FM translators and joint sales agreements help minority broadcasters “thrive,” said FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai in a statement released Wednesday after his visit to minority-owned radio stations and a TV station operated by historically African-American school Tougaloo College. The school’s WLOO Vicksburg, Mississippi, might not have survived this long without its JSA, Pai said. He also visited an AM station that had found its FM translator “critical” to its operations. The FCC should support minority broadcasters with rules that will allow AM stations an exclusive FM translator [application] window and allow JSAs, and should establish “an incubator program to make it easier for minority entrepreneurs to enter the broadcast business,” Pai said. “I hope that these and other policies find bipartisan support in the months and years ahead.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has granted an FCC motion to dismiss a petition for review filed by William Johnson, in which he sought to reverse the FCC’s decision to dismiss his application for review of an earlier decision dismissing his petition to rescind the transfer of a radio license for FM Translator Station W227AV in 2010. Johnson’s final petition for review was filed after the deadline for such an appeal, the court ruled.

Nielsen will begin its real world test of an enhanced system for gauging radio listenership in the cities of Washington and Baltimore Monday, the company said on a webinar and a panel at the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters Thursday. The Critical Band Encoding Technology (CBET) system enhances the ability of Nielsen’s portable people meters (PPM) to pick up the inaudible signals behind radio content that Nielsen uses to assign ratings, said Nielsen Senior Vice President-Product Leadership Bill Rose. The system is seen as a response to The Telos Alliance’s Voltair device, which performs a similar function. The Voltair system can boost a station’s ratings by 8 percent, a Telos executive said at the NAB Radio Show, and it's seen as an important tool for any station that wants to remain competitive, Tony Gray, programming director of WYOB-FM, Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, told us Thursday. Rose said the new CBET system is intended to provide “a level playing field” for “everybody.” Voltair devices cost about $15,000 and must be purchased by individual stations, radio officials have told us. Though Rose said Voltair can be used with the new CBET system, Nielsen doesn't endorse doing so. A Nielsen official told us Nielsen doesn’t endorse Voltair because of its “subjective use” and because it has the potential to make the PPM tones audible. The CBET has been extensively tested to ensure it doesn’t affect sound quality, Nielsen officials said. Voltair didn't comment. The rollout of the CBET is expected to begin in other cities in November, and Nielsen wants to complete the process this year, Nielsen officials said.

Comments are due by Nov. 9 on a possible new methodology for calculating regulatory fees for AM and FM radio and for TV and on reallocating full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) from the Wireline Bureau working on numbering and universal service issues, said a notice published Thursday in the Federal Register. Reply comments are due Dec. 7. The FY 2015 fees were adopted last month, and the FCC said it's seeking input on proposals that came up during the course of the FY 2015 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking such as separating broadcasters that serve between 3 million and 6 million people from those that serve more, and on standardizing the incremental fee increases as the populations served by radio broadcasters increase. The agency said it's also seeking feedback on automatically assessing fees based on the relative type and class of service -- for example, assessing FM classes B, C, C0, C1 and C2 stations at twice the rate of AM class C stations. The FCC said it's seeking comment on assessing AM class A stations at 60 percent more, class B stations at 15 percent more, and class D stations at 10 percent more than class C stations. The agency also said it's seeking input on readjusting the broadcast TV regulatory fee table to its once-traditional determination that Top 10 market stations should pay about twice what stations in markets 26-50 pay. And since the spectrum incentive auction may result in fewer TV stations, and thus changes in the regulatory fee apportionment among the remaining ones, the FCC said it wants comments on changing the methodology of assessing TV regulatory fees. The agency is seeking comment on combining wireless and wireline services into the Interstate Telecommunications Service Providers category and on reassigning some Wireline Bureau FTEs as indirect for the purpose of regulatory fees.

DTS completed the purchase of HD Radio developer iBiquity Digital (see 1509020039) for $172 million, DTS said in a news release. The acquisition was financed through cash and debt, said DTS in a news release. Monday, it called the purchase an extension of the company’s strategy to deliver a “personalized, immersive and compelling experience across the network-connected entertainment value chain.”

Media General and unsolicited transaction seeker Nexstar continued their war of news releases over whether Nexstar should acquire Media General in a $4.1 billion deal (see 1509280041) or if Media General should stick to its plan to buy Meredith. Media General said its board is "carefully reviewing" Nexstar's proposal to decide what plan to recommend, and will complete its review "in due course." Media General hired Goldman Sachs and Weil Gotshal to help its board consider Nexstar's proposal, it said in a news release Monday. About four hours later, Nexstar in its own release, said it hopes the Media General announcement means it will "conduct an objective and timely evaluation of our clearly superior proposal," in the words of Nexstar CEO Perry Sook. "Based on our conversations with many large Media General shareholders, they are highly supportive of our proposed combination," he said.

The FCC should allow into the incentive auction four stations that narrowly missed the deadline to reach Class A status in time to participate, said Watch TV in comments supporting a petition for reconsideration filed by the Class A licensees of the affected stations, which include The Videohouse and Abacus Television. “Making so small an additional number eligible for the auction will not have a significant impact on the Commission’s ability to repurpose TV spectrum,” Watch TV said in comments posted Monday in docket 12-268. “The Commission should grant them relief, based both on the merits of their cases and the importance of avoiding the risk of potential litigation that could disrupt the auction timetable.”

Broadcasters unanimously opposed the FCC proposal to preserve more channels for unlicensed and wireless mic use, in comments on a vacant channel rulemaking. Prioritizing unlicensed use over licensed TV broadcasters upends FCC policy, said Mako, Sinclair and numerous other broadcasters in docket 15-146. The commission can't make such a “radical shift” without first establishing a record to inform it, Sinclair said. There is “no logical way” for the FCC to “legally determine that unlicensed services, which have never" before "been accorded priority” over licensed services, “should now be found to have priority,” Mako said. Without a record, the proposed policy shift is “arbitrary and capricious,” Sinclair said. The vacant band rule would interfere with broadcasters taking full advantage of the new ATSC 3.0 standard, said Bonten Media and Pearl TV. “ATSC 3.0 is a near-term reality, and the Commission’s decision in this docket should preserve its significant benefits for the American public,” Pearl said. Implementing some of the channel sharing facilitated by the new standard will require stations to alter their contours, which could become “impractical or impossible” if TV stations have to worry about protecting unlicensed channels, Pearl said. The vacant channel rule would “improperly constrain television stations’ options for new or expanded television services” and reduce the chances to make broadcasting more diverse, said the Association of Public Television Stations, Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS jointly. If the FCC does enact the rule, it should come with exemptions for noncommercial educational full-power stations and translators, they filing said. The agency can't make the vacant channel proposal into a rule because it conflicts with congressional directives to preserve low-power TV spectrum, said the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition. The FCC must instead go back to Congress for guidance, the coalition said. The commission must provide “a legitimate opportunity” for displaced LPTV and translators to get new channels after the auction, Gray Television said. The FCC should also allow qualified LPTV stations after the auction to transition to Class A status, Gray said. The vacant channel policy is unlikely to be useful, Sinclair said. “The likelihood that the white spaces will have practical (as opposed to theoretical) value for unlicensed service is very small,” said Sinclair. “Unlicensed uses have been permitted in the white spaces of the broadcast bands for years, but the only evidence of usage suggests a few isolated experiments (and failed experiments at that).”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting defended a public media platform that drew scrutiny over costs. CPB said it believes “that the fixed fee structure provided in” its grant to Public Media Platform Inc. “was appropriate and the amount paid for that work was reasonable.” CPB's Office of Inspector General released an audit report Wednesday of CPB's grant for the PMP project that found that there were “material noncompliance issues” that resulted in more than $2.6 million in questioned costs and more than $135,000 in undocumented expenditures that could have been spent more efficiently that PMP had incurred but not yet claimed from CPB. None of PMP's five founding member entities, including NPR and PBS, “maintained project accounting records” to support $835,000 in “leadership labor expenses” and three of the founding entities “failed to maintain” documentation to support more than $1.5 million in software development services, the OIG said. NPR billed CPB on a flat-fee basis instead of billing for actual costs as required by its technical services agreement, resulting in $110,000 in questioned costs on NPR's billings to CPB and more than $135,000 in “funds put to better use,” the OIG said. PMP overclaimed $97,153 in fringe benefits and indirect costs, the OIG said. PMP didn't maintain its accounting records in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), resulting in “a material internal control weakness over financial reporting," the OIG said. The CPB OIG recommended CPB management seek recovery of the more than $2.6 million in costs associated with noncompliance issues and not pay out the $135,000 in costs to NPR associated with “funds put to better use." The CPB should also ensure future grant agreements specify that labor expenses be billed based on actual project-level timekeeping records and that leadership costs be claimed based on the organization's indirect cost policy, the OIG said. CPB should require PMP to record financial information in accordance with GAAP principles and ensure financial reports “can be reconciled to PMP general ledgers,” OIG said. “We share the OIG’s concern about the lack of record-keeping to substantiate other labor charges under the grant agreement,” CPB said in a Thursday news release. “While there is no disagreement that extensive, valuable work was performed on this project appropriate for reimbursement by CPB, CPB will be working with the OIG and the PMP to determine whether the charges for the work completed can be substantiated.” CPB plans to more fully respond to the OIG report by Dec. 30 and “will make its final determination based on further inquiries to the Public Media Platform, Inc., which could substantiate some of the OIG’s questioned expenditures. Until then, the amount of any refunds that may be appropriate cannot be known.”

Gray Television is selling stations in three markets to facilitate regulatory approval for its planned buy of Schurz Communications' TV and radio stations (see 1509150075), and buying three TV stations, the broadcast company said in a Thursday news release. Gray will sell KAKE Wichita, Kansas, to Lockwood Broadcast for Lockwood's WBXX-TV Cookeville, Tennessee, and $11.2 million cash, it said. Under the Schurz deal, Gray is picking up KWCH-DT Hutchinson, Kansas. According to Gray, there will be no shared services agreement with Lockwood and KAKE will operate independently from Gray and KWCH after the transaction. Gray also will swap WSBT-TV South Bend, Indiana -- currently owned by Schurz -- for Sinclair's WLUC-TV Marquette, Michigan. Gray already owns WNDU-TV South Bend. Gray will sell Schurz's KOTA-TV Rapid City, South Dakota, to Legacy Broadcasting for $1, but will keep the assets used for KOTA's ABC program stream. After the transaction, it said, it plans to transition the existing ABC programming stream to its KEVN-TV Rapid City. And Gray said it plans to buy Fireweed Communications' KYES-TV Anchorage for $500,000 and apply to the FCC for a "failing station" waiver of local ownership rules to allow combining it with Schurz's KTUU-TV Anchorage. Gray said the transactions should close by the end of Q1.