to the catalog. “We do not believe it is necessary to add these specific items to the Catalog because, to the extent that stations reasonably incur such expenses, they can be claimed within the appropriate cost categories or on the catch-all 'Other' line in the Reimbursement Form that is available for expenses not listed within a particular category,” the PN said. The agency also rejected requests for the possible prices of items to be increased, the PN said. Reimbursements for costs that are over the catalog's predictions are still reimbursable, but broadcasters and multichannel video programming distributors will have to justify why they went over, the PN said.
The FCC should release the software tools and data that it developed to assign channels and assign stations to repacking phases to make it easier to identify those stations that could make the repacking effort more difficult, said OTA Broadcasting in informal comments filed in docket 12-268. “Free market forces also can be harnessed to simply eliminate some stations that present a bottleneck or that constitute part of a linked station set,” the company said. “These voluntary free market actions have the potential to both give winning carriers expedited access to their spectrum and afford broadcasters a longer period to construct their new facilities -- truly a win-win.”
Fox Television Stations will receive $350 million in proceeds from the incentive auction, and Tribune Media will receive $190 million, they said in news releases Wednesday. “This spectrum sale isn't expected to lead to any material change in the operations or results for Fox Television Stations or for any of the affected television markets,” the Fox release said, a statement echoed by Tribune Media. Fox expects to receive the proceeds in 2017, Tribune in the second half of 2017, they said. “We are starting to see that the public companies did not 'cash out' at significantly 'low prices' -- which had been an initial concern aired by some investors,” said Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker in an email to investors. “Given the ultimate MHz Pop valuation of the reverse auction (which we determined to be $0.31), we should NOT be surprised that the public companies might not get the bulk of these proceeds.” Gray Television announced a yield of $90.8 million Tuesday (see 1702070034).