With the end of the AWS-3 auction, the upcoming incentive auction will be costlier, panelists at a spectrum conference sponsored by PwC said Thursday. It’s unclear how that will affect broadcasters on the reverse side of the upcoming incentive auction, said Eric Wolf, vice president of technology strategy and management at the Public Broadcasting Service. “There will be a lot more demand for spectrum,” said John Hane, a Pillsbury communications lawyer. “Another view is the AWS-3 auction is fundamentally different from the 600 MHz auction. AWS was a fairly straightforward auction -- people knew what they were bidding on. The 600 auction is very complex, even on the forward side of the auction.” The industry has “essentially forced consumers to stitch together the services that they want,” Wolf said. It can disaggregate and break up service from infrastructure, Hane said. He said he’s optimistic that ATSC 3.0 will be adopted. The “3.0 will make it a lot easier,” said John Lawson, principal of Convergence Services. “It seems like it’s happening, but there’s no structure to make these devices interoperable. We’re still in this scenario with silos.” Wolf said, “Don’t think about it as how many dollars per hertz or bits you can extract. Think about it as how can you help the consumer?” The FCC should be thinking of the consumer, too, and beyond the dollars, he said. “By 2025, I see the FCC trying to auction the T-band,” said Mike Gravino, director of the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition. “I see a constant struggle between the wireless industry and broadcast industry, even though we want to be the same, a struggle over this bandwidth.”
The FCC Enforcement Bureau refused to reduce or cancel a $20,000 penalty for General Communication Inc. (GCI) for failing to keep an antenna structure properly lit in Fairbanks, Alaska, the bureau said in a forfeiture order Wednesday. The bureau fined GCI for failing to monitor the obstruction lighting, maintain a functioning alarm system and notify the Federal Aviation Administration of the light outage, in violation of the rules, it said. GCI didn’t comment.
Nexstar Broadcasting bought digital video advertising company Yashi for $33 million, the acquirer said in a news release Monday. Yashi owns a proprietary platform for digital advertising that integrates “geographic, demographic, and other data-driven targeting tools with real-time-bidding,” Nexstar said. The deal “substantially broadens and diversifies Nexstar’s digital media portfolio” with businesses that are complementary to a focus on “multi-platform marketing solutions for local and national advertisers,” it said. Yashi will operate as a division of Nexstar.
CEA’s “R4.0” Video Systems standards development committee formed a new working group (R4WG18) on receivers for the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast DTV standard, ATSC said Monday in its monthly newsletter. R4WG18 is co-chaired by Martin Freeman of Samsung and Peter Shintani of Sony, and its charter “is to develop standards, recommended practices and technical reports on receiver guidelines, profiles and characteristics in support of the ATSC 3.0 emission standard,” ATSC said. “A fast-track liaison process has been established between ATSC and CEA for the two-way exchange of important information between the two standards development organizations,” ATSC said. The point men on the liaison will be Paul Thomsen, a technology adviser to CEA, and Rich Chernock of Triveni Digital, who chairs the ATSC’s "TG3" technology group that’s leading the ATSC 3.0 development effort.
The Media Bureau seeks comment on a petition asking the FCC to rule that broadcasters can’t use last in first out pricing against political candidates, said a public notice Thursday. It seeks comment on “whether the practice of stations of deciding that particular classes of advertising time are effectively sold out discriminates against candidates -- as candidates routinely buy their advertising time late in an election cycle,” said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford in a blog post Friday. In the 45 days before a primary election or 60 days before a general election, stations can’t charge more than the lowest price charged for the same class and amount of time to the station’s best commercial advertiser for that same class of advertising time, the PN said. The notice is a response to a petition filed in September by Canal Partners Media, which wants the FCC to issue a declaratory ruling that broadcasters must treat political candidates as being the first-in advertiser regardless of when the candidate purchased airtime, the PN said. Comments are due March 2, replies March 17.
Class A and full-power TV licensees have until May 29 to have their facilities licensed for them to be protected in the post-incentive auction repacking, said the FCC Media Bureau Wednesday night in a public notice. The pre-auction licensing deadline is also the deadline for licensees to modify their licenses to fix errors made in providing the FCC with operating parameters, and to have those modifications protected in the repacking, the PN said. Along with protection in the repacking, the licensing deadline also determines what stations can participate in the incentive auction, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Davina Sashkin on the law firm’s blog. ”What you have licensed (or have filed a license for) as of May 29, 2015 is what will be eligible for the auction, should you choose to participate.”
Level 3 Communications will provide video transport and end-to-end on-net services to NBC Sports and the NFL for Sunday's Super Bowl XLIX and related programming, using its Vyvx VenueNet+ technology, it said in a news release Tuesday. Level 3 will also carry pre- and postgame feeds to NFL operations centers, broadcast networks and satellite teleport sites, it said.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau fined Univision $20,000 for misusing emergency alert system tones during its Jan. 28, 2014, episode of the Luis Jimenez Show on WXNY(FM) New York, in an order released Friday. The station played EAS tones several times during a comedy sketch "in the absence of an actual emergency or authorized test of the EAS," in violation of Communications Act Section 325, the bureau said. Univision Local Media and the bureau entered into a consent decree stating that Univision will pay the $20,000 civil penalty within 30 days and implement a three-year compliance training program on EAS laws, the bureau said. Univision declined to comment. On Jan. 20, the FCC fined Viacom $1.12 million and ESPN $280,000 in a forfeiture order for using EAS tones for promoting the movie Olympus Has Fallen (see 1501200068).
More than 60 million registered users have signed up for iHeartRadio, said a company news release Friday. The digital music streaming service said it has nearly 90 million unique visitors across its network. The company’s brand awareness hit 75 percent in December, up 5 percent from the same period last year, it said.
The Association of Public Television Stations is restructuring its staff to better adopt its November strategic plan focusing on public service, public funding and public policy, said an APTS news release Thursday. APTS will create a collection of best practices for public TV, including community-based educational activities, public safety and civic leadership, it said. It will counsel stations on securing state funding, in addition to federal funding, for public TV, it said. The association also promoted two executives (see 1501220040).