The FCC should reform its “broken” process for authorizing TV satellite stations, former Commissioner Robert McDowell, now at Cooley, told an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai Monday, said a filing in docket 17-105. The process has been made “ad hoc” since the digital transition, his client Gray Television said. For existing satellite stations, the review should be automatically satisfied for stations that have been in operation for eight years, Gray said.

CTA and NAB will team to run a transmission facility at WJW, Tribune Media's Fox TV affiliate in Cleveland, as a “living laboratory” to support implementation of ATSC 3.0, said the groups Tuesday in an announcement a little more than a week before FCC commissioners are expected to authorize 3.0's voluntary deployment (see 1710270063). The FCC granted NAB an experimental license to operate a full-power Channel 31 transmission facility at the site to help broadcasters and consumer tech companies prepare to deliver 3.0 products and services, the groups said. The associations will “oversee and manage the station’s activities,” they said. CTA told us a year ago it was in “the planning phase” for field-testing 3.0 reception at WJW (see 1611280030), which also ran the first live 3.0 broadcast of a major professional sporting event when it beamed Game 2 of the World Series between the Cleveland Indians and Chicago Cubs from Cleveland's Progressive Field in October 2016 (see 1610260072). The Tribune station for years also has hosted 3.0 technology field trials (see 1507130007). NAB has had an experimental license from the FCC for operating the Cleveland test station for over a year, spokesman Dennis Wharton said Tuesday. The license was renewed in September for a two-year extension, he said. As for whether the CTA-NAB initiative at WJW would continue under the station's Sinclair ownership if Sinclair's Tribune buy is approved, "we’re not commenting on potential future business transactions involving the Cleveland test station," said Wharton.

The 2013 freeze on filing and processing of minor modification applications that would increase a full-power TV station's noise-limited contour or a Class A station's protected contour in directions beyond the station's authorized facilities is being briefly lifted. An FCC Media Bureau public notice Monday said that freeze will be lifted Nov. 28 through Dec. 7. It said any minor modification applications submitted during that period would be processed on a first-come, first-served basis. It said that during that time, it would process applications pending since the freeze was instituted.

Gray Television welcomes the FCC's “imminent approval” of ATSC 3.0 deployments (see 1710270063), said CEO Hilton Howell on a Monday earnings call. “By granting broadcasters the freedom to evolve technically, the FCC enables us to embrace a new standard that should open new opportunities for broadcasters, as well as new and better ways to serve our viewers.” This month also will “finally bring regulatory relief from the FCC,” Howell said of plans at commissioners' Nov. 16 meeting to vote in favor of local ownership deregulation. “It’s simply incredible that the FCC imposed the one-to-a-market rule that still governs mid-sized and small television markets before the bombing of Pearl Harbor” in 1941, he said. “No one can sincerely dispute that the world has changed considerably in the past few years, let alone in the last 76 years. We are grateful that the FCC finally will begin to take some long-overdue steps that permit local stations to take the steps necessary to be competitive.” Gray has “benefits of really strong duopoly operations” in its existing markets, said Howell, when asked in Q&A if local ownership deregulation will open up the company to new merger and acquisition opportunities. That’s not to say there won’t be “a great deal more opportunities that we will have in our existing markets,” he said. Gray will “continue to look at other transactions to grow a broader scale throughout the United States,” he said. “Things have been relatively slow on the M&A front,” but the company expects “things to pick up fairly rapidly after the FCC comes to a final conclusion,” he said. “It is our intention to take advantage of that whenever we have an appropriate, and financially appropriate, opportunity to do so.”

NAB ridiculed pay-TV's “ludicrous advocacy” that over-the-air viewers would lose programming in the ATSC 3.0 transition, in meetings Thursday with staff of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and the Media Bureau, said an ex parte posted Monday in docket 16-142. MVPDs’ “assertion” they “care deeply about the welfare of over-the-air viewers is laughable,” because they include “some of the least popular companies in America due to their unique commitment to providing dismal customer service,” NAB said: The companies “seek to pad their profit margins not only by dragging retransmission consent issues kicking and screaming into any proceeding that even tangentially affects television service, but now apparently by claiming to care whether viewers receive over-the-air signals.” NCTA CEO Michael Powell in Oct. 30 meetings with Commissioner Brendan Carr (see 1711030059) emphasized “the need for the Commission to ensure that the broadcasters’ voluntary roll-out of ATSC 3.0 does not disrupt consumers or impose costs and burdens on cable operators and their customers, said a Nov. 1 filing. “Back down here on planet Earth,” NAB recommends the FCC “adopt a standard for expedited processing of applications that mirrors the coverage area standard” the commission used during the DTV transition. The “flexibility” given broadcasters during that transition “applies with equal force” to 3.0, it said. NAB’s analysis suggests that, under the draft 3.0 order’s standard, 22 percent of TV stations “would have no available simulcasting partners that could qualify for expedited processing, and an additional 12 percent of stations would have only a single potential partner,” it said. NAB wants the agency to “clarify” language in the 3.0 order on encryption to say that while free next-generation signals may be encrypted, “they do not require special equipment programmed by a service provider.”

S&P downgraded Cumulus Media after the radio broadcast group announced it didn't make a $23.6 million interest payment on its 7.75 percent senior notes due 2019. The move on the payment -- due Nov. 1 -- was likely strategic, with the aim of preserving cash or pressuring bondholders into a subpar debt exchange, S&P said. It also said a debt restructuring is probably imminent. It said it lowered its corporate credit rating on Cumulus from CCC to D and its issue-level rating on the senior notes from CC to D. Cumulus said the nonpayment and downgrade don't "mitigate that the company is performing well and ... will have no impact on its operating constituents."

Entravision Communications closed on its buys of NBC affiliate KMIR-TV and MyNetworkTV affiliate KPSE-LD, both of Palm Springs, California, from OTA Broadcasting, it said Thursday. Entravision said the stations make Palm Springs one of the company's largest media clusters. It also owns Univision- and UniMas-affiliated TV stations and two FM radio stations there.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau issued eight warnings Wednesday and Thursday for unlicensed transmitter operation, said notices of violation. They went to operators and property owners in New Jersey (Ludwig Freiberg, William Batiste and Milka Placencia), New York (Vladimir Rosario), Florida (Eglon Garvey, Rocheney Charles and Judith Oreste) and Pennsylvania ( Richard Hairston and Jonathan Alcantara).

FCC relaxation of rules for AM directional arrays takes effect Dec. 4 (see 1709250049), with notification expected in Friday's Federal Register.

The case for a Viacom/CBS combination "is increasingly hard ... to ignore" for controlling shareholder National Amusements Inc. since it would boost Viacom's negotiating leverage with distributors, give big savings via synergies, provide more content for CBS All Access, and give Viacom time and capital for investing in its core networks, Credit Suisse analyst Omar Sheikh wrote investors Wednesday. He said NAI might be more open now to a CBS sale of Paramount than a year ago when previous deal talks ended (see 1612120060). NAI didn't comment.