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.

Petitions for reconsideration of the FCC's quadrennial review of broadcast ownership rules will be published in the Federal Register Friday, making comments on the recon petitions dueJan. 17 and replies Jan. 27, according to the Federal Register's website and Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford. “This may be one of the first opportunities where we will be able to assess the meaning of the changes in the membership of the FCC,” said Oxenford in a blog post Thursday. “We will see to what extent the new administration will be willing to roll back the decisions made by the FCC under its old leadership.” Oxenford represents Connoisseur Media on its recon petition of aspects of the ownership rules. NAB and Nexstar also filed recon petitions against the rules, and Prometheus Radio Project, National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council and the News Media Alliance took their petitions to the court system.

The FCC is likely to experience a filing crunch Dec. 1, 2017, due to changes to rules on the filing of ownership reports, said Pillsbury Winthrop broadcast attorney Scott Flick in a blog post. A rule change that will have noncommercial broadcast stations joining commercial ones in filing ownership reports means "pretty much every station in America will be making at least one filing by that deadline, with most making multiple filings," Flick said. For some stations, DTV ancillary services reports and midterm equal employment opportunity reports will be due at the same time, Flick noted. With so many filings on the same day, the FCC's systems could get overloaded, the blog post said.

HDTV will “become the norm” in the U.K. beginning Jan. 1 because the Freeview logo will be “withdrawn” from new standard-definition TVs and set-top boxes entering the market, the subscription-free over-the-air TV viewing service said in a Thursday announcement. The change will be a “landmark moment” in the evolution of U.K. TV service and will pave the way “for further improvements in picture quality, including Ultra HD,” said Freeview Managing Director Guy North in a statement. Freeview calls itself the U.K.’s “most widely used TV service,” and estimates it reaches 19 million homes. The withdrawal of the Freeview logo from new SD products, first publicized in 2015, already has helped drive a 36 percent decline in sales of SD TVs, while HDTV sales have surged to make up 80 percent of the 6 million TVs sold in the U.K. each year, Freeview said. It emphasized the Jan. 1 change applies only to new SD equipment. “Legacy SD equipment will still be able to access Freeview channels,” it said. “No viewers will experience a loss of service.”