Nexstar Broadcasting reached a $44 million deal with Reiten Television to buy four CBS-affiliated TV stations serving the same western North Dakota designated market area, Nexstar said in a news release Thursday. Nexstar will also provide sales and other services to two ABC-affiliated stations owned by Forum Communications in the same DMA, taking over a shared services agreement with Reiten. The deal will increase Nexstar’s portfolio of stations that it “owns, operates, programs or to which it provides sales and other services” to 114 television stations in 59 markets, reaching 18 percent of all U.S. TV households, the release said. “The Western North Dakota market is a natural complement to our existing operations in the Upper Midwest region of the United States,” Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said in the release. The deal is expected to close in late 2015 or early 2016, the release said. Nexstar also announced in a separate release that it opened a new $3 million, 15,000 square-foot broadcasting and news facility in Roanoke, Virginia, to support its stations WFXR Roanoke and WWCW Lynchburg and its website VirginiaFirst.com. The building includes “a dynamic news studio outfitted with the latest HD news production resources and technologies,” and enhanced meteorological equipment, Nexstar said. Along with the facility, Nexstar expanded its local news operation and added new newscasts and 30 news and production jobs, the release said.

The full FCC unanimously rejected two petitions for reconsideration filed by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) against Media Bureau decisions that led to the approval of online radio service Pandora’s buy of KXMZ(FM) Box Elder, South Dakota (see 1506020035), said a recon order approved Thursday as part of the commission’s consent agenda. “None of ASCAP’s arguments on the merits warrants reconsideration or review of the Bureau’s order,” the FCC said. ASCAP appealed both a declaratory ruling that allowed Pandora to buy the station without establishing that it was less than 25 percent foreign owned, and the FCC approval of the transfer of license. The buy of KXMZ was intended to allow Pandora to qualify for music rights at the same rates enjoyed by broadcasters, and that is why ASCAP objected to the rulings. The FCC upheld the bureau’s decision that ASCAP doesn’t have the standing to object to Pandora’s purchase of the station, and rejected ASCAP's argument that the declaratory ruling on foreign ownership hadn’t considered the public interest ramifications of allowing Pandora to buy the station. “The future of the collective music licensing system is not a relevant public interest factor” to the FCC’s analysis of Pandora as a prospective licensee, the order said, and, “in any case, is a question that is more appropriately resolved by Congress, the courts, and government agencies with expertise in this area."

Proposals to include an AM-only window for FM translator applications in the AM revitalization draft order amount to a request for free spectrum, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said during a news conference Thursday. “It’s not the general policy of this agency to give away free spectrum.” Wheeler said the other proposals in the draft order are modifications to allow AM to function better that “make a lot of sense” and should be considered separately from the translator window issue. During a subsequent news conference, Commissioner Ajit Pai disagreed. “An AM only translator window is not a giveaway,” Pai said, saying the proposal has wide support among broadcasters and in Congress. Pai said his office is discussing the proposal with other offices and he is hopeful the commission will approve an order that includes the window. Many AM broadcasters are pushing for such a window to allow them to take advantage of the lower interference and larger audience of the FM band (see 1509160036).

Entravision reached a $30,000 settlement with the FCC Media Bureau over KXFX Brownsville, Texas, failing to fulfill its Class A obligations and breaking public file rules, said an order and consent decree released Tuesday. KXFX was off the air for much of the time between June 22, 2010, and May 29, 2012, the consent decree said. The outage was caused by “unique facts attendant to its border location, and the limited availability of operating channels owing to the operation of authorized Mexican broadcast stations,” Entravision told the bureau, according to the consent decree. Under the settlement, the bureau will cease proceedings to downgrade the station to low-power status, and Entravision will fulfill its public file requirements going forward.

The FCC Media Bureau wants information on whether PMCM's WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey, is being carried by pay-TV carriers, according to an information request released Wednesday. PMCM has filed several related applications for review seeking to overturn bureau decisions related to its attempt to use the same main program and system information protocol (PSIP) channel as Meredith’s WFSB Hartford. The bureau had ruled that multichannel video programming distributors must implement PMCM's must-carry request by Sept. 3. or that PMCM could pursue carriage on cable channel 33. One of PMCM's applications for review is against that order and is still pending, opposed by Cablevision, Ion and Time Warner Cable. However, WJLP recently told viewers on its website that “WJLP Me-TV is coming to Cablevision on channel 33, Comcast on Channel 8, and Time Warner Cable on 1239 in early September!,” the bureau said. As a result, the bureau wants to know if WJLP is being carried by those MVPDs, what channel it's on, and how the responding parties feel the situation affects the application for review.

Lobbying on the FCC draft AM revitalization order is aimed at convincing commissioners to support an AM-window for FM translator applications, Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford said in a blog post Wednesday. AM operators see the translator window as “the one sure way to help preserve AM operations for the foreseeable future,” Oxenford said. Instead of the window, the draft order proposed to allow AM licensees to buy distant translators and move them, which had spurred much broadcaster lobbying trying to get the agency to allow an AM-only window (see 1508310046). “The fear of many AM stations is that the big market AM stations would be able to pay more for the existing translators that might be for sale, and most existing translators will be moved to big markets, while operators in small markets won’t get any relief,” Oxenford said. “Until the decision has been voted on, there certainly will be continued attempts to convince the Commissioners how to vote on what many AM broadcasters consider to be a crucial proposal.”

ABC and Media General reached a new affiliation agreement, Media General announced Wednesday. The agreement includes all of Media General's ABC stations, covers 12 markets and expires in 2021, Media General said.

The FCC Media Bureau approved the sale of seven TV licenses by Granite Broadcasting and Malara Broadcast to Quincy Newspapers, Sagamore Hill of Indiana and Sagamore Hill of Duluth, Minnesota, said a letter issued Tuesday. The approval also includes a nine-month waiver of local ownership rules to allow Quincy to unwind joint sales agreements in three markets, the order said. An existing JSA between Granite and Malara will be assumed by Quincy and Sagamore Hill after the deal, but converted into an shared services agreement that complies with FCC rules for sharing advertising sales. The licenses in the deal are in Binghamton, New York; Duluth; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Peoria, Illinois; and Superior, Wisconsin.

Gray Television is buying all the TV and radio stations of Schurz Communications for $442.5 million, Gray said in a news release Monday. To facilitate regulatory approval, Gray plans to divest stations in Wichita, Kansas, and South Bend, Indiana, where it has overlaps with Schurz. “Gray's divestitures of KAKE-TV in Wichita and WSBT-TV in South Bend will take the form of cash sales, swaps involving comparable high-quality television stations, or a combination of cash and swaps,” Gray said. It's also planning to sell the spectrum of WAGT Augusta, Georgia, in the incentive auction, and fold Schurz’s KOTA-TV Rapid City, South Dakota, into an existing Gray station, the buyer said. It said the deal would expand Gray’s portfolio to 49 TV stations in 28 states, and allow it to reach about 9.3 percent of total U.S. TV households.

Sinclair's retransmission consent dispute with Dish Network may have breathed new life into a year-old application for review of Sinclair’s buy of Allbritton’s TV stations, said Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the filers of the original complaint, in a supplemental filing posted Tuesday in docket 13-203. In the original application for review, Rainbow PUSH maintained that Sinclair improperly controls the TV stations owned by an affiliated company, Cunningham Broadcasting (see 1409110049). Though the Media Bureau previously ruled that Rainbow PUSH’s allegations about Cunningham are without merit, emails between Dish and Sinclair during a recent retrans between those two companies show Sinclair was claiming the right to negotiate retrans agreements on Cunningham’s behalf, Rainbow PUSH said. Sinclair “took the position that it has de jure control of Cunningham and thus, under the STELA Reauthorization Act of 2014 ('STELAR'), can represent Cunningham and other companies in retransmission consent negotiations,” Rainbow PUSH said. Sinclair said it didn’t have improper control over Cunningham during the regulatory review of its Allbritton deal. Sinclair also threatened to pull its stations from Dish if that DBS company complained to the FCC, Rainbow PUSH said. This “raises profound questions of basic qualifications based on Sinclair’s now-admitted control of Cunningham, as well as Sinclair’s misrepresentations to the Commission, violations of the rules governing duopolies, abuse of the retransmission consent process, and the use of coercion to attempt to prevent a party from petitioning the FCC for redress of grievances," Rainbow PUSH said. The FCC should open hearings on the matter, Rainbow PUSH said. “We have grown accustomed to filings like this from Rainbow Push over the years," a Sinclair spokeswoman emailed us. "As with previous filings, we don’t believe there is any validity to their claims and will respond procedurally in due course.” The Media Bureau declined to comment.