NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan lobbied FCC Chief of Staff Matthew Berry in support of Connoisseur Media’s petition for reconsideration so "embedded markets" don't artificially limit station ownership and for action on the association's petition for rulemaking to deal efficiently with interference between FM translators and full powers. Such a suburban radio market also is considered part of parent markets, which cover an entire metropolitan area (see 1707070064). "Station groups in New York, NY, and Washington, DC. may be artificially and unreasonably limited in the number of stations they can acquire in embedded markets due to the local ownership limit in the parent market," Kaplan wrote in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 14-50. "Stations in embedded markets do not compete across other embedded markets, and they do not compete in their parent markets." Kaplan sought an NPRM on FM interference that "remains a persistent problem."

Scripps/Tribune "should have been dead on arrival" at the FCC, said former Commissioner Michael Copps, now a special adviser at Common Cause, during a Coalition to Save Local Media news-media call Tuesday. The group strongly opposes Tribune's takeover (see 1708300053). Copps said no one company "should be allowed to wield the power that would be wielded by Sinclair," and it will lead to higher cable bills and local newsroom staffing cuts. He criticized the FCC as accelerating "corporatized media" trends. One America Network CEO Charles Herring said the proposed deal generated "the broadest opposition of any proposed merger ever," with a lot of cable programmers concerned. Sinclair has "unbalanced market powers," for example, forcing the Tennis Channel onto MVPD lineups at unfair rates and carriage terms. He criticized the reinstatement of the UHF discount, saying it "stinks worse than three-day-old fish." Rep. David Price, D-N.C., said the discount is a "consolidation power grab" that would be eliminated by the Local and Independent TV Protective Act he's co-sponsoring (see 1707280001). Copps said the bill needs sizable grass-roots support and organizing to move forward. Sinclair didn't comment.

E.W. Scripps completed buying Katz broadcast networks (see 1708010036 and 1710020027), paying $292 million for the 95 percent it didn't own, Scripps announced Monday. Bounce, Grit, Escape and Laff are the networks.

A federal court denied PMCM TV an emergency stay pending review of its petition seeking restoration of a channel originally assigned to its WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey. "Petitioner has not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review," said a brief order Friday of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in PMCM v. FCC, No. 17-1209. The panel consisted of Chief Judge Merrick Garland and Judges Thomas Griffith and Cornelia Pillard. PMCM Friday replied to FCC opposition to its stay request (see 1709280034).

Nearly 100 million iPhones are in the market with a deactivated FM chip, NAB responded Friday to claims attributed to Apple in some publications that iPhone 7s and iPhone 8s don’t contain FM chips and can’t be enabled to receive FM signals. That was a day after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai called on Apple to activate the FM chips in its iPhones to promote public safety (see 1709280060), NAB has commissioned quarterly “tear down” reports on smartphones since 2012, and says iPhones “built during that time, including the iPhone 7,” have “a chipset that includes support for FM radio,” said the trade group. Apple also sells the iPhone 6S, which has a deactivated FM chip, NAB said. "We encourage Apple to activate this feature on their future handsets so Americans can have access to lifesaving information during emergency situations.” Pai’s urging Apple to activate FM chips “could foreshadow further use" by the FCC chairman of his "bully pulpit to correct what he views as market inefficiencies without imposing additional regulation,” blogged Wiley Rein broadcast attorney Ari Meltzer, though Meltzer said he didn’t feel Pai departed from his previous stance that such decisions should be left to the market. NextRadio “thoroughly supports” Pai’s call for “more manufacturers, including Apple, to activate the FM chip” in their smartphones to promote public safety, said the Emmis Communications subsidiary and originator of the FM reception smartphone app in a statement: “The utility and urgency of having access to FM broadcasts has never been more apparent given recent weather emergencies.” Apple didn’t comment.

Proposals for FM translators filed in the July 26-Aug. 2 filing window that are mutually exclusive with other proposals have until Nov. 29 to sign settlement agreements or engineer a resolution to their mutual exclusivity, the Media and Wireless bureaus said in a public notice Thursday. A technical resolution amendment or joint request for approval of their settlement agreement has to be filed by then, it said.

PMCM is seeking just restoration of the channel originally assigned to its WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey, it told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a Thursday filing (in Pacer) seeking an emergency stay of FCC recent final orders rejecting the broadcaster's long battle to be assigned virtual channel 3 (see 1709220033). The company was replying to an FCC filing (in Pacer) Wednesday opposing the stay request (in Pacer). “In asking this Court to take the extreme step of altering WJLP’s current channel positioning, PMCM is seeking the same affirmative relief as in its four failed mandamus petitions -- relief that would upend, not preserve, the status quo,” the FCC said. “What PMCM is seeking here is a restoration of the channel it was originally assigned to, and operating on, in New Jersey before the FCC imposed the unlawful change,” PMCM said. Its previous mandamus tries didn't involve merits, and this latest challenge has a better chance, PMCM said. The standard of “’likely to succeed on the merits’ applicable to stay requests is obviously far lower than the ‘clear and indisputable’ standard which tied the Court's hands earlier,” it said.

Entercom will divest three stations to Educational Media Foundation in connection with its proposed buy of CBS Radio, Entercom said in a news release. The FMs, divested to bring the deal in line with FCC ownership rules, are KSWD Los Angeles, KSOQ San Diego and WGGI Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. “We have made great progress towards the completion of our merger with CBS Radio and this agreement with EMF brings us one step closer,” said David Field, Entercom CEO. California nonprofit EMF operates 770 FM stations and translators specializing in adult contemporary Christian music, the release said. “We remain on track to close the CBS Radio transaction later this year,” said Field.

The FCC Media Bureau denied Trinity Broadcasting’s request for permanent waiver of the main studio rule but granted one-year temporary waiver, based partly on the expectation the rule soon will be eliminated, said a letter to Trinity’s WGTW-TV Millville, New Jersey. “While we recognize that the Commission has proposed to eliminate the main studio rule, the Commission has established that, until such time as a policy has been modified or changed, it should be applied according to its terms.” The transitional state of broadcasting, with stations going off-air and changing channels because of the incentive auction, was a factor in the decision, the bureau said. Trinity requested waiver after WGTW sold its spectrum in the incentive auction and entered into a channel sharing agreement with WMGM-TV Wildwood, New Jersey. The new community of license would mean that WGTW’s former studio in Millville no longer would meet main studio rule requirements, it said.

The FCC Incentive Auction Task Force and Media Bureau need to dismiss all incorrectly filed applications for the repacking first priority window before the FCC opens a second priority window, said Washington, D.C., broadcast owner WMTM in a petition for reconsideration filed Monday. WMTM owns station WIAV-CD. The IATF announced the opening of the Oct. 3 second window last week (see 1709200060). Stations filing for expanded facilities in the second window have to protect the facilities requested by stations that filed in the first window, that public notice said. Since several of the applications from the first window are “impermissibly filed,” that protection creates a problem, WMTM said. Incentive auction rules allow stations to request either alternative channel or expanded facilities, not both, the filing said. “There is simply no reason to rush to open the Second Filing Window while there are improper applications pending that will needlessly constrain the already difficult task of identifying alternate channels or expanded facilities,” WMTM said. “The stations that have waited their turn and followed the clearly established process to seek an alternate channel or expanded facilities should not be harmed by stations that filed prematurely.”