The FCC OK'd TDS moving KOHD Bend, Oregon, to Channel 18 from 51. The station owner had said the move would eliminate potential interference in the lower 700 MHz A block adjacent to Channel 51 in the Portland market, said a Media Bureau order Thursday. An NPRM on the proceeding had identified the carrier as T-Mobile (see 1504100038). The new order said the change will be effective once the decision appears in the Federal Register, "an expedited effective date" that's needed because of the May 29 pre-auction incentive licensing deadline by when stations must license newly built facilities for them to be protected in the post-auction repacking. That deadline was the subject of bureau public notice included along with the KOHD order in Thursday's FCC Daily Digest (see 1505140044).

A proposal for the FCC to no longer require radio broadcasters to disclose on-air some details of sponsorship identification was opposed by groups favoring such disclosure, show filings posted to docket 15-52 Tuesday and Wednesday. The Radio Broadcasters Coalition petitioned Nov. 26 for a class waiver of the sponsorship ID requirements, to provide information about sponsored material through less frequent on-air announcements with enhanced online disclosures (see 1503130051). Those opposed to the request raised issues of payola if such ID goes online. "Preventing structural payola is essential for promoting broadcast localism," said Common Cause, the Future of Music Coalition, Media Alliance, National Federation of Community Broadcasters, Prometheus Radio Project, United Church of Christ and a few other groups. "If this waiver were granted, large corporations could purchase airtime for songs advocating for their preferred social or political viewpoints" and "the vast majority of listeners would never know," they said. Common Cause and the Future of Music Coalition also made individual filings, as did musicians including David Lowery. It's "incorrect" that the waiver would promote payola, said the radio coalition that includes Beasley Broadcast, Cox Enterprises, Emmis, Entercom and iHeartMedia. "Rather than eviscerate protections against payola, the requested waiver would result in easier and more useful public access to information about sponsored music and sports programming," it said. "Restrictions on payola would remain in full force if the waiver request were granted and more information, not less, would be available to the consumer."

The FCC Media Bureau rejected two petitions for reconsideration asking it to reverse its rejection of two applications for review challenging two forfeiture orders against low-power TV stations. The petitions by KM LPTV of Milwaukee and KM LPTV of Chicago were dismissed as being “repetitious,” the bureau said in orders on reconsideration issued Tuesday. The forfeitures were related to violations of children’s TV rules. The licensees raised “verbatim” the same issues in the petitions for recon that they did in their prior applications for review, the bureau said. The arguments “plainly do not warrant Commission consideration" because they rely "on arguments that have been fully considered and rejected by the Commission within the same proceeding,” the bureau said.

A group of broadcast attorneys met Wednesday with members of the FCC Incentive Auction Task Force, Media Bureau, Wireless Bureau and the Office of General Counsel to discuss how anti-collusion rules will apply to attorneys representing TV stations in the reverse auction, according to an ex parte filing posted by the FCC Monday. The anti-collusion rules are expected to limit severely communications among attorneys representing TV stations, Communications Daily has reported. Wiley Rein's Kathleen Kirby, Fletcher Heald's Stephen Lovelady and Jack Goodman were the broadcast attorneys in the meeting.

Pandora told the FCC it will take several steps to comply with last week's foreign ownership declaratory ruling (see 1505040065 and 1505050049) requiring the streaming music company to say what it will do to monitor investments so foreign ownership doesn't exceed 49.9 percent. Pandora said it will seek to qualify its shares in a Depository Trust Co. program so foreign-owned stock goes into a segregated account, monitor stock held by current and former directors and officers, monitor SEC filings and ask some shareholders to fill out a citizenship questionnaire. The board "will promptly amend Pandora’s bylaws to give Pandora the authority" to monitor ownership, the company said Friday. It filed an amendment to its application to buy KXMZ(FM), Box Elder, South Dakota, a deal related to which Pandora sought the declaratory ruling. Many of the steps Pandora said it will take were suggested in the declaratory ruling.

The FCC must be more flexible about what information broadcasters participating in the auction are allowed to know, the Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition said in informal comments posted online in docket 12-268 Friday. Allowing broadcasters access to information such as the current clearing target, whether dynamic reserve pricing is on or off or has been used on any stations would aid broadcaster decisions about the auction, the EOBC said. The FCC should also give broadcasters enough information after each round to allow them to analyze bidding activity “and make informed decisions,” EOBC said. Auction participants can acquire useful information by knowing the bidding activity of their competitors, EOBC said. “Providing this information is standard in any FCC auction and the reverse auction should be no different,” EOBC said.

Roughly a week before ATSC 3.0's framers unleash a full progress report on the next-gen DTV standard at their “Boot Camp” conference on Wednesday in Washington, ATSC Thursday said the “first ingredient” of ATSC 3.0's physical layer has reached the status of “candidate standard” following a month of balloting. The so-called “bootstrap signal” portion of the physical layer is designated “A/321 Part 1" and will be “important to the future evolution of ATSC 3.0,” ATSC said in an announcement. Other “core elements” of the physical layer, including its modulation and error correction systems, will be balloted for candidate status this summer, ATSC said. Balloting on each of ATSC 3.0's components typically will be a four-week process, ATSC has said. The bootstrap signal for ATSC 3.0 transmission will remain a candidate standard for nine months while prototype equipment is built and tested “in advance of balloting for the entire system,” ATSC said. “The bootstrap is a low-level signal that tells a receiver to decode and process wireless services multiplexed in a broadcast channel,” said ATSC President Mark Richer. “It’s designed to be a very robust signal and detectable even at low signal levels.” The bootstrap signal provides “a universal entry point into a broadcast waveform,” ATSC said. It uses a “fixed configuration” known to all receivers “and carries information to enable processing and decoding the wireless service associated with a detected bootstrap signal,” as well as a “flag” that indicates when an emergency alert is in effect, it said.

NAB CEO Gordon Smith lobbied FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly, opposing an NPRM proposing to adopt a rebuttable presumption of effective competition for all cable operators, which the group and some others have opposed and NCTA backs (see 1505060051). The proposal "is unlawful and goes well beyond STELAR’s limited directive to modify the petition filing process for small cable companies," said NAB of the 2014 Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization Act's Section 111. "Congress just recently addressed the Commission’s implementation of the effective competition requirements, and elected not to alter the FCC’s longstanding approach to making its necessary effective competition findings," said a filing posted Thursday to docket 15-53 on the meeting also attended by NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan and O'Rielly aide Robin Colwell. "It is odd, indeed, for the FCC to go far beyond what Congress just instructed it to do; namely, make mere administrative changes for small cable operators."

Alpha Media completed its $11.2 million buy of Coast Radio’s San Francisco Bay Area radio properties, Media Venture Partners, which represented the seller, said in a news release Tuesday.

Pandora's deal to buy a "small station in South Dakota" shows the company "has declared war on songwriters," said National Music Publishers’ Association CEO David Israelite of the firm's attempt to lower its royalty rate through the acquisition. "In the history of the struggle between creators and those who try to profit off of their work without paying them fairly, this move by Pandora ranks as the most cynical and shameless." The station "has become a pawn in Pandora's game to pay the creators on which it built its business even less," Israelite said in a news release Tuesday. The FCC said the previous day that Pandora could be up to 49.99 percent foreign owned, paving the way for the company to get agency approval for its $600,000 planned buy of KXMZ(FM), Box Elder, South Dakota, from Connoisseur Media (see 1505050049), a deal that NMPA has criticized (see report in the June 17, 2013, issue). A representative of the station had no immediate comment Wednesday, and Pandora declined to comment. "Pandora is radio," and buying KXMZ would qualify the company for the same Radio Music License Committee license "under the same terms as our competitors," the company said Monday when it got the FCC foreign ownership declaratory ruling. "This move makes sense to us beyond the licensing parity alone."