The FCC shouldn’t impose a deadline for low-power TV displacement applications that is retroactive or becomes effective on the day it's announced, Gray told Commissioner Mike O’Rielly and Commissioner Ajit Pai’s aide Matthew Berry in separate meetings Wednesday and Thursday, according to an ex parte filing. “Licensees must be given sufficient warning of this crucial deadline to allow them to complete construction and license permitted facilities.” Such a deadline should be set six months in the future, it said. “This will give permittees with either partially built stations or concrete plans to build a station sufficient time to complete construction and license the facility.”

Tegna completed its buy of three Sander Media TV stations, it said in a news release Thursday. The stations are KGW Portland, Oregon; WHAS-TV Louisville; and KMSB Tucson. The FCC approved the transfers and a nine-month temporary waiver of the local TV ownership rule last month (see 1511230051). The deal is connected with the Gannett/Belo transaction.

The FCC Media Bureau changed the ex parte rules for docket 14-150, on PMCM’s channel assignment, from permit-but-disclose to restricted, said a public notice Thursday. The grant of PMCM’s requests for an alternative PSIP or for emergency relief from the bureau’s channel assignment “would require a waiver of the Commission’s rules, and non-tariff waiver proceedings are restricted,” the PN said. The public interest “would be best served by designating this proceeding as restricted in order to ensure fairness to all parties and to promote efficiency in the resolution of the matters at hand,” the PN said. “This proceeding involves a small number of parties to a fact-specific dispute.”

A PMCM TV ex parte filing on a meeting with FCC officials left out (see 1511270044) CBS and Meredith’s objections to PMCM’s proposal that it be restored to major/minor virtual channel 3.10, the major broadcasters said in their own ex parte filing in docket 14-150 posted Wednesday. “PMCM wishes to ‘restore’ operation for which it had no authority in the first instance." PMCM’s claim to virtual channel 3.10 “has been rejected by a well-reasoned [Media] Bureau decision and the D.C. Circuit declined to grant mandamus,” the latest ex parte filing said. “PMCM has a pending Application for Review of the Bureau’s decision, and these further filings appear to be simply an effort to circumvent the Commission’s processes so it can return to the previously unauthorized operation.” PMCM just a repeats its previous arguments, they said. “Should PMCM propose solutions other than PSIP [Program and System Information Protocol] Channel 3.10, Meredith and CBS stand open to discuss them. Meredith and CBS, however, have made clear that they do not wish to engage any more resources in PMCM simply repeating the same thing.”

The Office of Management and Budget OK'd the FCC incentive auction short-form application, Form 177, the commission said in Wednesday's Federal Register, making Dec. 2 the effective date. The application filing window begins at noon EST Dec. 8, and runs through Jan. 12 at 6 p.m.

Comcast will include a national video description pilot program with NBC’s broadcast of The Wiz Live! Thursday, the first U.S. live entertainment program to be accessible to people with a visual disability, Comcast said. The video description narration track is inserted between the natural pauses in dialogue to describe the visual elements of a show or movie, including facial expressions, settings, costumes and stage direction. The pilot program, which coincides with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, is available across the country where SAP (secondary audio program) feeds are available, Comcast said. Descriptive Video Works is delivering the video and audio description.

Sinclair Broadcast signed a multiyear contract with Marketron to use location-based advertising for Sinclair’s stations’ mobile platforms, said Marketron in a news release Tuesday. Marketron's service already is used by “over 60 Sinclair stations across 30 markets,” it said. The service allows location-based targeted ads, it said: “All company stations are expected to implement it by year-end.”

TVfreedom.org, Antennas Direct and TV stations gave away over-the-air TV antennas to more than 2,000 people in Albuquerque, Denver, Oklahoma City, and Rapid City and Sioux Falls in South Dakota, said TV Freedom in a news release Monday. The giveaway was part of TV Freedom’s “Broadcast TV Liberation Tour.” The total retail value of the antennas given away “was approximately $225,000,” the release said.

Broadcasters have until Dec. 30 to file petitions for reconsideration or applications for review of the form broadcasters will use to seek reimbursement for expenses caused by the post-incentive auction repacking, said a Fletcher Heald broadcaster law firm Sunday blog post. The public notice announcing the form was published in Monday's Federal Register, saying the PN took effect then. “The release of the form does not necessarily mean that that form is yet in its absolute cast-in-stone final state. It still must be reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget, and the Bureau has suggested that at least some tweaking might occur along the way,” said the blog. “If there’s anything in the version of the form as described in the Bureau’s notice that raises any questions, now is the time to try to get those questions resolved.”

PMCM's WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey, should be restored to virtual channel 3.10 on an interim basis to address the problem of TVs not tuning to WJLP in an area where a different station is transmitting on the same over-the-air channel, said PMCM in a meeting with FCC Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake Nov. 23, according to an ex parte filing in docket 14-150. The Media Bureau assigned WJLP to virtual channel 33, though PMCM is seeking to be assigned virtual channel 3.10. But many viewers trying to watch WJLP on channel 33 are instead receiving WCBS-TV New York, which broadcasts on that channel, PMCM has said (see 1510010031). PMCM wants the channel restored to 3.10 pending the incentive auction, “which might open new VHF PSIP [Program and System Information Protocol] possibilities acceptable to PMCM and not incompatible with anyone else,” PMCM said.