The FCC must be more flexible about what information broadcasters participating in the auction are allowed to know, the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition said in informal comments posted online in docket 12-268 Friday. Allowing broadcasters access to information such as the current clearing target, whether dynamic reserve pricing is on or off or has been used on any stations would aid broadcaster decisions about the auction, the EOBC said. The FCC should also give broadcasters enough information after each round to allow them to analyze bidding activity “and make informed decisions,” EOBC said. Auction participants can acquire useful information by knowing the bidding activity of their competitors, EOBC said. “Providing this information is standard in any FCC auction and the reverse auction should be no different,” EOBC said.

Roughly a week before ATSC 3.0's framers unleash a full progress report on the next-gen DTV standard at their “Boot Camp” conference on Wednesday in Washington, ATSC Thursday said the “first ingredient” of ATSC 3.0's physical layer has reached the status of “candidate standard” following a month of balloting. The so-called “bootstrap signal” portion of the physical layer is designated “A/321 Part 1" and will be “important to the future evolution of ATSC 3.0,” ATSC said in an announcement. Other “core elements” of the physical layer, including its modulation and error correction systems, will be balloted for candidate status this summer, ATSC said. Balloting on each of ATSC 3.0's components typically will be a four-week process, ATSC has said. The bootstrap signal for ATSC 3.0 transmission will remain a candidate standard for nine months while prototype equipment is built and tested “in advance of balloting for the entire system,” ATSC said. “The bootstrap is a low-level signal that tells a receiver to decode and process wireless services multiplexed in a broadcast channel,” said ATSC President Mark Richer. “It’s designed to be a very robust signal and detectable even at low signal levels.” The bootstrap signal provides “a universal entry point into a broadcast waveform,” ATSC said. It uses a “fixed configuration” known to all receivers “and carries information to enable processing and decoding the wireless service associated with a detected bootstrap signal,” as well as a “flag” that indicates when an emergency alert is in effect, it said.

NAB CEO Gordon Smith lobbied FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly, opposing an NPRM proposing to adopt a rebuttable presumption of effective competition for all cable operators, which the group and some others have opposed and NCTA backs (see 1505060051). The proposal "is unlawful and goes well beyond STELAR’s limited directive to modify the petition filing process for small cable companies," said NAB of the 2014 Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization Act's Section 111. "Congress just recently addressed the Commission’s implementation of the effective competition requirements, and elected not to alter the FCC’s longstanding approach to making its necessary effective competition findings," said a filing posted Thursday to docket 15-53 on the meeting also attended by NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan and O'Rielly aide Robin Colwell. "It is odd, indeed, for the FCC to go far beyond what Congress just instructed it to do; namely, make mere administrative changes for small cable operators."

Alpha Media completed its $11.2 million buy of Coast Radio’s San Francisco Bay Area radio properties, Media Venture Partners, which represented the seller, said in a news release Tuesday.

Pandora's deal to buy a "small station in South Dakota" shows the company "has declared war on songwriters," said National Music Publishers’ Association CEO David Israelite of the firm's attempt to lower its royalty rate through the acquisition. "In the history of the struggle between creators and those who try to profit off of their work without paying them fairly, this move by Pandora ranks as the most cynical and shameless." The station "has become a pawn in Pandora's game to pay the creators on which it built its business even less," Israelite said in a news release Tuesday. The FCC said the previous day that Pandora could be up to 49.99 percent foreign owned, paving the way for the company to get agency approval for its $600,000 planned buy of KXMZ(FM), Box Elder, South Dakota, from Connoisseur Media (see 1505050049), a deal that NMPA has criticized (see report in the June 17, 2013, issue). A representative of the station had no immediate comment Wednesday, and Pandora declined to comment. "Pandora is radio," and buying KXMZ would qualify the company for the same Radio Music License Committee license "under the same terms as our competitors," the company said Monday when it got the FCC foreign ownership declaratory ruling. "This move makes sense to us beyond the licensing parity alone."

Relaxed FCC rules on travelers' information stations (TIS), used to send noncommercial travel-related information to motorists over AM frequencies, will be effective June 4, said the agency in Tuesday's Federal Register. A TIS rule requiring filtering of audio frequencies transmitted over such stations will be relaxed to requiring it only above 5 kHz instead of 3 kHz, it said. "This rule change will enable TIS operators to improve the audio quality and intelligibility of TIS broadcasts." Commissioners approved a TIS order in March that held off on making other changes some requested (see 1503260059).

The seller of KXMZ(FM), Box Elder, South Dakota, and would-be buyer Pandora lobbied the FCC last week seeking "expedition since the proposed transaction has been pending for nearly two years," they said in a filing in docket 14-109. An FCC order Monday let Pandora exceed the 25 percent limit on foreign ownership and be as much as 49.9 percent foreign owned (see 1505040065), as expected (see 1504280046). Foreign-ownership reporting conditions that might be proposed in the declaratory ruling that Pandora seeks and whether the company would be willing to accept them were discussed, said the filing on meetings with aides to Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Ajit Pai, also attended by representatives of KXMZ owner Connoisseur Media. "We also reiterated the public interest benefits of Pandora's programming for listeners of KXMZ," it said of the meeting with an aide to O'Rielly. But the FCC didn't approve Pandora's buy of KXMZ, and the order drew concern from O'Rielly and Pai.

Balloting on the first component of ATSC 3.0's physical layer is set to close May 6, ATSC said Friday in The Standard, its monthly online newsletter. The first ballot from ATSC’s Technology Group 3 is to elevate the “working draft” of a “system discovering and signaling” document to a “candidate standard,” the newsletter said. This “important part” of the physical layer is called the “bootstrap” or “preamble,” and it provides “robust signaling and synchronization,” it said. Balloting on the document began April 8, ATSC 3.0's framers said at the NAB Show (see 1504130030), If approved, the document would be the first part of ATSC 3.0 that’s elevated to candidate standard status “and represents a major milestone of the process,” it said. “Additional documents describing the physical layer and other layers of the system are expected in the coming months.” Balloting on each of ATSC 3.0's components typically will be a four-week process, it said. As ATSC 3.0's component parts are adopted as standards, they will be numbered after the ATSC specialist groups where they originated, it said. Since the S32 specialist group is responsible for the physical layer, the first document from S32 will be numbered “A/321,” it said.

As Congress looks at FCC process reform (see 1504300063), Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition Executive Director Preston Padden said the agency's work on the TV incentive auction rulemakings “have been the most open and transparent proceedings I have seen in 40 years of being around the FCC.” Staffers working on the auction have provided all stakeholders “unlimited access” on issues as they come up, he said Friday. Before the report and order in May 2014, Chairman Tom Wheeler "invited every stakeholder group to visit with him for ‘one last shot’ to make their best arguments,” Padden said. “This was unprecedented. The FCC has not done everything our coalition has asked, by a long shot, but we could have no complaint about the openness, transparency and diligence of the process."

There’s no meaningful evidence that political candidates are disadvantaged by FCC last-in, first-out (LIFO) rules, NAB said in a meeting with Chief Bill Lake and other Media Bureau staff Friday. Canal Media Partners, which petitioned the FCC to give candidates priority over other advertisers (see 1503300017), also participated in the meeting, an ex parte filing said. “The petitioner’s theory is contrary to law, undermines the Commission’s policies and has absolutely no basis in the record.” Granting the petition would effectively eliminate “the use of LIFO to establish preemption priorities, with the likely effect of eliminating low-priced classes of preemptible time altogether,” NAB said. “That would eliminate an inexpensive option for political candidates and all other advertisers.”