DTS Q3 revenue jumped 59 percent to $48.7 million, said the company in a Monday news release. CEO Jon Kirchner attributed growth to the home, mobile and automotive segments, calling out expansion in the Play-Fi line with Onkyo and Pioneer and additional models incorporating DTS Headphone:X in Huawei’s mobile device line. New 2017 model year vehicles from Hyundai, Audi and Lincoln have added HD Radio, he said. Net income was $600,000 vs. a loss of $2.8 million in the year-ago quarter. Tessera announced in September (see 1609200027) it was buying DTS for $850 million. The deal is expected to close in December.

Eighteen TV ownership groups earn over 80 percent of industry revenue in the U.S., BIA/Kelsey reported Monday. That's "incredible," said the research firm's CEO Tom Buono. Local TV revenue will “approach $31 billion in total gross revenue” in 2016 and a combined value of $84 billion, said the firm. Of that revenue total, $6.1 billion in terrestrial advertising revenue will be generated by the big four network groups, and $9.3 billion in TV station gross revenue, it said. The six publicly traded TV groups will generate 6.4 billion in ad revenue and $9.9 billion in gross TV station revenue, and the eight private TV groups will generate $4.2 billion in TV ad revenue and $6.6 billion in gross TV revenue, the firm said.

NAB will file a court challenge of the FCC 2014 media ownership quadrennial review in time to participate in an expected lottery for venue, an association spokesman told us Monday. That window means the petition for review will be filed either this week or Monday. Prometheus Radio Project last week filed a petition for review in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (see 1611040054), and NAB is expected to file in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, after which a lottery to decide the case’s venue will be conducted. Regardless of that lottery’s outcome, many stakeholders have told us they expect the case to end up in the 3rd Circuit, where previous iterations have all been heard.

Calrec Audio, Ericsson, Rohde & Schwarz and Xilinx joined the Alliance of IP Media Solutions, the group said in a news release Tuesday. Other members of the trade group -- which promotes IP broadcast standards -- include 21st Century Fox, CBS, NBCUniversal, Panasonic and Sony, according to its website.

Beasley Broadcast's purchase of Greater Media was completed Tuesday, Beasley said in a release Wednesday, as expected (see 1610270059). The $240 million deal adds 18 radio stations to Beasley's holdings, and involves the divestiture of a station in Charlotte, North Carolina, Beasley said. Beasley also said interim CEO Caroline Beasley will take over as permanent CEO at the start of the new year, among other management changes (see 1611020026).

The FCC denied an application for review against a low-power FM construction permit granted to Community Radio, KCOD-LP Decorah, Iowa, but because filings show the LPFM applicant misrepresented his membership on an FM station board, the commission also directed the Media Bureau to initiate an investigation against the LPFM licensee, said an order issued Wednesday. “When seeking an LPFM construction permit, Community Radio certified in November 2013 that no party to its application held an attributable interest in any non-LPFM broadcast station. That was not accurate,” said Commissioner Ajit Pai in a concurring statement attached to the order. “James Glesne, the individual who certified Community Radio’s application, was serving on the board of a non-LPFM broadcast station, KPVL(FM) in Postville, Iowa, at the time he made the November 2013 certification.” Filings showed Glesne was on the board until April 2014, when he then submitted a resignation backdated to December 2013, the order said. “I’m inclined to believe that Community Radio’s misrepresentations to the Commission have been intentional, not inadvertent,” Pai said. He said he “would have been willing to support designating this matter for a hearing to determine whether Community Radio possesses the character and qualifications to hold an LPFM license” but said he was pleased the Media Bureau would investigate the matter. The order said the application for review wasn't granted because there's a remedy for the situation in Glesne severing ties with KPVL.

The filing windows allowing AM stations to buy and relocate FM translators were “a resounding success,” said FCC Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake in a blog post Wednesday. The second of those windows closed Monday (see 1610250061). The first window, open only to smaller AM stations, led to 671 relocation applications filed, and so far, over 90 percent have been granted, Lake said. The second window, for all AM stations, led to 420 applications, with 265 OK'd, Lake said. “A substantial majority of the licensees participating in the windows chose to acquire the relocating translators, thereby ensuring a permanent place for their programming on the FM dial,” he wrote.

With its quadrennial review media ownership order, the FCC is providing “an impressive imitation of an ostrich with its head in the sand,” said NAB Senior Deputy General Counsel Jerianne Timmerman in a blog post Tuesday. The quadrennial review order was published in the Federal Register Tuesday (see 1611010027). “The FCC again asserted that 'non-broadcast video programming distributors' are not meaningful competitors in local TV markets, virtually ignoring a host of 20th and 21st century technologies (including cable, satellite, mobile devices and the internet) to retain its local TV ownership restriction,” Timmerman said. By maintaining the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership (NBCO) ban, “the FCC essentially concluded that little or nothing of import has changed in the news industry and the marketplace position of print newspapers and broadcast stations for the past 41 years -- a nonsensical position on its face,” Timmerman said. She criticized the NBCO rule as out of date and arbitrary, since it only applies to papers “published” four or more days a week. “It borders on the absurd to contend that the viewpoint diversity concerns supposedly sufficient to ban the common ownership of a station and a newspaper publishing a print edition four days a week magically disappear when the newspaper publishes online every day but publishes in print only three days a week,” said Timmerman. Though the FCC touted the order as slightly relaxing the NBCO ban by providing a waiver process, that addition provides minimal change, Timmerman said. “The exception for failed/failing outlets, and the new waiver standard for newspaper/broadcast combinations not 'unduly harm[ing] viewpoint diversity,' fail to go beyond pre-existing waiver opportunities for broadcasters and newspaper owners,” she said. “The FCC has done nothing substantive here.” The agency didn't comment.

With winter weather coming and various business agreements on hold, creating uncertainty, Marquee Broadcasting is asking the FCC to approve its buy of Nexstar's KREG-TV Glenwood Springs, Colorado, separately from consideration of Nexstar buying Media General (see 1609220035). In a filing Friday in docket 16-57, the company recapped a phone call between President Patricia Lane and Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, during which she said the KREG purchase agreement is separate from and not contingent on Nexstar/Media General, and Marquee has only a limited time to access the station's tower and transmitter before heavy snowfall makes it inaccessible. Marquee also signed two long-term agreements and paid monthly rents in recent weeks -- steps it would have preferred to take after the assignment and transfer of license is complete, but then the station likely would have gone dark until late spring, the company said. Marquee said on the close of the acquisition it plans to convert the station from a satellite station to a stand-alone operation and change programming.

The FCC Media Bureau reached a $100,000 settlement with broadcast licensee Brian Dodge, who used assumed names and applications filled out in the names of family members to control numerous FM translators, AM, FM and low-power FM stations, said a consent decree released Thursday. “Due to a variety of factors, including the number of factual issues and the passage of time (with intervening deaths of certain persons who were named as principals of some applicants), a hearing would be lengthy and complex and would require a significant commitment of Commission resources,” the consent decree said. Dodge has been filing applications under false identities for stations mostly in the Northeast since 1982, said the Media Bureau. “Over most of that history, those applications and the radio station operations arising from various granted applications have been under a cloud of unanswered questions about whether the applications were factually accurate,” the consent decree said. “FCC enforcement action was inhibited by uncertainty as to which applicants might be secretly controlled by Dodge and Dodge's refusal to provide information to the FCC,” the Media Bureau said. Under the consent decree, Dodge will receive “conditional, short-term” license renewals for his FM translator stations, the grant of three pending assignment applications for those stations, and another license renewal. In exchange, he will have to pay the $100,000 settlement, have the licenses of two LPFM stations and an AM station canceled, and two petitions of reconsideration for FM applications dismissed, the decree said.