The FCC should preserve channels after the post-incentive auction repacking for new entrants to offer noncommercial educational service, officials from PBS, CPB and the Association of Public Television Stations said in a Tuesday meeting with members of the FCC’s Incentive Auction Task Force, according to an ex parte filing Thursday. The commission should also prioritize translators operated by NCE stations in the repacking, the public TV groups said.

The FCC’s data and research on the low-power TV industry is “inadequate,” LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition Director Michael Gravino told Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and her staff at a meeting Tuesday, according to an ex parte filing in docket 12-268. Gravino also said the FCC Video Division has a “vendetta” against the LPTV industry, pointing to a “huge back-log” of application approvals and a lack of data justifying policy decisions as evidence. Gravino also spoke to Clyburn about the “lack of disclosure and data by the Incentive Auction Task Force related to researching the economic cost benefits of LPTV as auction eligible entities,” the filing said.

Three proponents had registered by Tuesday afternoon their intent to vie for selection as the audio system for the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast specification, ATSC spokesman Dave Arland emailed us. The deadline for responses to ATSC’s Dec. 8 call for proposals (CFP) was 11:59 p.m. EST Tuesday. The three proponents are Dolby Labs, DTS and, as a group, Fraunhofer, Qualcomm and Technicolor, Arland said. ATSC, through its S34-2 ad hoc group, plans a thorough but fast-track process for choosing a proponent audio system for ATSC 3.0, in keeping with ATSC’s self-imposed deadline of finishing the ATSC 3.0 standard by the end of this year, its CFP said (see 1412090019). Audio systems proposed "will be judged discretely and in their entirety, as comprehensive, end-to-end systems for emission of the ATSC signal," the CFP said. "ATSC does not intend to develop the ATSC 3.0 audio system out of independent components from multiple sources."

The incentive auction downgrades low-power TV from a secondary service to a tertiary service able to be displaced by both full-power and Class A stations, Lotus Communications said in comments filed in response to the incentive auction LPTV NPRM. “The Commission should not unilaterally downgrade an entire class of licensee without redress or remedy,” Lotus said. The FCC should act to preserve LPTV stations that have public interest benefits by allowing them to convert to Class A status, Lotus said. The FCC “can extend the Class A protection set forth in the Spectrum Act to a discrete group of LPTV stations and the populations that they serve without imposing any undue procedural burdens on the Broadband Plan or negatively impacting its goals,” Lotus said.

The FCC can’t “justify from a legal or policy standpoint” offering stations with the same impact on spectrum clearing vastly different opening prices in the incentive auction, Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition Executive Director Preston Padden told Incentive Auction Task Force Chairman Gary Epstein, Vice Chair Howard Symons and Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake in a meeting Tuesday, an ex parte filing said. The proposed use of dynamic reserve pricing in the auction “is overly complicated and will introduce unnecessary impairment and potential inter-service interference to the auction,” Padden said. The commission should also loosen rules against disclosures among auction-eligible broadcasters, Padden said. “The Commission should adopt rules consistent with its recognition of the need to provide broadcasters with the information they need to make sensible business judgments and an opportunity for price discovery,” he said.

The FCC Media Bureau denied a motion to toll and delay the comment deadlines for the LPTV rulemaking from Free Access & Broadcast Telemedia, an order released Thursday said. Free Access had argued that it needed an analysis of how the commission's projected auction prices for broadcast stations -- called the Greenhill Report -- would affect LPTV stations in each designated marketing area, and asked the FCC to produce that information. The Media Bureau declined to produce that analysis, but did place the Greenhill book into the LPTV proceeding record. “We do not see the relevance of the Greenhill Report to potential measures the Commission can take 'to mitigate the impact of the incentive auction on LPTV and TV translator stations and to help preserve the important services they provide,'” the order said. Comments on the LPTV NPRM are due Jan. 12, replies Jan. 26.

Though TV sets still give “the best quality picture and viewing experience,” millennials ages 13 to 34 are “drastically” changing how content “is being discovered and consumed,” a joint CEA-NATPE study said. CEA and NATPE commissioned E-Poll Market Research to canvass millennials on their content consumption habits and found only 55 percent use TVs as their “primary viewing platform,” while mobile streaming devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones “are poised to dominate their viewing preferences," the groups said Thursday. Though many viewers of streaming programs say they're watching more TV programs overall, the study showed a decline “in the amount of time spent watching live television programs during their scheduled air time,” they said. “This is particularly true of the younger, millennial demographic which has some distinctive, common characteristics, including the regular use of multiple sources of program content.” Millennials are “comfortable using many different sources of TV program content and consequently are significantly more likely to consume full-length TV programs from a streaming source,” they said. Of those canvassed, 84 percent streamed a TV show in the past six months, compared with the 54 percent who viewed TV programming at its original air time, and 33 percent who watched content they had recorded on a DVR, they said. Other findings: (1) Millennials “value their Netflix subscriptions” more than broadcast or cable. In the study, 51 percent said they regard their Netflix subscription as “very valuable,” compared with 42 percent who said the same of broadcast channels, and 36 percent who said it of cable subscriptions. (2) Portability is king, as about half of millennials polled said they watch TV programming on a laptop, and for 19 percent it’s their preferred TV viewing screen. Another 28 percent said they routinely watch TV on a tablet, and 22 percent, on a smartphone.

The FCC Media Bureau proposed a $3,000 fine for Lincoln Broadcasting's KTSF San Francisco for failing to identify children’s programming by displaying the “E/I” symbol on the television screen, a notice of apparent liability released Wednesday said. Lincoln had argued that because KTSF is all Korean language, uses programming that originates in Korea, and the Korean language doesn't use the Roman alphabet, the E/I symbol wouldn't make sense to its viewers. That doesn't relieve the station of its duty to comply with the rules, and the correct way to address the issue would have been through a waiver request, the NAL said.

A recent FCC notice identifying “tentative winners” among mutually exclusive low-power FM applicants means those applicants not selected have 90 days to find an open frequency, Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford said in a blog post Friday. “Broadcasters need to watch these amendments, as they could pose interference issues for full-power FM stations on channels not previously proposed for use by any LPFM applicant,” he said. Full-power stations also need to be vigilant “to make sure that none of these applications (or any amendments subsequently filed by these LPFM applicants) will cause interference to their operations,” Oxenford said.

ATSC is looking ahead to 2015 "with eager anticipation, tempered with a healthy dose of cautious optimism," as the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system approaches the status of a "candidate standard" in the months ahead, ATSC President Mark Richer said in a President's Memo in ATSC's monthly newsletter, published Friday. "The process is the process, and there will need to be some give and take" as ATSC's "TG3" technology group works to make the candidate standard a reality, Richer said. The ATSC board "is urging TG3 participants to keep their eye on the prize and quickly resolve issues that arise or find ways to move forward on a path toward resolution" as the candidate standard is finalized, he said. "The eyes of the world are on the ATSC and our disciplined, inclusive, open approach to standards-setting. As such, it’s crucial that the new standard both moves ahead expeditiously and meets the varied needs of broadcasters, manufacturers and viewers in the United States and around the world."