The FCC Media Bureau dismissed must-carry complaints from NRJ TV against DirecTV. NRJ TV argued that DirecTV’s alleged refusal to carry its UHF digital channels KUBE-TV Baytown, Texas, and KTNC-TV Concord, California, violated FCC rules. The bureau is satisfied that dismissing the complaints “will serve the public interest by promoting the private resolution of disputes and by eliminating the need for further litigation and the expenditure of further time and resources of the parties and this commission,” it said Monday in letters (here and here).

The FCC set a March 16 effective date for rules for the Closed Captioning Quality Order. Record maintenance for video programming distributors' monitoring and maintenance activities, procedures for informal complaints on use of the Electronic Newsroom Technique (ENT), compliance procedures relating to ENT, and other rules will take effect on that date, the commission said Monday in a public notice. The FCC approved the order this year (see 1402210039).

Media General completed the purchase of LIN Media, the acquirer said in a news release Friday. The FCC Media Bureau recently approved the $1.5 billion deal (see 1412120052).

Journal Broadcast Group and Dish Network reached a carriage agreement for Journal's stations in all of its markets. WTMJ-TV Milwaukee, WTVF Nashville, WFTX-TV Cape Coral, Florida, and other stations will remain on Dish's lineup, Journal said Thursday in a news release.

The FCC is seeking comment on its proposed changes to rules for broadcast licensee-conducted contests, in which website disclosure will suffice instead of the now-required reading of rules over the air. Comments are due Feb. 17, replies March 19, the commission said Friday in a Federal Registernotice. The FCC unanimously voted last month to issue an NPRM on allowing broadcast stations to inform viewers about the terms of contests over the Internet rather than over the air (see 1411210044).

The FCC Media Bureau dismissed a petition asking it to deny the license renewal of a radio station owned by Redskins football team owner Dan Snyder, the bureau said in an order Thursday. The name of the team, often broadcast on WWXX (FM) Buckland, Virginia, is an obscenity, said objections from John Banzhaf, Louis Grimaldi, Jay Nightwolf and Verona Iriarte. Though the objections were outside the deadline to be considered as petitions to deny, the bureau considered them on the merits as informal objections, the order said. “Redskins” isn’t a sexual or excretory term, and so doesn’t meet the definition of obscenity or profanity, the order said. Objectors also said the word was a racial epithet, but the FCC doesn’t regulate the use of such words, the order said. The FCC doesn’t consider such words profanity “given constitutional considerations,” the order said. The order also rejected arguments that the FCC should deny the renewal because broadcasting the word means Snyder doesn’t meet the character requirements to be a broadcaster. The FCC can’t “deny renewal of a broadcast license because particular words or programming broadcast by the licensee offended some viewers,” the order said. WWXX (FM)’s license has been renewed, the order said. FCC officials on the eighth floor weren’t notified of the decision and learned of it from news reports, one official told us. The petitioners are weighing different options, Banzhaf said. One option is to make an appeal or ask for reconsideration, “arguing that they’ve read our petition incorrectly,” he said. There also are additional station licenses coming up all the time so “we can now benefit from the staff’s position, and my colleagues and I can go back and see if we can come up with even more theories,” he said: “It’s going to take the commission to do it, and not the staff.” The bureau staff misinterpreted several claims, including one of the major claims that the unnecessary and repetitious use of the word causes harm, he said. “Somehow they twisted that to be only psychological harm, but it’s not.”

PMCM pushed back against CBS and Meredith Corp., saying they haven’t attempted to show that PMCM’s WJLP-TV Middletown Township, New Jersey, caused any problems by use of Virtual Channel 3.10. Meredith Corp. and CBS issued a joint opposition to PMCM’s application for review of FCC Media Bureau orders on the proper virtual major channel for WJLP. That opposition “is essentially non-responsive” to PMCM’s application, PMCM said in its response posted Friday in docket 14-150. “Their failure even to attempt some, any, rebuttal may be seen as an effective concession of the correctness of PMCM’s arguments.” CBS and Meredith Corp. also fail to mention there are no fewer than 105 situations, already in place for years, “in which non-commonly-owned stations with overlapping service areas use identical two-part virtual channel numbers” in apparent violation of the A/65 ATSC standard, PMCM said.

The FCC Media Bureau approved Media General’s $1.5 billion buy of LIN Media, the bureau said in a letter released Friday. The deal was the subject of a Department of Justice consent decree in October requiring some divestitures (see 1410300060). The FCC concurred with Media General’s agreement with DOJ to divest seven stations, and considers the dissolution of several joint sales agreements to which some of the divested stations are parties to be a public interest benefit, the letter said. Though some JSAs remain in place among some of the 70-plus stations involved in the transaction, “Post-merger Media General” will have the same 2016 deadline to bring the JSAs in line with FCC attribution rules as other broadcasters, the letter said. On the closing of the deal, LIN CEO Vincent Sadusky will become CEO of post-transaction Media General, the letter said.

Recent FCC actions raise the question of whether the commission is getting rid of its Mattoon waiver policy, a broadcast attorney said. The FCC now seems to be backing off the use of these waivers, which allow relocation of an FM translator for use as a fill-in translator by an AM station without requiring multiple “hops,” Wilkinson Barker attorney David Oxenford said Friday in a blog post. Last week, the commission upheld in an order an earlier staff decision to deny a request from Educational Media Foundation to move a transmitter site, and the Audio Division denied a similar request from Hope Christian Church of Marlton in New Jersey. All of the actions and the express proposal in the AM improvement proceeding suggesting that the Mattoon waiver policy may no longer be necessary “indicate that the days of this policy may be numbered,” Oxenford said. Until rules are adopted in the AM revitalization proceeding, there’s still time to file informal comments in that proceeding on the Mattoon waiver policy “if it might affect your operations,” he said.

The FCC Media Bureau approved a Journal Communications and E.W. Scripps plan to combine their broadcast operations into one company and spin off and join their newspapers into another, according to a letter released Friday. Journal agreed to divest one of six radio stations it owns in the Wichita, Kansas, area and KNIN-TV Caldwell, Idaho, to comply with FCC ownership rules, the letter said. The divested stations will be assigned to a trust that will be required within six months to either sell the stations or, if possible, put them into the incentive auction. Otherwise, the stations licenses will be canceled, the bureau said. Scripps will also be granted a failing station waiver in the Green Bay, Wisconsin, designated market area, the letter said. The all-stock transaction will result in Scripps owning 33 TV stations and 34 radio stations, while Journal Media Group will cover 14 markets with the combined newspapers, the companies said in a July news release announcing the deal.