The FCC should include requirements for simulcasting and signal quality in rules for the ATSC 3.0 transition and require that negotiations to carry the transmissions using the new standard be held separately from retransmission consent negotiations, said representatives of the American TV Alliance in meetings Monday and Tuesday with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, according to an ex parte filing in docket 16-142. The ATVA contingent included representatives from AT&T, Charter Communications, Dish Network, Verizon and the American Cable Association, the filing said.

Sinclair and Tribune received “second requests” from DOJ last week for additional information about the first buying the second broadcaster, the buyer announced in a Q2 earnings release. Tribune consolidated operating revenue fell 2 percent to $469.5 million. Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker called results “mixed” in an email to investors, and she and CEO Peter Kern blamed costs associated with a programming shift at WGN America. “Those changes are now behind us, and we expect a much more profitable 2018 with more original hours than the network has ever carried,” Kern said. The deal with Sinclair is “on track,” Kern said. Tribune didn't hold a Q2 earnings call. Some think the move to ATSC 3.0 (see 1706070063) could be helped by the deal and others fear the reshuffling of TV stations' frequencies now that the incentive auction is over could be delayed (see 1708080067).

Allowing broadcasters temporarily to deploy ATSC 3.0 on vacant channels would ease the transition to the new standard, said Pearl TV, One Media, Sinclair and NAB in a meeting with Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey and bureau staff Thursday, according to an FCC ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. “Allowing broadcasters to use available channels where available during Next Gen deployments will help both broadcasters and consumers.” Full-power broadcasters won’t “seek to displace” low-power stations that were given new channels through FCC displacement windows in favor of 3.0 facilities, the broadcasters said, though “full-power licensees' use of unoccupied channels to help assure continued service should be entitled to a higher priority than low power television stations and TV translators as a matter of policy.” The FCC also should adopt only ATSC's A/321 document on system discovery and signaling architecture into its rules, the broadcasters said. “Adopting additional components of the ATSC standard into the FCC’s rules could risk stifling innovation and forcing broadcasters to return to the Commission repeatedly for permission to make changes,” the filing said. LG and others support proposals for the commission to also incorporate the A/322 document on ohysical layer protocol into the 3.0 rules (see 1707040001).

When Univision and Northwest Broadcasting in June joined the ATSC 3.0-based broadcaster spectrum consortium started by Sinclair and Nexstar (see 1706200084), it brought the consortium’s “reach” to 90 percent of the U.S., said Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley on a Wednesday earnings call. “The consortium’s mission is to promote spectrum aggregation, innovation and monetization, and we are continuing to invite other broadcasters to join, as we enhance our industry’s ability to compete in the wireless data transmissions sector.” Sinclair also is working with Nexstar to “coordinate the transition” to 3.0 in 97 designated market areas, he said. That work is “an important step to ensuring a speedy rollout of the next-generation advanced services for our viewers and advertisers,” he said. “More broadcasters will be added to this planning process” as they join the spectrum consortium, he said. Sinclair is “quite excited” about the prospects for FCC "relaxation" of local media ownership rules, Ripley said in Q&A. “Overall, we think the industry needs to consolidate to two or three large broadcasters and really just one to two strong local players in each market,” he said. “In some of the larger, and even medium-sized markets, you’ve got anywhere from three to five local players,” and that “doesn’t make sense,” he said. “If there’s relaxation, there’ll be a consolidation at the local level, greater scale at the national level, and there’s significant savings to be had putting local content players together on a local level.” That will give way to “stronger local content producers, which will be able to spread their content and their resources across multiple platforms,” he said. “We see that as the evolution of the industry as dereg sets in here, and you end up with more consolidated, stronger local content players that are more efficient, and so the economics will be great and the strategic output will also be great.”

The FCC should require broadcasters using ATSC 3.0 to offer a free stream of the new standard at the same format and quality as their DTV signal, said the MVPD-backed American Television Alliance in a Friday letter in docket 16-142. “It is not too much to ask that broadcasters be required to serve all viewers within their local markets before remaining portions of their spectrum may be repurposed for any potential ancillary or supplementary service offerings,” they said. Broadcasters had opposed proposals in the 3.0 proceeding to mandate specific formats and signal quality for their transmissions (see 1705100072). Under the ATVA proposal, broadcasters would be free to transmit additional streams in other formats or use their remaining spectrum for other purposes, the letter said: It “should go without saying that the benefits of any technological advancements in broadcasting should flow towards ‘the public’ first.”

Microsoft’s vacant channel proposal would make it harder for the public to get updates during emergencies, said former Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate in an opinion piece in The Hill Wednesday. The proposal also would make it difficult for broadcasters to roll out ATSC 3.0 (see 1707170053), which is expected to greatly enhance the dissemination of information during emergencies, Fugate said. Susan Crawford, former special assistant to then-President Barack Obama for science, technology and innovation policy, wrote in Wired to criticize the proposal. NAB distributed both of the criticisms to reporters. Microsoft didn't comment.

Sinclair and Nexstar agreed to share spectrum during the ATSC 3.0 transition in the 43 markets where they both own stations, they said in a news release Thursday. The coordination deal involves “a plan to spearhead the transition” in the 54 markets where only one of the companies has a station. Under the agreement, the broadcasters would share their spectrum within their markets, “with some spectrum remaining as 1.0 and other spectrum migrated to ATSC 3.0,” the two TV station owners said. “Specific market roll out schedules and sharing arrangements are in development in anticipation of the FCC approval of the new ATSC 3.0 standard by the fourth quarter.”

Broadcasters are willing to allow the transition to ATSC 3.0 to cause service losses, but in every other context treat broadcast service losses as unacceptable, the American Cable Association told the FCC in a letter posted Thursday in docket 16-142. “The Commission should prevent service loss caused by the ATSC 3.0 transition for the same reasons that broadcasters say the Commission should prevent service loss in other contexts,” ACA said, pointing to NAB arguments in proceedings on the post-incentive auction repacking and vacant channels that disruptions to service will hurt localism. Not simulcasting during the 3.0 transition will create similar disruptions, but broadcasters have asked the FCC not to require simulcasting, ACA said. Without a simulcast in 1.0, broadcast customers without 3.0 compatible equipment will be unable to receive a broadcast signal, and MVPDs that retransmit a broadcaster’s signal would also be affected, ACA said. “If ‘too bad’ is an unacceptable response to potential service losses caused by the repack or white spaces, it is surely an unacceptable response to potential service losses caused by a broadcaster’s voluntary transition to a new transmission standard.” Broadcasters "have asked the FCC for permission to voluntarily upgrade their facilities, at their own expense, to improve their service and offer viewers a better experience,” an NAB spokesman emailed. “ACA continues to try to sidetrack this innovative proposal to stifle competition.”

ATSC 3.0 includes “the accessibility tools” necessary to comply with FCC rules for closed captioning, said NAB and CTA in a meeting with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and staff from the Media Bureau, Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and the Office of General Counsel Thursday, an ex parte filing said. It said the 3.0 petition was intended to show that the agency has “previously approved technologies closely related to the Next Gen TV standard for closed captions in the past,” not “elide the requirements of Section 79.1 with respect to the types of programming that must be captioned.” ATSC 3.0 devices “will fully meet their accessibility obligations,” CTA and NAB said Monday in docket 16-142. The A/343 document, approved as a final ATSC 3.0 standard in December, defines the required technology for closed caption and subtitle tracks over multiple transports.

The FCC “has the opportunity to seize the momentum” from the end of the incentive auction “to transition ATSC 3.0 through an organic, market-driven process,” CTA told members of the Media Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology in Tuesday meetings, said an ex parte notice filed Thursday, and posted Friday in docket 16-142. The petition asking the commission to allow broadcasters to transmit using ATSC 3.0's physical layer "was filed over a year ago," in April 2016 (see 1604130065), “but industry still does not have the certainty needed to move forward,” CTA said. The South Korean transition to ATSC 3.0 is “driving industry” to deploy TVs with dual ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 tuners, and “the current prevalence of smart TVs will smooth the consumer transition to ATSC 3.0,” it said. ATSC, CTA and other standards organizations “are working in parallel to develop standards and best practices for the transmission standard ATSC 3.0 that will continue to allow industry to meet its legal and regulatory obligations, including those related to accessibility,” it said. CTA would like "for the FCC to issue its Order soon" on ATSC 3.0's final rules, said Julie Kearney, vice president-regulatory affairs, Friday when asked what sort of certainty CTA seeks from the commission. "We know that it hopes to, but we really want it issued," Kearney said of the order. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in February he hoped to have the order authorizing ATSC 3.0 as a final voluntary standard by year-end, while Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said authorization of the final standard could occur “hopefully by Halloween" (see 1702230060).