DOJ withdrew an August request that the FCC defer action on Frontier Media seeking a declaratory ruling allowing it to be 100 percent foreign owned (see 1607080051), said a letter filed in docket 16-212. DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security and the DOD analyzed the application and have "no objection," the letter said.

The lowest unit rate period for the November general election started Friday, 60 days before Election Day, said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford in a blog post. During that period, candidates buying broadcast advertisements can be charged only the lowest rate that commercial advertisers were charged for the same class of time the candidates are buying. The rule applies to federal, state and local candidates, but not PACs and issue advertisers, Oxenford said. “In setting the lowest unit rates on a station, it must be remembered that virtually no station will have just one lowest unit rate,” said Oxenford. “Almost every station will have several -- if not dozens of lowest unit rates -- one lowest unit rate for each class of time.”

Moody's said it may cut the junk credit rating of Tegna, at Ba1 one notch below prime, on concerns that the spin-off of Cars.com will leave the TV station owner less diversified. "Without these assets, which represent close to 40% of the company's current revenue mix, the company will be significantly less diversified, much smaller in scale, and likely experience slower top line growth," the ratings agency release said Wednesday evening. Earlier that day, Tegna said Cars.com would become a separate publicly traded company, and analysts expect it may sell its stake in CareerBuilder (see 1609070036). The broadcaster didn't comment Thursday.

ATSC members, in balloting completed Wednesday, approved elevating ATSC 3.0's physical layer transmission system (document A/322) to the status of a final standard, ATSC said in a Thursday announcement. “While other ingredients of the ATSC 3.0 standard are still in the final stages of standardization, the approval of the over-the-air transmission system is a foundation for the future,” said ATSC President Mark Richer. ATSC 3.0's framers are “delivering” on the timetable published “early in the process” to finish work on the “complete” ATSC 3.0 standard by the first quarter of 2017, Richer said Thursday in the September issue of The Standard, ATSC’s monthly newsletter. But “as we saw with ATSC 1.0, broadcasting standards are never totally done,” he said. “Great standards continue to evolve with enhancements, modifications and adjustments. Standards development is an ongoing organic process that continues, and the ATSC board already is looking beyond ATSC 3.0.”

Rule changes to streamline foreign ownership regulations will be on the agenda for the FCC Sept. 29 commissioner meeting, Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a blog post Thursday. The item would "extend to broadcast licensees the same streamlined rules and procedures that common carrier wireless licensees use to seek approval of foreign ownership," Wheeler said. The FCC sought comment on changes to make it easier for publicly owned companies to avoid running afoul of foreign ownership rules. Also on the agenda are an item on independent programming and a long-awaited set-top box order (see 1609080085).

SoC supplier Sigma Designs thinks high-dynamic-range adoption is “widespread right now” among its base of TV-maker customers, said Ken Lowe, vice president-strategic marketing, on a Tuesday earnings call. “Everybody that we’re working with right now” on 4K TV design wins “is designing TVs that are HDR-enabled,” Lowe said. For TV makers, HDR’s only sticking point is deciding “which specific version of it” to use, he said. HDR10 has had the widest adoption so far because it has “the lowest costs,” but the hybrid-log-gamma technology espoused by the BBC and NHK “seems to be getting more popular,” Lowe said. Dolby Vision “is there for a lot of people that want the premium and Dolby is going to continue to promote it,” he said. What Sigma has done with its “universal HDR” SoCs is “we’ve mitigated the risk of the making that decision,” Lowe said. Of the TV makers “we deal with,” they can “load our chip and they are covered for all the standards,” he said. “That’s the strongest position we can offer them.”

Tegna will spin off Cars.com into another publicly traded company, amid personnel moves including the parent company's CEO retiring (see 1609070037) and as it considers alternatives for CareerBuilder. Analysts said that could lead to a sale of that job-search site. The spin off, expected in the first half of next year, will position Tegna and Cars.com "to take advantage of differentiated opportunities in the rapidly evolving broadcast and digital landscapes," said the parent in a news release Wednesday. Other owners of CareerBuilder are McClatchy and Tribune Media, and the owners may be reviewing takeover offers for the asset, Noble Financial analyst Michael Kupinski emailed investors. "It sounds like a sale is the least complicated transaction -- given the different ownership structures," wrote Wells Fargo's Marci Ryvicker. "We believe there have been inquiries from interested buyers over the past few years." Tegna stock closed up Wednesday 8.9 percent to $21.81.

It’s “wrong” to pit HDR10 in a “format war” with Dolby Vision for supremacy in high dynamic range, said an Insight Media white paper Monday, explaining the similarities and differences between the two technologies. Think of HDR10 as a “subset” of Dolby Vision, said the paper from a firm with clients in the broadcast and other industries according to its website. Dolby Vision “is a more comprehensive approach that has value in the market, while HDR10 is more like a special ‘light’ case of Dolby Vision,” also with marketplace value, said Insight. “Both formats, and others, will coexist in the market with no winners or losers.”

The FCC's apps-based set-top plan mustn't allow rewriting “any terms or conditions contained in programming contracts between broadcasters and multichannel video programming distributors,” NAB said in a letter posted in docket 16-42 Friday. Ex parte filings by programmers have suggested the set-top proposal being pursued by the FCC could involve the commission in a licensing regime to allow third-party set-top makers access to MVPD content (see 1608240064). “NAB cannot support any order where the Commission creates an ongoing ability to review or modify broadcaster contracts through the licensing process,” it said. “Any such provision undermines the Commission’s stated goals of protecting content, respecting copyright and avoiding third-party casualties in its quest to generate a competitive set-top box marketplace.” The initial FCC plan explicitly said it wouldn't interfere with existing contracts between programmers and MVPDs, and its latest plan should follow the same directive, NAB said. “The tasks of developing the terms and conditions of the license and determining whether an entity is compliant with the license must be at the exclusive discretion of the licensing body itself,” NAB said. “Any other outcome would necessarily involve the Commission in the interpretation of contractual terms and determinations of which terms should or should not be honored by competing applications. This is unacceptable.” Tech groups also lobbied last week on the NPRM (see 1609020031).

CBS is starting a commercial-free version of its CBS All Access VOD subscription service at $9.99 a month, in addition to its current, $5.99 a month service featuring commercials, the company said in a news release Wednesday. It nevertheless said the commercial-free plan's live-streaming of CBS stations will have the same commercials as the broadcasts, while some on-demand shows will include promotional interruptions.