Video technology supplier Harmonic saw “increased Ultra HD and HEVC compression activity breaking loose” in Q2, CEO Patrick Harshman said on a Monday earnings call. During the quarter, Harmonic “passed our key milestone” by shipping the industry's first Ultra HD encoders with high dynamic range, “enabling the significantly wider color range and enhanced luminance levels that many of our customers now believe is vital to the commercial success of Ultra HD,” Harshman said. Bolstering Ultra HD adoption are growing TV sales and consumer interest, “a gradually maturing ecosystem, new test channel launches and continuous innovation in video quality and bandwidth efficiencies,” he said. There’s also “growing market interest” in HEVC compression, he said: “Many of the world's leading media and telecom companies are now actively considering leveraging HEVC to recompress existing services to dramatically expand reach and reduce distribution costs.” Harshman thinks it’s “an interesting dynamic” that more and more broadcast and media companies are “looking to use HEVC in the near term for traditional HD and even SD content as they look to drive better efficiencies in their mobile networks in their streaming infrastructure,” he said in Q&A. “We've had a couple of announced customers using HEVC technology for those services, and so we do have a view now that HEVC will be more of a near term driver even before Ultra HD really kicks out,” he said.

Consumers will suffer if the FCC eliminates its exclusivity rules, NAB said in a presentation to Chairman Tom Wheeler’s Media aide Maria Kirby Thursday, according to an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 10-71. A lack of exclusivity rules could make it harder for the FCC to enforce its coverage rules, NAB said. “Broadcasters have incorporated this geographic limitation into their contracts and, because of the rules, stations do not negotiate for coverage beyond those distances,” the filing said. “Eliminating the rule may incentivize stronger, large-market stations to seek to expand their exclusive service areas,” the filing said.

The Radio Music License Committee reached a settlement in its antitrust case with the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, said RMLC, which represents the vast majority of the nation’s commercial radio stations, in a news release Thursday. The settlement ends nearly three years of antitrust litigation between the groups, said RMLC. Under the settlement, SESAC must negotiate rates industrywide, the parties will have to undergo binding arbitration when they can’t reach a voluntary agreement, and SESAC’s current rates are frozen at their 2015 level until negotiations for the 2016-2018 term are resolved, it said. The settlement also gives SESAC more ability to license works directly to radio stations and requires SESAC to reimburse RMLC for legal fees from the antitrust case. The agreement’s “immediate impact” is that stations “will not have exposure to further SESAC rate increases and the industry now has the opportunity to obtain sustained SESAC fee relief,” RMLC said. In its release on the settlement, SESAC said it "guarantees a level playing field in establishing the fair market value of our creators’ musical works for the broadcast radio industry." The new agreement has “many benefits” for radio stations, said Wilkinson Barker radio station lawyer David Oxenford in a blog post Friday. One such benefit is that SESAC will publicize its catalog online and not take action against radio operators over SESAC music licenses unless that music has been in the online database for 45 days, he said. This will make it easier for radio operators to avoid inadvertently playing SESAC music and incurring SESAC license fees, Oxenford said. Radio stations need to have current SESAC licenses and “affirmatively opt into coverage” to benefit from the deal, Oxenford said. “RMLC is to provide each station a letter which will provide a general estimate of the fees for the current license term before the station makes the decision.”

Though ATSC President Mark Richer “can't name a specific date for the work of a subcommittee, the process to select audio technology for use in ATSC 3.0 is making great progress and is generally on track," he emailed us Friday. Under ATSC’s call for audio proposals issued in December, the S34-2 ad hoc group that’s studying ATSC 3.0 audio proposals faces an Aug. 14 deadline for delivering a recommended audio standard to its parent S34 specialist group on "applications and presentation" chaired by Madeleine Noland, an LG Electronics consultant. Dolby Labs CEO Kevin Yeaman on a Wednesday earnings call generally sidestepped questions about Dolby’s fate in the ATSC 3.0 audio selection process, though he said "we’ve been highly engaged in that process.” Dolby’s AC-4 technology is one of the proposals that the S34-2 ad hoc group is considering for adoption, along with a second proposal from the MPEG-H audio alliance of Fraunhofer, Qualcomm and Technicolor. A third proponent, DTS, dropped out of the running days before the NAB Show opened in mid-April (see 1504130030). “We have a fantastic solution that both increases efficiency and also opens up possibilities for new and enhanced audio experiences,” Yeaman said of Dolby AC-4. “We feel good about where we are at this stage in the game,” though “we’re still ways off from any broad implementation,” he said. Pressed in Q&A on when ATSC might pick an audio winner for ATSC 3.0, Yeaman said: “I don’t think we have a firm date from them.”

Comments on the FCC rulemaking notice on relaxing channel sharing rules are due Aug. 13, replies Aug. 28, said a public notice on docket 15-137 released in Wednesday's Daily Digest.

The FCC rescheduled a webinar on channel sharing originally slated for Wednesday to Aug. 13, a public notice said Tuesday.

Tegna, formerly Gannett, will sell its McLean, Virginia, headquarters for $270 million to private investment group Tamares, Tegna said in a news release Tuesday. The deal is expected to close in late Q3 or early Q4, the broadcaster said. Tegna said it will continue to occupy part of the building for 18 months. The deal allows Tegna to “optimize” its real estate portfolio, it said. “TEGNA remains committed to staying in the Washington, D.C. area and a process is underway to find the most appropriate space to meet our company needs.”

Entercom completed its $105 million purchase of Lincoln Financial Media, with those formerly Lincoln radio stations being operated by Entercom as of Friday, Entercom said in a news release Thursday. Also as of Friday, Entercom began operating KSWD(FM) Los Angeles as part of a radio station swap with Bonneville International, which in turn is taking over four Denver-area radio stations that had been part of Entercom or Lincoln -- KOSI(FM) Denver, KYGO(FM) Denver, KKFN(FM) Longmont and KEPN(AM) Lakewood. That swap is being done to satisfy Justice Department antitrust concerns regarding Entercom's presence in the Denver market (see 1507150011). Entercom said it expects the station exchange to close by Q4, subject to FCC approval.

The FCC was right when it rejected the petition by ADX Communications regarding assignment of radio licenses to an ADX competitor, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said Friday. ADX, which has two radio stations in Pensacola, Florida, in 2012 sought to block competitor Cumulus Licensing when it filed applications for licenses at stations in the Pensacola area and nearby Mobile, Alabama, as well a change in community of license, arguing the FCC should treat the region as one market instead of the normal Arbitron market definitions and that a two-year waiting period should apply. The Media Bureau denied ADX, and the full commission affirmed the bureau's move in 2014. ADX then appealed. In its ruling, the court said the FCC's decision to stick with its traditional market definition methodology was reasonable and that its interpretation of waiting period language was consistent with past policy.

All AM stations should have access to any FM translator, iHeartMedia said in an ex parte filing posted Thursday in FCC docket 13-249. In a meeting with Commissioner Michael O'Rielly, CEO Bob Pittman and other executives pushed for a variety of steps aimed at revitalizing AM radio, including authorizing all-digital AM operations on an experimental basis and the FM translator access, which "would allow AM stations to expand audience by reaching listeners who do not tune into the AM band due to signal quality or other issues," iHeartMedia said. The company also urged against reducing interference protections for Class A stations, saying that could harm the AM band.