The FCC Audio Division’s increase in speed in the resolution of applications for review is notable, a broadcast attorney said. It is likely a result of an effort by the division to identify and “package” cases appropriate for relatively streamlined treatment, and “an affirmative response to that effort from the 8th floor,” Fletcher Heald attorney Donald Evans said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1uePPXl). The latter factor is particularly noteworthy because, under former chairmen Kevin Martin and Julius Genachowski, the commission “reportedly showed zero interest in dealing with pretty much any routine Media Bureau applications for review,” he said. The commission under Chairman Tom Wheeler “has encouraged disposition of those long-pending items,” he said. If only the other bureaus and divisions would follow a similar course, “those mountains of years-old applications for review could be reduced to molehills,” he said.
Bott Communications, Inc. (BCI) asked the FCC to reject Jet Fuel Broadcasting’s petition for reconsideration concerning Jet Fuel’s application for a new AM station at Orchard Homes, Mont. The commission rejected the application. The recon petition is “moot” and “untimely,” Bott said in its opposition. Jet Fuel’s petition was filed 26 days late, it said. Jet Fuel “should be admonished for making scurrilous and unsupported ad hominem attacks against BCI and its principals,” BCI said. The petition raises arguments “that are untimely, misplaced, unsupported, and which, through name calling, discredit Jet Fuel and its case,” it said.
The FCC Media Bureau granted a rulemaking petition to Western Pacific Broadcast, which requested a change in community of license to Dover, Del. The public interest would be served by realloting Channel 5 from Seaford, and modifying the construction permit for Western’s WMDE-TV, an unbuilt station, accordingly, the bureau said in a report and order (http://bit.ly/1hXADc7). The change in community of license wouldn’t result in a change in Western Pacific’s proposed contour coverage of Seaford, it said. The bureau also dismissed a reconsideration petition filed by PMCM-TV on a report and order to amend the post-transition table of DTV allotments to allot Channel 5 to Seaford. The bureau dismissed the petition as untimely, it said in a memorandum opinion and order on further reconsideration (http://bit.ly/1n2O8L2).
NAB CEO Gordon Smith told FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel Monday about the association’s concerns on a new TV station resource-sharing attribution order and that agency staff shouldn’t change Office of Engineering and Technology bulletin 69 on predicting a TV licensee’s coverage area. Another new FCC item, adopted March 31 along with the sharing order, asked about changing network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules (CD April 1 p11) (http://fcc.us/1hXNQBE). Those rules serve the public interest by promoting localism, Smith and another NAB executive told Rosenworcel and an aide, according to an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 14-50 (http://bit.ly/1hXOijn).
No one topped Media General’s deal to buy LIN Media, during a “window-shop” period that ended Friday, said LIN in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1iOi2Qx). The deal is valued at about $2.6 billion and divestitures will be needed to get FCC approval (CD March 24 p6).
The LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition continued to caution the FCC against establishing too large a guard band between spectrum blocks in the final band plan for the broadcast spectrum auction framework. The Spectrum Act directs the guard band size “to be only as large as is ’technically reasonable’ to prevent inter-service interference,” the coalition said in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday to docket 12-268 (http://bit.ly/1fBZIdH). There’s nothing in that legislation that directs the commission to provide unlicensed advocates “with anything at all in terms of accommodation for a scale of a service,” it said. The group opposed requests by Google, New America Foundation and others for a 24 MHz to 30 MHz contiguous band for unlicensed use, it said. Any attempt by the FCC to accommodate these positions by enlarging what’s technically needed for a guard band “will by considered by the LPTV community as a direct taking of the spectrum needed to repack our vital licensed services,” the coalition said.
The FCC proposed fining a Louisville, Ky., man $15,000 for operating what it called a pirate radio station there at 87.9 and 99.5 MHz, said an Enforcement Bureau notice of apparent liability released in Wednesday’s Daily Digest (http://bit.ly/1ftI9ws). It said Jose Alejandro Aguilar “continued to operate the radio station notwithstanding” a “warning ... warranting a significant penalty.” The FCC and other state and federal agencies have been cracking down on pirate FM stations (CD Sept 28/11 p4; April 22 p12).
The FCC Media Bureau opened a two-month settlement period for FM translator Auction 83 applicants with proposals in mutually exclusive groups. The applications “are subject to the commission’s competitive bidding procedures,” the bureau said in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1u5vm7m). Settlement agreements and primary station specification amendments are due June 30, it said. Applicants that must sign agreements or resolve their “mutual exclusivities” include KMBQ Corp. looking to serve Wasilla, Alaska; Alaska Educational Radio System looking to serve Willow, Alaska; and Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, looking to serve Ivins, Utah (http://bit.ly/1fQSfSB).
The FCC should eliminate rather than relax the audio filtering requirements for Travelers’ Information Stations, commented the Hatfield & Dawson engineering firm in docket 09-19 (http://bit.ly/1iJ2n51). The firm said it supports a limitation in TIS operations that is similar to limiting the bandwidth of all medium frequency (MF) broadcast stations “to a specific value because of the known limited bandwidth of virtually all modern MF receivers."
The FCC Media Bureau again reminded TV stations not affiliated with ABC, CBS, Fox or NBC and those outside the top-50 U.S. markets “they must begin to comply with the online political file rules on July 1,” said an FCC notice in Tuesday’s Federal Register (http://1.usa.gov/1kqclYa). That publication summarized a bureau public notice reminding stations of the expanded applicability of the rule, which broadcasters took to mean they wouldn’t get the relief they sought from uploading all new records on fcc.gov (CD April 8 p5).