An FCC loss in its court battle defending the restoration of the UHF discount could cause local broadcast dealmaking to “grind to a halt,” Barclays Capital emailed investors Monday. The three-judge panel hearing oral argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Friday didn't appear to agree with the FCC’s position (see 1804200059). The analysts described an FCC loss as a “monkey wrench in local broadcast" mergers and acquisitions and said the agency’s case appeared to be on “shaky ground.” Since M&A “is one of the last remaining sources of support for local broadcasters, this ruling could have significant repercussions over time,” the analysts said.

The FCC Media Bureau opened dockets for media items set for the May 10 commissioners’ meeting, said public notices Thursday (see 1804180068). Filings on a draft proposal on getting rid of rules requiring the physical posting of station licenses go in docket 18-121; on a draft NPRM on reforming interference rules between translators and full-power FM stations, docket 18-119.

Garmin unveiled Connect IQ 3.0, an open platform for third-party developers to create apps for Garmin wearables, bike computers and outdoor handheld devices, it said Wednesday. It showed new apps from companies including iHeartRadio and Yelp.

The low-power TV displacement application window was extended to June 1, said an FCC Incentive Auction Task Force and Media Bureau public notice in docket 16-306 Wednesday. The window, intended to allow LPTV stations displaced by the incentive auction and repacking to find new channels, was to close May 15. “This brief extension of the Special Displacement Window will allow applicants further time to analyze data and other information and to prepare or make changes to their applications accordingly,” it said. The PN doesn’t give an explicit reason for the extension, but a footnote cites an April 12 extension request from the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition, which complained of conflicting directives and confusing data sets. “Our request to extend the LPTV special filing window is advantageous to a more equitable and fair displacement process, and one which can avoid a flawed process and the legal ramifications of that,” the coalition said.

The FCC Incentive Auction Task Force released an additional $742 million in repacking reimbursement funds Monday, for its second allocation to broadcasters undergoing repacking, said a public notice Monday. The allocation was -- as expected (see 1803080049) -- adjusted upward to reflect the additional reimbursement funds recently provided by lawmakers. With this allocation full-power broadcasters have access to $1.74 billion -- nearly the whole of the original $1.75 billion repacking reimbursement fund. The PN includes a revised cost estimate of $1.88 billion for the repacking based on the funding requests submitted by broadcasters as of April 9. That’s down from the $1.95 billion estimate released by the agency in March, though the PN also says the repacking costs are expected to rise going forward. Broadcasters and broadcast attorneys have said the industry widely estimates the final cost of repacking full-power TV stations will be $2.5 billion. “Only a small fraction” of repacked entities are currently approaching the limit of their initial allocation funding, the PN said, but allocating the additional funds will allow those entities to “execute their post-auction construction.” With the original repacking reimbursement funds largely spoken for, the agency is expected to begin drawing on the additional funds provided by Congress, attorneys said. Though broadcasters welcome the additional allocated funds, the PN isn’t likely to trigger a wave of repacking spending, said Wiley Rein broadcast attorney Ari Meltzer. Broadcasters have been expecting a large second allocation since Congress added the additional repacking funding, he said. NAB praised the release of the funds, in a statement. "This additional repacking funding is critical to the 149 public television stations that are being repacked," said America's Public Television Stations CEO Patrick Butler in a statement. The money will allow noncommercial stations to pursue their goals without "fear of going off the air for lack of sufficient funds to complete the post-auction transition."

Movie theater subscription service MoviePass teamed with iHeartRadio on a $29.95 subscription offer. Participants get a limited MoviePass membership to see four 2-D movies a month for three months and an extended three-month free trial of iHeartRadio’s All Access on-demand offering. The deal lets the companies reach a broader audience, said Ted Farnsworth, CEO of MoviePass parent Helios and Matheson Analytics.

The viral video of Sinclair newsrooms repeating a script about "fake news" (see 1804020056) shows the inevitable result of FCC continued removal of policies that protected localism, former agency Chairman Tom Wheeler blogged Thursday for the Brookings Institution, with which he's affiliated. Axing those rules favor "a new national broadcasting powerhouse with unprecedented reach" over localism, Wheeler said, saying Sinclair, with its planned buy of Tribune Media, is "the consistent beneficiary" of the rule changes. He said the FCC has "one last chance ... to stand up for localism" by blocking Sinclair/Tribune. He said DOJ review of the deal is limited to strict antitrust statutes, but FCC broader public interest standard gives it the opportunity to point to eroding localism as a reason for opposition. The agency didn't comment Friday.

Comments on an FCC proposal to streamline the reauthorization of satellite TV stations (see 1803230054) are due May 11, and replies are due May 29, said a Media Bureau public notice Thursday.

State Emergency Communications Committees have until May 4 to amend their state emergency alert system plans to include summaries of actions taken to provide multilingual EAS messages, said an FCC Public Safety Bureau public notice Wednesday in docket 04-296 on how to make the amendments. The requirement is part of the FCC's data collection on multilingual EAS, which survived a recent court challenge from the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (see 1802200033).

The ATSC 3.0 receiver “guidelines work” that CTA is conducting “is an open standards project,” Brian Markwalter, CTA senior vice president-research and standards, emailed us. “The working group, under our Video Systems Committee, develops recommended practices for ATSC 3.0 receivers (mirroring ATSC’s work on ATSC 3.0),” he said. “The recommended practices are being developed as a suite.” Documents addressing the physical layer, logical layer, video and audio are complete, and “others are in process,” he said. “We do not speculate on the schedule” for when work on the entire suite will be finished, he said. Markwalter, an ATSC board member, said in the fall the “pace of work” was accelerating on the CTA-CEB32 “family” of recommended 3.0 receiver practices that would consist of 11 parts plus an overview that will be “easily mapped” to the suite of 3.0 standards (see 1709050038). CTA “has an associated group, where they’re writing recommendations” for 3.0 receivers, said Winston Caldwell, Fox Networks Group vice president-spectrum engineering and advanced engineering, at an NAB Show workshop on maximizing 3.0's future business potential (see 1804100048). “We’ve been involved there just to make sure that those receivers support a lot of the capabilities that we’re interested in.”