Cleveland field tests done in June found that ATSC 3.0 delivers “significantly improved mobile reception capability” over the existing ATSC 1.0 DTV standard, LG, Zenith and GatesAir told the FCC in a Wednesday ex parte notice in docket 16-142. The test results are “pertinent” to the petition for rulemaking asking the FCC to authorize voluntary use of ATSC 3.0's physical layer (see 1604130065), and were submitted at the request of Martin Doczkat, chief of the Technical Analysis Branch in the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology, the filing said. That “highly reliable in-vehicle mobile reception was achieved” in the tests using tens of thousands of ATSC 3.0 “data points” bodes well for the “current and future” automotive industry, including autonomous cars, LG, Zenith and GatesAir told the commission. The tests originating from “experimental facilities” owned by WJW Cleveland generated “clean” reception to a mobile van more than 80 percent of the time in ATSC 3.0's “most rugged mode,” the companies said. Reception, as "anticipated," was “poor” when testing ATSC 3.0 in a moving vehicle in the less robust “stationary” mode, they said. They also said “because challenging routes were chosen, results should not be considered as statistical over the entire service area.” Their goal in the field tests was to “challenge the system,” they said.

Multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) with retransmission consent agreements with Media General and that have after-acquired station clauses in retransmission consent agreements with Nexstar will see the retrans fees they are paying those Media General stations go up 11 to 125 percent if those broadcasters merge. That's according to an ex parte filing Friday in docket 16-57 on a meeting between American Cable Association (ACA) Senior Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman and an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler. ACA has pushed for conditions on Nexstar's buy of Media General (see 1611020041). And in the conversation, it said that to insulate consumers from higher cable rates directly resulting from the merger and those after-acquired station clauses, the FCC should condition approval on Nexstar's commitment not to exercise those clauses for the duration of its agreement with an MVPD. Nexstar counsel didn't comment.

NAB, Free Press, Common Cause, the United Church of Christ and Media Alliance filed as intervenors in 21st Century Fox's petition for review of FCC elimination of the UHF discount (see 1609070046), in filings in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. NAB said its members were adversely affected by the order. The public interest groups are concerned their constituencies will be adversely affected if the rule is modified. Fox's appeal argues the FCC ignored congressional intent and exceeded its statutory authority in eliminating the discount.

The FCC should either amend or eliminate its TV white space rules, NAB said in a meeting Wednesday with Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp, according to an ex parte filing in docket 16-56. “The Commission’s current approach -- allowing TVWS operations in the face of the documented failure of its rules and ongoing noncompliance with those rules -- is incoherent.” The TVWS database is inaccurate, and guidance from OET requires that any device that doesn't comply with the FCC's push notification requirement must cease operating on Dec. 23, yet no industry standards exist for complying with the push requirement, NAB said. “To NAB’s knowledge, TVWS database administrators and TVWS device manufacturers have taken no steps to comply with this requirement,” the group said. “The Commission should either adopt and enforce effective rules that will allow TVWS devices to coexist with licensed operations, or it should eliminate or suspend TVWS operations.”

The FCC should take action now to eliminate skywave protections for Class A radio stations, the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters said in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. NABOB supports the tentative conclusion in the AM revitalization Further NPRM that critical hours protections for Class A stations should be eliminated, and that some protections from co-channel stations and first adjacent channel stations should remain. Though technical objections to eliminating skywave protections have been offered up by opponents of NABOB's stance, those objections are "unfounded," the group said. The skywave protections are a legacy of a time when many communities didn't have their own local radio stations and had to rely on distant stations for information, the association said. “That rationale is no longer applicable in 2016, almost all communities receive local AM and/or FM service.” When the Class A licenses were given out in the 1920s and '40s, discriminatory laws and policies blocked African-Americans from owning the stations, NABOB said. “When African Americans were able to enter the industry, it was often though ownership of less valuable stations.” Eliminating skywave protections would be “an enormous benefit” to local stations that can't operate at night because of those rules, NABOB said. Class A stations are a draw to the AM band in the same way an “anchor tenant” big box store is to a shopping center, proponents of the skywave protections have said (see 1603220054).

NAB arguments that public interest groups advocating in favor of retaining physical public correspondence files in TV stations have never accessed such files (see 1609150061) are false, said the National Hispanic Media Coalition and Free Press in an ex parte filing responding to the association in docket 16-161. Free Press and NHMC also took issue with NAB filings stating that by advocating for a physical file in this proceeding but for a digital file in others, Free Press was being hypocritical. “The most serious charge that NAB levels at any 'interest group,' in its otherwise inaccurate and meritless letter, appears to be the accusation that Free Press expresses more concern today than it used to for access disparities faced by people of color and people with lower incomes,” said Free Press and NHMC. “Happily, to the extent there is the any truth whatsoever to the accusation, Free Press is glad to be found guilty as charged. Free Press continues to evolve in its understanding of, and its advocacy regarding, the most serious challenges posed by the continued inequity in our nation’s media and telecommunications systems.”

Technology Group 3, the body within ATSC that’s supervising the framing of ATSC 3.0, made “a great deal of progress” in meetings in New York this week on high dynamic range for the next-generation broadcast standard, ATSC President Mark Richer emailed us Thursday through a spokesman. “We now expect A/341 to go out to ballot for Proposed Standard sometime in December,” Richer said of the ATSC 3.0 video document, which has been stuck in candidate standard mode for months as various ATSC committees tried to hash out consensus on HDR. TG3 twice has delayed picking a winning HDR technology for ATSC 3.0. After the latest two-month delay in September (see 1609290074), the candidate standard period on A/341 is now due to expire Nov. 30.

The FCC Media Bureau granted an 18-month extension request from the NAB, the American Foundation for the Blind and the American Council of the Blind (see 1610050042) for more time to develop technology to provide an audio representation of visual, non-text emergency information such as maps and graphics, said an order Wednesday. The petitioners are required to provide a status report in November 2017, the order said. “The report should include information about the extent to which images are conveyed with a corresponding on-screen crawl that includes the critical details conveyed by that image regarding the emergency and how to respond to the emergency.” The order extends a waiver that was first granted to NAB in 2015 of rules that require visual information to be aurally represented for individuals who are blind and visually impaired.

Free Access and Broadcast Telemedia's court challenge of FCC incentive auction rules is an attempt to "relitigate" low-power TV licensee Mako's rejected auction challenge (see 1608300056), the agency said in a reply brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Monday. Though FAB's challenge is against later-released aspects of the incentive auction plan, those orders don't "reopen the issue of whether LPTV stations should be protected" in the incentive auction, the commission said. Since the decision not to protect LPTV stations wasn't made in the orders FAB has challenged, the appeal should be rejected, the FCC said. The court also should reject constitutional arguments that the auction is an "undue taking" of LPTV spectrum, the FCC said. "It is well settled that broadcast stations, including LPTV stations, have no property right in the radio spectrum." The regulator also pushed back against arguments that its treatment of LPTV stations was arbitrary and capricious, arguing that the decision not to protect LPTV was already litigated during Mako. "This Court in Mako affirmed that decision as reasonable and consistent with the Spectrum Act," the FCC said. FAB's "last-ditch challenge" to that decision is "procedurally barred," it said.

Digital TV stations’ annual DTV ancillary/supplementary use services report is due Dec. 1, the FCC Media Bureau said in a public notice Monday. Licensees need to submit a form for each station “detailing whether they provided ‘ancillary or supplementary services’” during the 12 months prior to Sept. 30, the PN said.