Sling TV will add HBO to its programming next week, Sling said in a news release Wednesday. Sling TV customers can access HBO's linear channel and on-demand content for $15, when they sign up for the $20 Best of Live TV core package, it said. With this addition, Sling TV will be the only streaming service that offers ESPN and HBO, it said.

Placing even a few TV stations in the wireless band would “dramatically affect” the amount of spectrum available in the forward auction, NAB told an aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a meeting Monday, according to an ex parte filing posted online in docket 12-252 Wednesday. “If the FCC places even a handful of stations in the wireless band, it may consequently be restricting the forward auction to two or three blocks of paired spectrum available in the Northeast corridor,” NAB said. The FCC also has made “broadcaster costs an after thought” in the repacking process, NAB said. The commission staff “has yet to produce any data suggesting that, by optimizing repacking moves earlier in the auction process, it will be handcuffed from its goal of repurposing spectrum for the wireless industry,” NAB said. The agency also should modify its white spaces rules to require white space devices to include “geolocation capability” to make falsifying their location more difficult and an enforcement system that “imposes responsibility on database administrators who fail to correct false information in the database,” NAB said.

TiVo joined the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) Alliance for Family Entertainment, TiVo said in a news release Tuesday. It's the first technology company to become a member of ANA's national family brand marketers, TiVo said.

EchoStar will become a shareholder in SmarDTV, a subsidiary of Kudelski Group that offers advanced set-top boxes and conditional access modules, EchoStar said in a news release Tuesday. EchoStar's operations in Steeton, U.K., and Madrid, Spain, will be transferred to SmarDTV, it said. SmarDTV will facilitate joint commercial activities and deliver consumer devices to TV broadcasting and broadband markets, it said. The devices, including conditional access modules, gateways and set-top boxes, will use Kudelski technologies for security, middleware and user experience, it said.

Noncommercial broadcasters in both TV and radio weighed in against an FCC proposal to issue FCC Registration Numbers (FRNs) that would allow users to be uniquely identified without using their full Social Security numbers, said comments filed in docket 07-294 Monday. The only support for the proposal came from a joint filing from a coalition of public interest groups including the United Church of Christ, Common Cause and the Prometheus Radio Project. The public interest groups said the proposal would enhance the FCC’s ability to collect the ownership data required to enact policies to increase diversity in broadcast ownership. “The broadcast ownership data must be accurate and comprehensive in order to accomplish the FCC’s goals of studying and analyzing ownership trends,” the joint filing said. The Association of Public Television Stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio and several organizations representing noncommercial college broadcasters said the proposal would be an outsized burden for noncommercial stations with boards of directors instead of owners. Requiring even partial SSNs and name and address information for those serving on NCE station boards would have “a significant negative impact” on stations’ ability to recruit volunteers for their licensee boards, a coalition of public broadcast licensees said. “Not only would the proposal not improve the quality, usability, and reliability of the Commission’s broadcast ownership data, it would in fact diminish those qualities in the data,” said a joint filing from APTS, CPB and NPR, pointing to the differences between commercial broadcast ownership and the nonprofit model. “Any policies introduced by the Commission to enhance the diversity of commercial station ownership based upon this data would almost certainly be misplaced in the context of public broadcasting,” the public broadcasters said. Prospective public broadcasting board members “do not have a financial interest in the station and many would not want to reveal private personal information as a consequence of volunteering to serve a community’s public service broadcaster,” the APTS joint filing said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit should dismiss the appeal of the FCC decision not granting the license applications of two New York City radio stations because of lack of standing or affirm the FCC's order, said the commission in a brief for appellee filed at the FCC Friday for case 14-1130. The commission granted an application to assign the licenses of the New York radio stations, WLIB(AM) and WBLS(FM), in accordance with an agreement approved by a bankruptcy court, the brief said. The appellants, four residents of the New York City area, filed a petition May 29, 2012, seeking denial of the license application because it would reduce radio programming "geared toward black and local audiences" and encourage more consolidation of media "into the hands of the corporate elite," the brief said. The appellants, on appeal of the commission, said granting the application would violate their Fifth Amendment right to equal protection under the law. The commission concluded the appellants failed to raise substantial and material questions of fact regarding the qualifications of the applicants or to present other evidence that the license assignments would be contrary to the public interest, the brief said. The equal protection argument was dismissed since it wasn't presented to the Media Bureau, which is required by commission rules, it said. Inner City Media (ICMC), the parent company of Urban Radio I, the licensee of the radio stations, was placed into involuntary bankruptcy on Aug. 19, 2011, because it defaulted on its loan obligations, the brief said. In February 2012, the bankruptcy court authorized the sale to YMF Media for all of ICMC's assets, including the two radio licenses, subject to FCC consent, it said. Urban Radio filed an application for consent to the assignment of the licenses to YMF Media's subsidiary, YMF Media New York Licensee, on April 30, 2012, it said. Oral argument hasn't been scheduled.

Stations' use of last-in, first-out (LIFO) is consistent with Communications Act Section 315(b)(1) and FCC rules, NAB said in an ex parte notice Friday in docket 15-24. NAB officials met with Media Bureau officials March 23 to urge the commission to deny Canal Partners Media's petition for a declaratory ruling on how broadcasters sell political time, it said. Canal didn't provide facts for its claims and the commission shouldn't grant its petition, NAB said. If the bureau granted the petition, the LIFO category of time, an inexpensive option for political candidates and other advertisers, would be eliminated, it said. This wouldn't be in the public interest, it said. Media buyer Jan Crawford Communications (JCC) explained that Canal's claims "do not bear any resemblance to actual political advertising practices," NAB said. LIFO creates "an equitable and legal rate structure for all buyers," NAB said, agreeing with JCC. Canal has said TV stations haven't been disclosing LIFO policies to political ad buyers (see 1503180041).

Sinclair launched a new division that will invest in “emerging digital technologies and digital content companies,” said the broadcaster in a news release Thursday. It said Sinclair Digital Ventures will “focus on companies with products or services that support and expand Sinclair’s digital capabilities and non-linear footprint.”

The FCC Incentive Auction Task Force announced additional dates for sessions to offer broadcasters more information about the TV incentive auction and repacking process, said a public notice Thursday. It plans two information sessions in Las Vegas April 13 and 14 in conjunction with the NAB show; a session in Richmond April 21; Baltimore, April 22; Seattle, April 27; and Denver, April 29.

The FCC rejected various filings seeking further revisions to Travelers’ Information Stations (TIS) rules, in an order released Thursday. The filings asked the FCC to rethink its prohibition against the routine rebroadcast of weather information as part of the service. Following its recent order revising the rules, the FCC said it “received a number of petitions, styled as ‘comments,’ asking it to reconsider this decision on the basis that such weather information would help travelers to plan their routes. ... We treat these ‘comments’ as petitions for reconsideration and dismiss them.” The comments rely “on arguments that have been fully considered and rejected by the Commission within the same proceeding,” the FCC said. But the FCC also said it allows TIS licensees to integrate weather broadcasts into their TIS feeds “during times of hazardous or potentially hazardous conditions” and affords licensees “substantial discretion to determine what information is relevant to such conditions.”