The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology’s plans to use the TVStudy software to conduct the incentive auction instead of the OET-69 software oversteps the agency’s authority and violates both the Spectrum Act and the Administrative Procedures Act, said NAB in comments filed with the FCC Friday (http://bit.ly/1jbr2h1). “The Spectrum Act requires the Commission to use ‘all reasonable efforts to preserve’ coverage areas and populations served for each broadcast television licensee, as those values were calculated using the ‘methodology’ in effect on February 22, 2012, when the Spectrum Act was enacted,” said NAB. That includes the OET-69 methodology and the software used to generate interference predictions and calculate broadcaster coverage area, NAB said. Not using OET-69 carries “a strong presumption of unlawfulness,” NAB said. The broadcast association also criticized the FCC for allowing OET to publicize updates and change the TVStudy software through updates to a website rather than the normal public notice process, and through delegated authority rather than commission votes. “The Commission should not resolve major outstanding issues in the incentive auction proceeding at the Bureau and Office level,” NAB said. OET also deletes the prior version of the TVStudy software from its website as it’s updated, NAB said, “thereby depriving the public of a comprehensive record of OET’s actions.” The commission should “observe the requirements of the Spectrum Act and the APA now, before stakeholders commit to participating in a flawed proceeding that will be cumbersome and expensive to unwind,” said NAB.

The FCC approved Gray Television’s deal to buy 12 Hoak Media stations, and several related transactions involving former Gray and Hoak stations being bought by Gray-affiliated Excalibur Broadcasting, Nexstar and Mission Broadcasting, said Gray in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1jc9Wjk). Three stations involved in the $300 million deal remain unapproved. Some of the transactions had to be changed to comply with a March 12 Media Bureau public notice that announced extra scrutiny for deals involving sharing arrangements and financial entanglements among ostensibly separately owned stations, Gray said. “The changes included removing Gray’s guarantee of Excalibur’s financing to acquire Excalibur’s new stations and eliminating a put/call option on Excalibur’s new stations.” The deal involved stations in Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Nebraska and North and South Dakota. The transactions are expected to close in Q1 or Q2, said Gray.

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau dismissed three petitions for closed captioning exemption. The bureau required additional information to evaluate whether the petitioners’ programming should be exempted, it said in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1jBLrgb). Hunting Park Church of Christ in Shreveport, La., and C&G Productions in Arlington, Va., “ultimately failed to provide the requested supplemental information,” it said. They must comply with the closed captioning requirements “with regard to the programming that was the subject of their petitions by July 1, 2014, which is 90 days after the release of this Notice dismissal,” the bureau said. Kiya Amajioyi Co. of Salisbury, Md., withdrew its petition, rendering it moot, the bureau said.

Any broadcasters that previously engaged in joint retransmission consent negotiations or have agreements to do so should begin to consider alternative plans following the FCC report and order prohibiting such negotiations by competing top-four stations, said a broadcast attorney. The FCC approved the order along with an FNPRM at Monday’s monthly commission meeting (CD April 1 p11). The prohibition will take effect after the effective date of the report and order, “regardless of any terms included in any pre-existing agreements between broadcasters allowing or requiring such negotiations,” said Fletcher Heald’s Dan Kirkpatrick in a post on the broadcast law firm’s blog (http://bit.ly/1jZd5Xc). Existing agreements entered into as a result of joint negotiation won’t be disturbed, “but no new agreements based on joint negotiations will be allowed, even if negotiations have already begun,” he said. The order lists activities that define joint negotiation, including “any informal, formal, tacit or other agreement and/or conduct that signals or is designed to facilitate collusion” on retransmission consent terms between top-four TV stations that aren’t commonly owned and serve the same designated market area, the order said (http://bit.ly/1jZekFI). The commission declined to address whether joint negotiation by same-market multichannel video programming distributors should be considered a violation of the duty to negotiate retrans in good faith, it said. The FNPRM seeks further comment on whether syndicated exclusivity rules are still needed to protect broadcasters’ ability to compete in the video market, it said. It also asks to what extent would local stations’ audiences “likely be diverted to distant stations carried on cable systems if the exclusivity rules were eliminated?” Joint negotiations probably would be ill-advised, even if an MVPD wants to negotiate in that manner, Kirkpatrick said. “The new rules don’t provide any exemption for MVPD consent.” Regardless of what happens with exclusivity rules, absent a court challenge, the issue of joint retrans negotiations between same-market top-four stations has now been decided, he said.

Hearst Television pledged to do at least 12 minutes of nightly coverage of “election discourse” during the 30 days leading up to the 2014 general election and some primaries, the broadcaster said in a news release Tuesday. That will apply to each of Hearst’s 28 news stations, the broadcaster said. This year, the coverage will include an “In Their Own Words” feature, which offers up candidate information and video statements on political issues, that Hearst will make available online and for mobile devices 60 days before the election, the release said. Hearst said it’s partnering with fact-checking website PolitiFact for election coverage.

Broadcasters should seek a legislative solution to Aereo rather then suing the streaming TV service, analysts BTIG said in a blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/1rZwOXO). Broadcasters should update “woefully outdated” copyright and retransmission consent laws instead of suing Aereo, BTIG said. Rewriting the Communications Act or the Cable Act is risky, because “so much of the law is outdated, that the risk of the unknown could be greater than the risks posed by current laws,” BTIG said. Since those rules were written, “distribution methods have progressed beyond where Congress could have imagined,” BTIG said. “A legal Aereo should serve as a wake-up call to the government to update a wide array of outdated media legislation, which has also led to a severe imbalance of retransmission consent leverage."

Nielsen and Integral Ad Science agreed to provide viewability measurement within Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings, in markets around the globe. Integral began powering the measurement tool for Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings in the U.S. in 2012, Nielsen said in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/PbfJv3). This is part of the companies’ efforts to expand the scope of their services across new channels and platforms, Nielsen said. It said it will be leveraging the same methodology in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and the U.K.

Comments in an FCC proceeding on a multilingual emergency alert system plan are due April 28. Replies are due May 12, the commission said in a Federal Register notice (http://1.usa.gov/1jgkIFU). The Public Safety Bureau issued a public notice seeking comment on the “designated hitter” plan this month (CD March 13 p 10).

A compromise plan for making joint sales agreements attributable put forth by NAB is just a “restatement” of current JSA and local marketing agreement rules, Free Press told FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn in a letter Monday (http://bit.ly/1mvlKk4). The NAB proposed letting JSAs remain unattributed if they can demonstrate majority control over the involved station by the licensee and a public interest benefit. “NAB’s proposal seeks to change nothing,” Free Press said. “JSA participants would be exempt from attribution if they continue to operate under their JSAs exactly as they are currently operating and if they do one thing as simple as air the weather, show that one of the stations multicasts, or do not let the station fall into disrepair by spending routine capital,” Free Press said. “Thus, 100% of today’s JSAs would be granted an exemption.” In a meeting with Chairman Tom Wheeler Friday (http://bit.ly/1j4Ux4P), NAB President Gordon Smith said the NAB proposal’s goal was “not simply to codify current FCC practices” but to allow broadcasters to show that they retained “de facto control” of their station and that JSAs are in the public interest. That point was also echoed in an NAB meeting with Clyburn’s staff, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1iBgmYT). A planned waiver process to allow deserving arrangements to remain unattributed is not sufficient, NAB said. “Waivers are inherently uncertain and likely to create obstacles to the investment needed to purchase or run a television station,” NAB said. “Particularly with no timeframe for action, a waiver process would not serve the public interest."

An episode of Fox drama The Following was incorrectly rated as appropriate for children, said the Parents Television Council in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1gYvyek). The episode included a scene of “a young woman having her throat brutally and graphically slit open,” but had a TV-14 rating instead of “a more appropriate TV-MA (Mature Audience Only) rating,” PTC said. “This is just the latest -- but perhaps the most brazen -- example of a wholly fraudulent TV content ratings system that serves no one but the networks’ own financial interest,” said PTC President Tim Winter in the release. The Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board should reform the ratings system, PTC said. “If the TV content ratings system is to be of any value to those whom it is intended to serve -- parents -- then the ratings must be accurate, consistent, transparent and publicly accountable."