The FCC should issue an immediate partial stay of its order loosening placement requirements for FM translators, said Prometheus Radio Project in an emergency petition posted Tuesday in docket 13-249. The order, unanimously approved at commissioners' Feb. 23 meeting (see 1702230060), takes effect April 10. “The premature grant of new translator applications will cause immediate and irreparable harm” to low-power FM licensees, Prometheus said. “Incumbent LPFM stations will thereafter be severely limited in seeking to relocate within their communities of service because these new FM translators will box in or short-space them," Prometheus said, and LPFM licensees that need to relocate “will be forced to shut down or to relocate to a distance that could preclude them from reaching their established community audience.” The group will seek reconsideration of the translator order, which it said is arbitrary and capricious because the order’s elimination of the 40-mile restriction on how far a translator can be located from a transmitter “was not a logical outgrowth” of the Further NPRM that preceded the order. The order doesn’t address possible impacts to LPFM, the advocate for such stations said. “It is apparent that the Office of Management and Budget shares this view, because it determined that the final version of the Order deviated so substantially from the proposal that its preapproval under the Paperwork Reduction Act was deemed insufficient,” the group said (see 1703080023).

If the FCC reinstates the UHF discount, it should adopt a similar discount for VHF stations, PMCM said in an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 13-236, though it also said the UHF discount shouldn't be restored. “Technological change has eliminated the justification for the discount,” the firm said. “UHF stations are now superior to VHF stations, with VHF facing disadvantages comparable to those UHF faced with analog,” the filing said. “Granting a discount to UHF stations but not granting one to VHF’s is plainly irrational under these circumstances; the very factors that would support a UHF discount support a VHF discount even more.” Restoring the discount without providing one for VHF would be “an insurmountable disadvantage” for VHF stations, the broadcaster said. Commissioners tentatively are set to vote April 20 on restoring the UHF discount.

Petitions to deny Entercom’s proposed buy of CBS Radio are due May 1, the Media Bureau said in a public notice posted in docket 17-85. Oppositions to petitions are due May 11, replies May 18. The all-stock deal would include divestitures in seven markets, and the companies requested a six-month waiver of the TV/radio cross-ownership rules to allow CBS CEO Les Moonves and CBS Chief Operating Officer Joseph Ianniello to sit on the Entercom board after the deal (see 1703210063).

The FCC should do away with ownership rules such as the eight voices test, joint sales agreement attribution, and the top four prohibition, said NAB in a meeting Wednesday with staff from Chairman Ajit Pai’s office, according to an ex parte filing in docket 14-50. “Retention of a ban on combinations involving top four-ranked stations is arbitrary and capricious.” The commission should grant NAB’s reconsideration petition against the 2014 quadrennial review, the group said. “The top one or two stations often earn notably higher revenues and ratings than other stations." The FCC is taking up the UHF discount at its April 20 meeting, and is expected to address other ownership rules later (see 1703070055).

Restoring the UHF discount could lead to a wave of deals, said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford in a blog post Friday. The draft UHF discount order announced Thursday (see 1703300066) “will likely have an immediate impact on the market for the purchase and sale of television stations” if approved, Oxenford said. “There is much appetite for broadcast groups to grow larger to compete with other video providers that have nationwide reach.” Oxenford expects public interest groups to appeal any decision to restore the discount: “That position would be opposed by broadcasters who favor the discount and believe that it is necessary to let them compete.”

The FCC should inform low-power TV and translator stations about what phase of the repacking their local stations are in, said the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition and numerous LPTV station groups in meetings with FCC staff and Chairman Ajit Pai Monday, according to an ex parte filing in docket 12-268. “Knowing when the auction eligible entities in your local market 'have' to move by, can greatly assist you in planning for when you have to move yourself if displaced.” The LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition previously disclosed these meetings in a newsletter (see 1703290053). “It would be totally unfair to secondary license holders and non-­eligible auction entities to not be given some sort of heads up about when there local markets will be repacked,” the filing said.

There’s a “business upside” to ATSC 3.0 emergency-alerting capabilities, and the AWARN Alliance plans to explore that at an “executive breakfast presentation” April 26 during the NAB Show, the alliance said in a Wednesday announcement. Using ATSC 3.0, AWARN (Advanced Warning and Response Network) is “transforming the alerting landscape as man-made and natural disasters reveal the urgent need for new warning systems,” said the alliance. “AWARN is using the same features that will drive new revenue streams: geo-targeting, personalization, interactivity, deep indoor and mobile reception, and device wake up.”

The FCC should study the effect of the incentive auction and repacking on low-power TV and translators, enact policies to help those stations get through the repacking, and ask Congress for legislation to allow flexible use of LPTV spectrum and an application window to upgrade to Class A status, said several LPTV group owners in a meeting Tuesday with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, the Incentive Auction Task Force, Office of Engineering and Technology, and the Media Bureau, said the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition newsletter. An ex parte filing describing the meeting wasn't available Wednesday. The LPTV groups involved included Edge Spectrum, DTV America, Syncom Media, Prism TV, Cocola Broadcasting, Videohouse and Major Market Media. The coalition gave Pai and staffers a detailed inventory of the various LPTV industry segments, and how the auction and displacement process have affected them. Included were discussions about the future of the industry, a new Class A window and a path toward a "new, targeted flexible use future,” said coalition Director Mike Gravino in the newsletter. Gravino said it has been over a decade since the LPTV industry met with an FCC chair.

Digital advertising income for U.S. radio stations increased by 14 percent in 2016, said BIA/Kelsey in a release. All-news WTOP(FM) Washington was the top revenue-generating station, with $67.5 million in ad sales. “The news-talk category experienced an overall improvement in 2016, likely due to the presidential year,” BIA/Kelsey said. Overall industry over-the-air radio advertising revenue “stayed relatively flat” at close to $14.1 billion, the researcher said. In 2017, radio industry revenue will reach $14.9 billion, the firm said. Radio merger and acquisitions likely will be more prevalent in 2017, the firm said. “With the February announcement that Entercom and CBS Radio will be combined into one company, after regulatory approval, the industry will experience renewed activity due to the sale and realignment in some markets,” it said. “By 2021 we expect radio to surpass newspapers and become the fifth largest media category among advertisers," Chief Economist Mark Fratrik said.

The agreement between Sinclair’s One Media 3.0 and chipmaker Saankhya Labs, announced Tuesday, to “fast-track” development of ATSC 3.0 receiver chipsets is expected to bear market-ready “mobile-first” components “in less than a year,” Mark Aitken, Sinclair vice president-advanced technology, told us. The software-defined-radio chipsets Saankhya will design and build under the “technical leads” of Sinclair and One Media 3.0 will be “multi-standard” components,” Aitken said. “It’s not just a chip for ATSC 3.0.” It’s a chip that “quite literally” will support “all the broadcast standards globally,” due to “its nature as a software-defined chipset,” he said. “There are parts of the world where we see opportunities for ATSC 3.0 to flourish, and so the support of multiple standards is important.” The chipsets also will be designed out of the gate for “a mobile-first implementation,” Aitken said. “The chip is being designed based upon the requirements of handheld and portable devices that have very tight power management, space management kind of constraints.” By comparison, “the chips that Samsung and LG are in hot pursuit of are chips that were designed for television sets and set-top boxes, where there are not these kinds of constraints,” he said.