The FCC issued an enforcement advisory warning that operating radio equipment without a license is a violation of federal law, as Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said it would during a recent speech to NAB (see 1602230070). The law against pirate radio applies “equally to the rebellious high school kid operating a radio station from his bedroom as it does to slick and sophisticated high-powered illegal broadcast operations,” the advisory said. It laid out the sections of the Communications Act that makes such activity illegal, and explained how to tell a pirate station from an authorized one. “Rules require licensed broadcast stations to identify themselves each hour using their FCC-assigned call signs, as close to the hour as possible. If the station does not identify with a call sign, it may be a pirate operation,” the advisory said. It also advised readers to look up station call signs in the Consolidated Database System. Those who suspect they’ve found a pirate operation are advised to give all possible information to the commission. The advisory also warns against supporting such stations. “Be advised that pirate radio operators also seek support from landlords or advertisers, including nightclubs, concert promoters and local merchants,” the advisory said. “Providing support for such illegal activity could not only damage the reputation of such businesses, but could expose them to FCC enforcement or other legal actions.”

The FCC said that on ex parte filings on presentations regarding Nexstar buying Media General, it's now deemed a “permit-but-disclose” proceeding where all parties need not be present, said a Media Bureau public notice on docket 16-57. Petitions to deny Nexstar/Media General are due March 18, said the PN in Monday's Daily Digest. The $4.6 billion deal is likely to get agency OK (see 1602020071).

The FCC OK'd transfer of the license for WNMN Saranac Lake, New York, to Cross Hill Communications from Channel 61 Associates, denying objections from competing broadcaster Convergence Entertainment and Communications, said a Media Bureau letter to the companies. Convergence's 2013 opposition cited the seller's misrepresenting facts in a 2007 analog license application to cover a new construction permit. In 2015, the bureau reached a consent decree on violations found in reviewing the WNMN deal, with Channel 61 agreeing to pay $30,000, the letter released in Monday's FCC Daily Digest said: "The Consent Decree terminated the investigation."

Wisconsin broadcasters lobbied FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai to keep exclusivity rules and backed retransmission-consent fees, a filing posted Friday to docket 15-216 said. Other broadcasters also have opposed an FCC proposal to change the rules (see 1602110062). During a Tuesday meeting with Wisconsin radio and TV officials and Wisconsin Broadcasters Association CEO Michelle Vetterkind, they told Pai and an aide that the exclusivity rules promote "localism by ensuring that local stations can negotiate for meaningful exclusivity rights for programming within their market," a filing by a WBA lawyer said. Retrans fees are "an important source of revenue for serving their local audiences," and "efforts to restrict the ability of broadcasters to negotiate market rate retransmission agreements is harmful to that local public service," the broadcasters said. Separately, NAB said that Thursday "a delegation of local broadcasters met with FCC Commissioners and their staffers to discuss policy issues and the impact of Commission regulations on the everyday operation of their stations." NAB held a lobbying meeting in Washington (see 1602230070), and industry officials were telling the commission of concerns on the incentive auction, too (see 1602250038).

The FCC Media Bureau rejected a move by Latina Broadcasters to keep the license of its WDYB Daytona Beach, Florida, eligible for sale in the TV incentive auction. The station had been listed as included in the auction, but the FCC decided Latina missed the 2012 deadline to file for Class A status, making it ineligible for the auction (see 1602120065). Latina filed for stay of the Feb. 12 order on its Class A status and of the auction itself. The bureau rejected both. Feb. 19, Latina sought review of the Feb. 12 order in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “Latina has failed to demonstrate that it is likely to succeed on the merits” in its appeal, the bureau said in its order. “Latina is unlikely to succeed on its claim that it was deprived of due process.” Latina is also unlikely to win on its claim of equitable estoppel, the bureau said. “While Latina cites several eligibility notices as affirming that WDYB-CD would be protected in the repacking process and eligible for auction participation, these notices emphasized that they were provisional and were not intended to decide eligibility issues.” Latina hasn't demonstrated it will suffer irreparable injury absent a grant of the stay petition, the bureau said. “If Latina were to prevail on the merits of its claims, appropriate relief would be available at a later date.” In the meantime, Latina can continue to operate as a Class A station. It wouldn't serve the public interest to delay the auction until after Latina’s appeal is addressed by the court, the bureau said. The FCC has “devoted considerable time and resources since the enactment of the Spectrum Act to preparing for the incentive auction -- an unprecedented proceeding involving numerous complex and highly technical issues, representing the culmination of four years of work by the Commission and dozens of members of its staff, with significant ramifications for the nation’s economy and consumers,” the bureau said. “The beginning of the auction is now only five weeks away. A delay would disserve both consumers and eligible entities who have developed business plans based on the current schedule, including securing financing and deferring other business plans.” Meanwhile, Class A broadcasters Videohouse, Fifth Street Enterprises and WMTM filed a brief at the D.C. Circuit on the FCC recon order excluding them from the incentive auction. The D.C. Circuit has agreed to hear the case on an expedited basis (see 1602230077). “The Commission’s line-drawing exercise in determining which Class A eligible [low-power] TV stations would be eligible for the reverse auction and entitled to discretionary protection has been marked by arbitrary and capricious action,” the broadcasters said. The FCC decided to tie eligibility to whether a Class A-eligible LPTV station had filed Form 302-CA by Feb. 22, 2012, they argued. “That was not a known ‘deadline’ until it was imposed more than 27 months later on June 2, 2014, which, of course, makes it no deadline at all,” the stations told the court. “Even assuming that imposing a retroactive deadline were legitimate, the FCC’s actions were still arbitrary and capricious,” they said. “This is because the FCC violated a bedrock rule of administrative law by subjecting similarly situated entities to disparate treatment.”

The long-delayed choice of an audio codec for ATSC 3.0 is “progressing,” ATSC President Mark Richer told us Wednesday. “Audio, not uncharacteristically, is the complicated document” in ATSC 3.0, Richer said. “So we have plenty of people working on that, and it’s just complicated, so it’s taking a while longer than we would like.” But ATSC is “still on track to have audio done in a timely manner to allow the standard to be finished on time,” Richer said of elevating the entire suite of ATSC 3.0 specs to the status of final standard by the end of 2016. Richer thinks “there’s a fairly good chance” that ATSC 3.0 audio will “go out for a vote” as a candidate standard by the NAB Show, which opens April 16 in Las Vegas, he said. “I hope that will happen, but I think it will,” he said. ATSC released its call for proposals on ATSC 3.0 audio in December 2014 with a “project schedule” calling for ATSC’s S34 specialist group to recommend a winning codec by August 2015 (see 1412090019). The decision will boil down to a choice between the Dolby AC-4 codec and that of the MPEG-H consortium of Fraunhofer, Qualcomm and Technicolor.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and its Integrated Public Alert and Warning System division are working toward a national test of the emergency alert system to take place Sept. 28, said an FCC ex parte filing documenting Monday's 2016 EAS forum and posted Wednesday in docket 15-91. The forum included representatives of state broadcasting associations and Public Safety Bureau staff including Chief David Simpson. The National Weather Service is close to being able to receive non-weather emergency alerts, the filing said. The NWS could do such alerts now, but is concerned about duplicate EAS alerts, the filing said. At the forum, Simpson discussed the recent FCC NPRM on improving EAS, and told the group that the proposed rules had the support of all four regular commissioners. The forum also discussed further modifications to state EAS boards, and a multilingual EAS pilot program.

Time Warner Cable offers no statutory support for its opposition to PMCM’s must-carry complaint, said PMCM in an FCC reply filing Wednesday. Though TWC argued that a congressional requirement that a station be carried on the channel on which it is broadcast refers to the virtual channel encoded into a station’s program and system information protocol (PSIP) (see 1602100060), PMCM said that’s not the case. The statute’s language is “unmistakably clear on its face and not validly open to other interpretations more convenient to TWC," PMCM said. The statute "refers to the channel on which the station’s signal is in fact broadcast," rather than a virtual channel, PMCM said. Virtual channels are a “wholly Imaginary” concept, PMCM said. “Unlike a station’s RF channel, which is a matter of technical fact corresponding to the particular frequency on which the station actually transmits, ‘virtual channels’ are simply made-up fictions not necessarily having any relationship to reality.”

The FCC Media Bureau granted waivers of the significantly viewed exception to network nonduplication and syndicated exclusivity rules for Media General's WNCT-TV Greenville and WNCN Goldsboro, both in North Carolina. The WNCN request was unopposed. Capitol Broadcasting, licensee of WRAL-TV Raleigh opposed the WNCT request. WRAL argued that the local cable operator would drop WRAL if the waiver were granted, but the bureau said that was outside the scope of inquiry, and that Media General showed WRAL isn't significantly viewed in Greenville and Kinston, North Carolina.

LG Electronics teamed with Korean broadcasters MBC and SBS and other partners to beam the world’s first end-to-end 4K broadcast in Korea using the ATSC 3.0 standard, the companies said in a Tuesday announcement. Also working on the test broadcast were the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea, Korean conditional access firm DigiCAP, French broadcast equipment supplier TeamCast and American video software supplier Media Excel, they said. The first end-to-end broadcast of 4K Ultra HD “represents a significant development, because past demonstrations have simply used pre-recorded material loaded directly to a transmitter,” the announcement said. This test broadcast featured a live camera feed with real-time IP transmissions from the SBS network studio in Mokdong to the broadcaster’s Gwanak Mountain transmitter. The IP signals transmitted over the air on Channel 53 were then received using a simple antenna and decoded in Ultra HD by an LG ATSC 3.0 receiver, it said. The success of the trial “highlights the potential for Korea’s launch of terrestrial UHD TV commercial services using ATSC 3.0 in February 2017,” it said. "And the fact that Korean companies are playing such an important role in ATSC 3.0 provides a good opportunity for Korean equipment manufacturers to advance in the U.S. market.”