Media General agreed to a $4.6 billion purchase offer from Nexstar, said a Nexstar news release Wednesday. The purchase agreement ends a struggle between Nexstar and Meredith over Media General's future, and entitles Media General's shareholders to net cash proceeds from the sale of Media General spectrum in the FCC incentive auction. Meredith will receive a $60 million termination fee under its original agreement with Media General. The new company formed by the deal will be called Nexstar Media Group and will divest some stations in order to receive FCC approval, the news release said. The transaction is expected to close in late Q3 or early Q4, it said.

The FCC should approve rules to facilitate multilingual emergency alerts as detailed in the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council's Katrina Petition (see 1511170048), MMTC said in a letter to the FCC posted online in docket 04-296 Friday. “A definitive ruling to ensure multilingual communications during and after emergencies would save many lives,” MMTC said. “It would serve as a defining, transformative, and lasting statement of compassion by the Commission in the 21st Century.” MMTC proposed that the FCC could create rules that allow broadcast professionals serving multilingual populations to be treated as “first responders” and give them “priority in accessing transportation to and from radio stations that are providing emergency information to the public.” MMTC also proposed the commission reduce or waive regulatory fees for broadcasters that provide multilingual emergency messages. “In this way, these stations can recover some of the un-budgeted out of pocket costs of multilingual emergency operations,” MMTC said.

The FCC Media Bureau approved Nexstar’s $44 million deal with Reiten Television to buy four CBS-affiliated TV stations in North Dakota, said a letter released Thursday. The Media Bureau approved the continuation of a satellite exemption for three stations involved in the deal because it will “benefit the public interest by promoting access to broadcast services which may otherwise not be feasible,” the order said. The approval is conditioned on Nexstar terminating an existing joint service agreement on closing, the order said. The stations involved in the sale are KXMA Dickinson, KXMB Bismarck, KXMD Williston and KXMC Minot.

There's a "schism" between true virtual reality and 360 video, said Michael Davies, Fox Sports senior vice president-field and technical operations, in a Thursday news release. Davies thinks 360 video is more “attainable” and can be consumed on multiple devices, while full VR requires more specialized equipment and proprietary players, he said. Fox Sports is continuing “the growth of live production capabilities” for drones, said Director-Technical Operations Brad Cheney. “We are also testing new hardware which gives us better lenses, cameras and stability in the air.” Fox Sports is “in continuous dialog with the governing bodies, venue management teams and local officials to make progress as technologies change,” Cheney said. He said drones would be used in golf coverage and motor sports coverage in 2016.

Univision Communications became a minority investor in digital firm Onion Inc., publisher of The Onion satirical newspaper, the broadcaster said in a news release Tuesday. “With more than 25 million engaged monthly uniques on Onion Inc.’s platform, UCI will expand its overall digital presence in multicultural, millennial focused content with this transaction.” Onion Inc. will “operate independently, maintaining the integrity of the brand and editorial voice,” Univision said. “UCI will have oversight of Onion Inc. to leverage Univision Digital’s distribution, resources and media expertise to expand the exposure of the brand."

Three months after being approved by the FCC, the AM revitalization order was published in the Federal Register Tuesday, establishing comment dates for several proposals for easing the burden on AM stations contained in a Further NPRM issued with the item. Comments on the FNPRM are due March 21, replies April 18, a Media Bureau public notice said. Stakeholders at an industry event last week noted the delay in publishing the FNPRM (see 1601120064).

Allegro DVT launched the industry’s first “test suites” for decoder manufacturers to gauge compliance with the HEVC Scalability Extension (SHVC) standard, it said in a Monday announcement. The test suites are composed of multiple test sets to check spatial, bit-depth and color gamut scalability, plus "various combinations of these scalability features,” it said. The company expects SHVC “to play a major role especially in the context of the upcoming ATSC 3.0 standard,” which will introduce new features, such as Ultra HD, high dynamic range and support for mobile devices, it said. SHVC’s “layered” coding can be used to achieve backward compatibility “and less bandwidth congestion in the backbone network while ensuring efficient support for portable and mobile devices,” it said.

PBS is “focused on how we can encourage civic discourse and help Americans engage in thoughtful conversations about the future of our country” in the runup to elections, said PBS CEO Paula Kerger Monday in a presentation to the TV Critics Association in Los Angeles. “Working together with our member stations, we’re going to provide a forum for political conversations that spans local grassroots perspectives and national level context.” Kerger said the 2016 coverage will include a mix of new and returning series and specials highlighting all the major political events “and go beyond the headlines to provide in-depth analysis of important issues and trends.” The election coverage will also include multiple platforms and a working partnership with NPR, Kerger said, announcing “a new strategic partnership with NPR to leverage the work of journalists in more than 200 public radio newsrooms and PBS stations across the country.” The partnership will mean sharing content across platforms and create a “digital election hub with local and regional coverage of national issues.” Kerger was asked about the possibility of some PBS stations selling out in the spectrum auction, but said “because we’ve entered the quiet period ... we’re not allowed, no one is allowed to talk about any individual situation. To be clear, a station needs to have broadcast spectrum and be broadcasting over the air to continue as a PBS station, so there is not a scenario where a station would just be a cable-only entity.”

Joint sales agreements that were in effect as of March 31, 2014, don't have to come into compliance with FCC JSA attribution rules until Sept. 30, 2025, the Media Bureau said in a public notice Thursday. The change was mandated by Congress as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act (see 1512210050) and the PN was expected.

“Subjective tests” using human viewers to verify the compression efficiency of Ultra HD’s H.265 codec that previously had been estimated using only “objective metrics” have found better than expected bit-rate savings compared with the older H.264 codec. So said BBC R&D Engineer Rajitha Weerakkody and BBC Video Coding Project Leader Marta Mrak in a Thursday blog post that summarized the findings in a just-published IEEE research paper they both helped author. The overall average bit-rate saving achieved with H.265 compared with H.264 “for the same subjective quality” was found to be 59 percent, versus the 44 percent efficiency gain shown with objective quality metrics, Weerakkody and Mrak said. The tests also found the bit rate savings for larger picture sizes were higher than for smaller picture sizes, “which is a very encouraging sign for future UHD deployments,” they said. In the subjective tests, they said, viewers were shown “a carefully selected set of coded video sequences” in four different formats -- Ultra HD (3840x2160 and 4096x2048), 1080p (1920x1080), 720p (1280x720) and 480p (832x480), at frame rates varying between 30 and 60 Hz. Many of the tests were conducted at the BBC R&D labs “under controlled viewing environments,” in conformity with ITU recommendations on “visual quality assessment,” they said.