Norway this week becomes the first country to begin a hard switch off of FM transmissions to complete the transition to Eureka-147 digital audio broadcasting radio services, said Digital Radio UK, the group that’s promoting a DAB switchover in the U.K. During a Wednesday ceremony in the Arctic city of Bodø, at precisely 11:11 a.m. local time, a giant dial will be moved from FM to DAB to signify the moment of the transition, the group announced Monday. The Norwegian switch off will be implemented region by region across six regions, ending in the northern regions of Troms and Finnmark Dec. 13, it said. DAB digital radio services launched in Norway in 1995, and now cover 99.7 percent of the country, it said.

All Entercom stations in the company’s Sacramento cluster should be included in the license renewal proceeding of Entercom’s KDND(FM), said the Media Action Center, which is disputing the station’s renewal over an on-air contest that led to the death of a 28-year-old mother (see 1612290039). “The foolish on-air contest stunt that resulted in the negligent homicide death of Jennifer Lea Strange flowed from an abandonment of oversight and responsibility, not by KDND staff, but by a completely intertwined, interconnected and mutually organized and managed entity known as Entercom Sacramento License," said the group in a petition to enlarge issues filed in FCC docket 16-357 Monday. The petition also asks the FCC to consider the matter of Entercom’s character in the hearing, an argument the agency previously rejected, the filing said. “A character issue against Entercom Sacramento is warranted based on overwhelming evidence, and may be the only way to convince the regulatee that compliance is a necessary part of doing business as a licensed enterprise." The center said the company violated reporting rules by failing to disclose the terms of a settlement with the victim’s family. Entercom Sacramento “should be required to disclose all the terms of the settlement and submit the showings required by rule,” said the group, which says it seeks to hold broadcasters accountable for their public-interest obligations. “A reporting violation issue is needed.” Entercom didn't comment.

Q3 was a “landmark quarter” for the NextRadio FM-reception smartphone app, Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan said on a Thursday earnings call. NextRadio developer Emmis landed adoption of the app on the Samsung Galaxy S7, the top-selling smartphone in the world and one that’s sold by all major U.S. carriers, Smulyan said. “Stay tuned for announcements about NextRadio being adopted by other manufacturers.” Emmis also just reached a renewal agreement with Sprint that keeps NextRadio pre-loaded on the carrier’s Android devices, he said. “That’s our first renewal and Sprint was our first partner, and we’re happy about that.” NextRadio has surpassed 25 million listening hours, but “the reality is this is still the early stages,” he said. “We have come an awfully long way since this project started.” Emmis thinks NextRadio “is the catalyst that our industry needs,” he said. But landing NextRadio on the iPhone remains the toughest nut to crack, Smulyan said. “We have a whole game plan” for winning Apple’s support, but nothing “definitive,” he said in Q&A. Emmis defied the “skeptics” when it won NextRadio adoption among all the major U.S. carriers after Sprint, he said. “We won’t rest until we are in every smartphone, and we’ve got to get Apple.”

HD Radio announcements from DTS at CES include new implementations from Jaguar, Dodge, Honda, Toyota, VW and Subaru and new data technology from partners Total Traffic Network and the Broadcaster Traffic Consortium, said DTS in Las Vegas. DTS will also demo its Connected Radio platform, which combines FM radio with IP-delivered content, new features and services using existing radio capabilities. Connected Radio is being prototyped by DTS original equipment manufacturer partners, it said. DTS, in its new life as a wholly owned subsidiary of Tessera, also announced an expansion of its other businesses at the electronics show.

There are 32,397 stations licensed by the FCC as of the end of 2016, according to the commission's list of such totals issued Thursday. There are 1,778 full-power TV stations, 417 Class A TV stations, 1,966 low-power TV stations, 4,669 AMs and 10,187 full-power FMs. The total is up from 31,032 total stations at the end of 2015, according to a list from the end of last year. Since then, four TV stations, 15 new AMs and 51 new FMs have been added, according to the lists.

America's Public Television Stations will request a “review and a reversal” by “the full Commission” of the FCC decision to apply new Form 323 rules to noncommercial stations, said APTS CEO Patrick Butler in a statement Thursday. The Media Bureau rejected appeals of those rules on delegated authority Wednesday (see 1701040069), though the appeals had been made to the full FCC. “Those who serve on public television station boards are unpaid volunteers. Requiring them to provide sensitive personal information to the Commission is a pointless exercise that advances no identifiable public interest,” Butler said. He praised Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly for condemning the bureau decision. In their joint statement, the Republican commissioners encouraged stakeholders to appeal the order to the next iteration of the FCC, as Butler's statement indicates APTS will do.

Broadcast Music Inc. sought an interim royalty rate from the Radio Music License Committee, in an action filed Tuesday with U.S. District Court in New York. BMI and RMLC are negotiating a new five-year fee deal to replace the previous agreement, which expired Saturday. RMLC proposed an interim rate of 1.4 percent of a station's gross revenue, below the 1.7 percent rate in the broadcaster group's existing deal with BMI. The performing rights organization is asking Judge Louis Stanton to maintain the existing rate while negotiations continue. “We attempted to negotiate in good faith with the RMLC for many months, and just before the end of the year, the RMLC presented an interim rate that significantly undervalues the work of BMI’s songwriters,” said BMI Senior Vice President-Licensing Mike Steinberg in a statement. “The RMLC’s proposal falls well short of what is in the best interests of our affiliates.” The reduced interim rate is appropriate “in light of the RMLC's understanding of BMI's market share of public performances on radio relative to [the American Society of Composers. Authors and Publishers] and the new costs associated with the emergence of Global Music Rights,” RMLC said in a statement. BMI argued in its filing (in Pacer) that RMLC's analysis is “necessarily based on inaccurate information about BMI’s market share” and is “contrary to BMI's internal analyses.” This follows a temporary licensing agreement between RMLC and GMR (see 1612270052). The broadcasting group reached a five-year rate deal with ASCAP last month (see 1612160027).

The FCC Media Bureau's decision to approve Univision's foreign-ownership request Tuesday (see 1701030055) could be a guide for how future requests will be handled, said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford in a blog post Wednesday. “This decision provides a good basis for determining what issues any potential foreign investor in a US broadcast station would face, particularly when investing in a public US company.” The FCC has other foreign-ownership requests pending with companies such as Frontier Media, and with those decisions the process could become routine, Oxenford said. “The FCC’s decision will enable Univision to accommodate increased foreign investment that may result from share purchases by the public in an IPO while enabling Televisa (an existing investor in, and business partner of, Univision) to increase its current equity stake in the company,” said Univision and Grupo Televisa in a statement.

The FCC Media Bureau granted Univision’s petition for a declaratory ruling allowing it to be foreign owned up to 25 percent and to increase up to 49 percent, said an order issued Tuesday. The order specifically allows the broadcaster to be owned by Mexico-based Grupo Televisa, which already provides Spanish-language programming to Univision. The ownership arrangement has “the potential to encourage investment in the company from new sources and to encourage reciprocity in parts of Latin America,” the order said. “The Petitioners have also shown how grant of the application will further Univision’s service to the Hispanic community and other minority communities.” Univision doesn’t have to seek further FCC approval for Televisa’s ownership stake to rise to 49 percent, but would have to for larger portions or different foreign owners, the order said. Team Telecom signed off on the petition in November (see 1611280047).

The FCC proposed a penalty of $20,000 for Pentecostal Temple Development Corp.'s AM station WGBN for failing to light and repaint antennas as often as required and for failing to notify the FAA of a lighting outage, said a notice of apparent liability issued Friday. “Such structures present a significant public safety risk, especially to passing aircraft,” the NAL said. Pentecostal in Lincoln Borough, Pennsylvania, previously was warned it "must repair the required lights and repaint the Antenna Structures to bring them into compliance with the Commission’s rules” and had said it would do so by May 2016. But an August inspection found the antennas were still out of compliance, the NAL said.