Entravision reached a $30,000 settlement with the FCC Media Bureau over KXFX Brownsville, Texas, failing to fulfill its Class A obligations and breaking public file rules, said an order and consent decree released Tuesday. KXFX was off the air for much of the time between June 22, 2010, and May 29, 2012, the consent decree said. The outage was caused by “unique facts attendant to its border location, and the limited availability of operating channels owing to the operation of authorized Mexican broadcast stations,” Entravision told the bureau, according to the consent decree. Under the settlement, the bureau will cease proceedings to downgrade the station to low-power status, and Entravision will fulfill its public file requirements going forward.

The FCC Media Bureau wants information on whether PMCM's WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey, is being carried by pay-TV carriers, according to an information request released Wednesday. PMCM has filed several related applications for review seeking to overturn bureau decisions related to its attempt to use the same main program and system information protocol (PSIP) channel as Meredith’s WFSB Hartford. The bureau had ruled that multichannel video programming distributors must implement PMCM's must-carry request by Sept. 3. or that PMCM could pursue carriage on cable channel 33. One of PMCM's applications for review is against that order and is still pending, opposed by Cablevision, Ion and Time Warner Cable. However, WJLP recently told viewers on its website that “WJLP Me-TV is coming to Cablevision on channel 33, Comcast on Channel 8, and Time Warner Cable on 1239 in early September!,” the bureau said. As a result, the bureau wants to know if WJLP is being carried by those MVPDs, what channel it's on, and how the responding parties feel the situation affects the application for review.

Lobbying on the FCC draft AM revitalization order is aimed at convincing commissioners to support an AM-window for FM translator applications, Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford said in a blog post Wednesday. AM operators see the translator window as “the one sure way to help preserve AM operations for the foreseeable future,” Oxenford said. Instead of the window, the draft order proposed to allow AM licensees to buy distant translators and move them, which had spurred much broadcaster lobbying trying to get the agency to allow an AM-only window (see 1508310046). “The fear of many AM stations is that the big market AM stations would be able to pay more for the existing translators that might be for sale, and most existing translators will be moved to big markets, while operators in small markets won’t get any relief,” Oxenford said. “Until the decision has been voted on, there certainly will be continued attempts to convince the Commissioners how to vote on what many AM broadcasters consider to be a crucial proposal.”

ABC and Media General reached a new affiliation agreement, Media General announced Wednesday. The agreement includes all of Media General's ABC stations, covers 12 markets and expires in 2021, Media General said.

The FCC Media Bureau approved the sale of seven TV licenses by Granite Broadcasting and Malara Broadcast to Quincy Newspapers, Sagamore Hill of Indiana and Sagamore Hill of Duluth, Minnesota, said a letter issued Tuesday. The approval also includes a nine-month waiver of local ownership rules to allow Quincy to unwind joint sales agreements in three markets, the order said. An existing JSA between Granite and Malara will be assumed by Quincy and Sagamore Hill after the deal, but converted into an shared services agreement that complies with FCC rules for sharing advertising sales. The licenses in the deal are in Binghamton, New York; Duluth; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Peoria, Illinois; and Superior, Wisconsin.

Gray Television is buying all the TV and radio stations of Schurz Communications for $442.5 million, Gray said in a news release Monday. To facilitate regulatory approval, Gray plans to divest stations in Wichita, Kansas, and South Bend, Indiana, where it has overlaps with Schurz. “Gray's divestitures of KAKE-TV in Wichita and WSBT-TV in South Bend will take the form of cash sales, swaps involving comparable high-quality television stations, or a combination of cash and swaps,” Gray said. It's also planning to sell the spectrum of WAGT Augusta, Georgia, in the incentive auction, and fold Schurz’s KOTA-TV Rapid City, South Dakota, into an existing Gray station, the buyer said. It said the deal would expand Gray’s portfolio to 49 TV stations in 28 states, and allow it to reach about 9.3 percent of total U.S. TV households.

Sinclair's retransmission consent dispute with Dish Network may have breathed new life into a year-old application for review of Sinclair’s buy of Allbritton’s TV stations, said Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the filers of the original complaint, in a supplemental filing posted Tuesday in docket 13-203. In the original application for review, Rainbow PUSH maintained that Sinclair improperly controls the TV stations owned by an affiliated company, Cunningham Broadcasting (see 1409110049). Though the Media Bureau previously ruled that Rainbow PUSH’s allegations about Cunningham are without merit, emails between Dish and Sinclair during a recent retrans between those two companies show Sinclair was claiming the right to negotiate retrans agreements on Cunningham’s behalf, Rainbow PUSH said. Sinclair “took the position that it has de jure control of Cunningham and thus, under the STELA Reauthorization Act of 2014 ('STELAR'), can represent Cunningham and other companies in retransmission consent negotiations,” Rainbow PUSH said. Sinclair said it didn’t have improper control over Cunningham during the regulatory review of its Allbritton deal. Sinclair also threatened to pull its stations from Dish if that DBS company complained to the FCC, Rainbow PUSH said. This “raises profound questions of basic qualifications based on Sinclair’s now-admitted control of Cunningham, as well as Sinclair’s misrepresentations to the Commission, violations of the rules governing duopolies, abuse of the retransmission consent process, and the use of coercion to attempt to prevent a party from petitioning the FCC for redress of grievances," Rainbow PUSH said. The FCC should open hearings on the matter, Rainbow PUSH said. “We have grown accustomed to filings like this from Rainbow Push over the years," a Sinclair spokeswoman emailed us. "As with previous filings, we don’t believe there is any validity to their claims and will respond procedurally in due course.” The Media Bureau declined to comment.

NAB “does not raise anything new” in petitioning the FCC to reconsider its incentive auction procedures public notice on the issues of market variability, repacking broadcasters in the duplex gap and reserving space for wireless mics (see 1509110050), “and the FCC can quickly dispense with” the petition, CEA President Gary Shapiro emailed us Monday. Citing recent statements by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler standing by the scheduled March 29 auction date, CEA applauds “the commission’s timetable and its commitment to ensuring a smooth and successful auction process,” Shapiro said.

The associations and broadcasters opposing the Low Power FM Advocacy Group’s petition to change LPFM rules to allow them to run commercials are “uneducated or agenda seeking opportunists who do not have the success of service in mind,” LPFM-AG said in FCC reply comments in RM-11753. LPFM-AG blasted broadcasters for creating “an illusion of support” by commenting against the petition both under their company names and via their state and national broadcast associations. “Weight should not be added to their viewpoint,” LPFM-AG said. It panned the Prometheus Radio Project and REC Networks. “Their inexperience in real world radio station operations, combined with their interference into LPFM rulemaking & administrative license processes, are one of the glaring reasons why this service has failed,” LPFM-AG said. To listeners, there is no difference between LPFM and full-power FM, LPFM-AG said. “The current rules that only allow an LPFM to raise funds for itself are capricious and not at all in the public interest,” LPFM-AG said. “How does this serve the American radio listener?” Opposition to the petition from NAB and state associations (see 1509020050) shows that corporate radio interests oppose local radio, LPFM-AG said.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau proposed a $15,000 fine for an alleged New Jersey pirate radio operator who has shown “deliberate disregard” for previous warnings from the bureau, said a notice of apparent liability released Friday. Jean Yves Tullias, who the FCC said operates an unlicensed station on 107.9 MHz in Irvington, New Jersey, “has a history of operating unlicensed FM stations in New Jersey,” the NAL said. The bureau said it sent Tullias a Notice of Unlicensed operation in 2012, and in June 2015, tracked radio signals to a single-family residence, the NAL said. When they notified property owner Nicholas Fonrose about the unlicensed station by letter they received no response, but the home’s FM antenna was removed, the notice said. On Aug. 5, bureau agents tracked the unlicensed signal on 107.9 MHz to another home in Orange, New Jersey, confirmed that Tullias lived there, and contacted the property owner, who had the antenna taken down. On Aug. 10, the station was tracked to another house in Irvington, and Tullias was sent another notice. “Again, Mr. Tullias did not respond to the Notice,” the NAL said. The bureau proposed a $10,000 fine for the unlicensed operation, and adjusted it upward for Tullias’s disregard of repeated warnings, the NAL said.