DTS acquired broadcast radio technology company Arctic Palm Technology, it said in a Thursday announcement. DTS cited Arctic Palm’s experience in broadcast studio operations and services, and knowledge in broadcast metadata and platform integration. More than 2,700 stations have licensed Arctic Palm software, including those associated with NPR, Entercom, Townsquare, Saga, Cumulus, Bell Media, CBC and Corus, DTS said. Ontario-based Arctic Palm developed solutions to support HD Radio Advanced Services and is a partner in the Public Radio Satellite Services (PRSS) MetaPub initiative designed to enhance national and local public radio broadcasts with a real-time flow of metadata from PRSS producers. “As the automotive industry works to enrich the digital dash, broadcast radio around the world will need to enhance its service offerings with platforms such as Arctic Palm,” said DTS CEO Jon Kirchner.

Correction: NAB asked the FCC to take action on the Nexstar/Media General application and approve Nexstar's waiver request but took no position on whether the deal should be approved (see 1610050050).

A division of the Department of Homeland Security signed a memorandum of agreement with America's Public Television Stations to make datacasting available nationwide, DHS and APTS said in news releases. The MOA is between APTS and DHS' Science and Technology Directorate's First Responders Group, and the datacasting technology lets public safety officials transmit data over broadcast signals, the releases said. “Even in an emergency situation, where other wireless services often fail due to network congestion, datacasting still provides a reliable platform for quickly sending and receiving large files,” DHS said Wednesday. "America's Public Television Stations are honored to have established a formal partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate to promote the deployment of public safety datacasting as an effective component in the protection of the American people,” APTS CEO Patrick Butler said Thursday.

During Hurricane Matthew, broadcasters should keep some things in mind, an industry lawyer blogged. Pillsbury Winthrop's Scott Flick reminded broadcasters that FCC rules require them to make emergency information delivered audibly available as text, and vice-versa. "In past disasters, the FCC has proposed fines of up to $24,000 ($8,000 per ‘incident’) to TV stations that effectively said 'run for shelter' but didn’t air a crawl or other graphic at that time conveying the same information,” he wrote: Rules also require TV stations to “aurally present on a secondary audio stream (SAS) any emergency information that is provided visually in non-newscast programming.” Getting emergency information to the hearing impaired is “a worthy goal,” Flick said. “But it isn’t hard to understand the frustration of a station employee that hasn’t slept in 24 hours trying to get emergency information out to viewers as quickly as possible, but needing to pause to ensure the appropriate graphics and SAS information is prepared and aired in order to avoid an FCC fine.” Also Wednesday, the agency said it will stay open during the hurricane (see 1610050062). State telecom commissions also are preparing (see 1610060029).

As ATSC enters Q4, and with the progress being made on ATSC 3.0, “I feel like we’re entering the fourth quarter of an exciting college rivalry football game,” ATSC President Mark Richer said Wednesday in a football-laced commentary in the October issue of The Standard, ATSC’s monthly newsletter. With ATSC members having just approved three more standards in the suite that will make up the ATSC 3.0 system, ATSC “is in the red-zone, about ready to score its final winning touchdown,” said Richer. “After three hard-fought quarters, marked by lots of blocking and tackling and some huge plays, victory is imminent. Team ATSC is on track to bring the world’s first Internet Protocol-based television broadcast standard across the goal line.” Richer’s commentary didn't mention the latest delay in elevating ATSC 3.0's A/341 video document to the status of proposed standard because framers haven’t chosen a winning high-dynamic-range system. Nevertheless, “with the fourth quarter upon us, broadcasters, manufacturers and especially consumers are expected to win big with Next Gen TV,” said Richer in his commentary. “Winning in the end will take more than a couple of field goals, but I don’t think it will take any Hail Mary passes either.”

The FCC should approve Nexstar's buy of Media General and the acquirer's request for a waiver of the incentive auction rules (see 1609220035) that bar the consummation of the transaction while the auction is ongoing, NAB said in a letter filed in docket 16-57 Wednesday. Broadcasters have operated under the auction's quiet period prohibitions for nine months, and it's not clear when the auction will end, NAB said. “The FCC’s delay in acting upon the proposed merger also has created ongoing and unnecessary uncertainty regarding associated transactions for divestitures that, if consummated, will increase female and minority ownership of television stations and result in the sale of other stations to small, independent broadcasters.” The FCC's stated policy reasons for forbidding deals during the auction don't apply here, since Nexstar and Media General are both auction participants, and their deal was announced before the anti-collusion rules took effect, NAB said. The FCC's 180-day shot clock for the deal reached 180 about 50 days ago, and DOJ already gave its nod, the association said. “Reflexive application” of the auction rules to block the deal's consummation serves “no practical purpose and only will exacerbate the harm to broadcasters, both large and small, of the lengthy, continuing freeze placed on the entire broadcast television industry,” NAB said.

FCC new foreign ownership policies “reverse the presumption” that led to Pandora’s problems with the foreign ownership rules, Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford said in a blog post Monday. “Rather than assuming that there was a compliance issue because a company cannot prove that its foreign ownership was less than 25%, the FCC will now conclude that there is an issue only where a company” knows that it has a foreign ownership compliance problem, Oxenford said. Pandora had to seek a declaratory ruling to buy a radio station because some investors in the publicly traded company couldn’t be identified under SEC rules. “The bottom line is that the FCC is moving toward a system of assessing foreign ownership more like that which it uses for non-broadcast services -- one where foreign investment is more normalized and available to bring capital into the broadcast marketplace,” Oxenford said. Commissioners OK'd the foreign ownership rules at their Thursday meeting (see 1609290050).

Scripps is “disappointed” the transparency groups that filed 16 complaints against its WCPO-TV Cincinnati (see 1609260077) over political advertising filing rule violations “did not first contact the station,” the company said in a news release. “Had they done so, the station would have worked with them to ensure that all appropriate information was made available to the public.” Scripps agreed the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Sunlight Foundation and Benton Foundation found some “areas where the station's filings could have been more descriptive” and said it “made appropriate amendments” to its file. But the broadcaster also said some of the complaints “inaccurately allege that ad scheduling and other required information was missing, when in fact the information is listed in the file.” In response to a request from the transparency groups for the FCC to expedite the process (see 1609290063), a Scripps spokeswoman told us the company agreed to respond to the complaints by Oct. 14 instead of the initial Oct. 28 deadline offered by the FCC.

The parties that have brought 16 complaints against Scripps' WCPO-TV Cincinnati on alleged incomplete or inaccurate information filings on buyers of political ads (see 1609260077) are demanding the FCC Media Bureau speed up its handling of the complaint. In a letter Thursday to the bureau, Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Sunlight Foundation and Benton Foundation said the FCC should tell Scripps to respond to the complaint by Wednesday, instead of the Oct. 28 deadline the bureau gave. The bureau's Policy Division "frequently and publicly brags that it handles election-related matters on an extremely expedited basis," the complainants said. "That appears to be the case when the parties are advertisers and broadcast licensees, but not when affected parties are journalists and other members of the public." An Oct. 28 deadline means the pleadings cycle would wrap up Nov. 17, nine days after the election, they said: "That schedule is nothing less than an abandonment of your duty to serve the public interest." The FCC and Scripps didn't comment.

ATSC’s Technology Group 3 for the second time delayed picking a winning high-dynamic-range technology for ATSC 3.0 for two months by extending the candidate standard period on the A/341 ATSC 3.0 video document to Nov. 30, ATSC President Mark Richer confirmed in a Thursday email. “I am hopeful that TG3 will approve a ballot to elevate A/341 to Proposed Standard during its meeting on November 17th,” Richer told us. He gave no explanation for the latest delay in choosing an HDR system for ATSC 3.0, which was to have been completed July 31 before being delayed to Sept. 30 because ATSC 3.0's framers wanted to “get it done right,” they said in June (see 1606160052). The delays on HDR are reminiscent of the contentious debate within ATSC to choose a winning audio codec for ATSC 3.0, which resulted in a monthslong impasse before ATSC 3.0's framers, in a compromise, settled on Dolby AC-4 for North America, MPEG-H for South Korea (see 1604210053).