Entravision Communications, ZGS Communications and public interest groups the Media Alliance and The Hispanic Institute joined new broadcaster coalition TVfreedom.org, the organization said in a press release Monday (http://bit.ly/1obSU7N). “In the retransmission debate, the critical voice of the Latino consumer has been lost,” said Hispanic Institute President Gus West. TVfreedom, formed last week by a collection of broadcaster associations and network affiliate groups, said in its introductory press release that its goal is to hold multichannel video programming distributors “accountable” for programming blackouts and rising cable bills.

DirecTV and WeatherNation offered “Local Weather Now,” a feature allowing subscribers to access customized local weather information at the ZIP code level. While watching the WeatherNation channel, viewers can press the red button on their remote to access instant local weather conditions, the DBS company and channel said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1dd0ACd). Later this week, short-term and extended weather forecasts by ZIP code will be integrated into the live WeatherNation broadcast and run automatically on the telecast every 10 minutes, they said. DirecTV also plans to launch the “Severe Weather Mix,” which will be activated during major weather events that are potentially life-threatening, it said. Services available through the channel mix will include “live radar channel for tracking severe storms with up-to-the-minute storm cell tracking information” and live coverage from top national news networks such as CNN and Fox News, it said. DirecTV replaced The Weather Channel with WeatherNation after a carriage dispute with The Weather Channel last month (CD Jan 15 p20).

The Weather Channel urged the FCC to investigate the captioning practices of DirecTV and WeatherNation. The WeatherNation programming carried by DirecTV “is accompanied by closed captioning that is so inaccurate that it amounts to a complete failure to caption the programming,” Weather Channel said in an ex parte filing in docket 05-231 (http://bit.ly/1dCtGqr). Several viewers complained publicly “that they are not receiving WeatherNation’s closed captioning at all when viewing the channel on DirecTV,” it said. The Weather Channel has been unavailable to DirecTV subscribers since January due to a carriage agreement dispute (CD Jan 15 p20). DirecTV added WeatherNation to its channel lineup to provide subscribers with weather news and information. WeatherNation did not respond to a request for comment.

The FCC Media Bureau extended to March 20 the reply comment deadline in the proceeding on AM revitalization. The original deadline, Feb. 18, was extended by 30 days, the bureau said in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1bxadHS). The Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers requested a 60-day extension (CD Feb 7 p18). The bureau granted AFCCE’s request in part, it said.

NAB urged the FCC to update its broadcast ownership regulations and stressed the importance of the current retransmission consent system to TV viewers. The ability to negotiate in the marketplace for the value of the broadcast signal “is critical to broadcasters’ provision of the quality and quantity of programming that viewers expect from their local television broadcast stations,” it said in a ex parte filing in dockets 09-182 and 10-71 (http://bit.ly/1bxcFy0). NAB also urged the FCC to reform its license renewal application processes for stations to provide greater certainty and timely action on pending applications, it said. The filing pertained to a meeting with staff from Commissioner Mike O'Rielly’s office.

The Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers requested a 60-day extension of the reply comments deadline in docket 13-249. Due to the inclement weather and scheduling conflicts, the committee formed by the AFCCE to generate reply comments needs more time to review initial comments filed, AFCCE said in its request (http://bit.ly/N8KOyH). Reply comments on revitalization of the AM band are due Feb. 18.

NAB met with officials from the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology to discuss how interference between TV stations and wireless services will be predicted, said an ex parte filing released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1eC6Aof). The broadcast association “sought clarification” on the technological assumptions made by the OET methodology for calculating such interference, the proposed use of the “Longley-Rice propagation prediction model” and the “use and application of a clutter loss factor” for different interference situations, the filing said.

The current record on how cross-media ownership would affect minorities is “inadequate,” said officials from the United Church of Christ Office of Communication and the Institute of Public Representation in a meeting Monday with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s media aide Maria Kirby, said an ex parte filing released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1khXnFx). The FCC will need more hard data to meet the standards for such rules imposed by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Prometheus II decision, said the groups. The commission must “conduct analysis of the impact of its media ownership rules on women and people of color before it takes any action to relax those rules,” said the filing. The commission’s previously collected Form 323 data doesn’t provide such analysis because it’s disorganized and out of date, the filing said. “Only a data collection of the intensity of the Critical Information Needs studies would be adequate,” said the filing. The commission should base its decisions in the 2010 or 2014 Quadrennial Review on data collected from such studies, the filing said. Commission inaction on joint sales agreements and shared service agreements (SSAs) “invites broadcasters to quickly usher through as many of these arrangements as possible and then, in the event of later Commission action, to grandfather in the transactions, creating perverse incentives.” The FCC should make a tentative finding that SSAs undermine the goals of the ownership rules and provide notice of upcoming action, subjecting parties to possible unwinding of their arrangements, the filing said.

NAB and the Committee on Local Television Audience Measurement (COLTAM) passed a resolution supporting more accurate local TV measurement. NAB and COLTAM urged the Nielsen ratings system to delay implementation of hybrid measurement, methodology and technology “until it can be fully tested in the marketplace,” NAB said in a press release (http://bit.ly/LUhUS3). They also urged Nielsen to “increase its sample size in local TV markets to make ‘broadband-only homes’ additive to its samples beyond 2014,” it said.

NAB repeated its stance on the retransmission consent model, broadcast ownership rules and the upcoming broadcast spectrum incentive auctions, during a meeting with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, his staff, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake and Gary Epstein of the Incentive Auction Task Force. The FCC lacks statutory authority to compel broadcasters to permit pay-TV operators to resell over-the-air broadcast signals to subscribers, NAB said in an ex parte filing in dockets 09-182, 10-71 and 13-249 (http://bit.ly/1dthmZj). On the incentive auctions, NAB offered to meet with FCC staff “to test and refine repacking scenarios that will achieve the statutory goal of preserving broadcast coverage areas while successfully recovering spectrum for wireless broadband service,” it said. NAB urged the FCC to take a realistic look at its ownership restrictions in the current media market. The record before the FCC “contains many examples of joint sales and shared services arrangements among broadcasters that have produced clear public benefits,” it said.