Insight TV, billed as the first over-the-air 4K HDR broadcast channel in the U.S., launches Thursday in Boise on Evoca, the Edge Networks ATSC 3.0 platform (see 2004030006), said the startup. Insight TV, available 24/7 on the Evoca platform, will feature “original, adventure-focused programming and incredible storytelling,” said the company. “We built Evoca for the more than 50 million U.S. households in mid-sized markets like Boise -- where TV choices are limited and expensive,” said Evoca CEO Todd Achilles.

The FCC will seek comment on petitions for waivers of its freeze on full-power TV channel substitutions from broadcasters in Arizona and Oregon, said two public notices Tuesday. Both broadcasters are seeking to move from a VHF channel to UHF. Multimedia Holdings wants to move its KPNX Mesa from channel 12 to 18, and Sander Operating wants to move KGW Portland from 8 to 26.

The continuing pandemic could bolster arguments to relax media ownership rules, depending on the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the FCC’s appeal of Prometheus IV, said NAB lobbyists on a Radio Show panel Thursday. “Broadcasters are under a lot of fire from a lot of competition,” General Counsel Rick Kaplan said. Local journalism has become even more important during COVID-19, and lawmakers will have to realize that preserving it while subjecting only broadcasters to outsized regulation won’t work, he said. A SCOTUS decision in the FCC’s favor could strike down rules such as the eight-voices test but might also involve sending the case back to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals with new standards for reviewing the matter, Kaplan said. “There are many things on the table.” Kaplan expects the high court argument to be heard in January or February, and a decision by June, though earlier is possible, he said. If the election brings a change in the White House, NAB believes an incoming Democratic administration could make media ownership and diversity priorities in its communications policy, said NAB Vice President-Government Relations Grisella Martinez. Kaplan said he expects prospective FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington to approach the job similarly to the ways of the commissioner he would replace, Mike O’Rielly. “He’ll come in willing to learn,” Kaplan said of Simington.

The odds of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' Prometheus IV ruling are better than 50% -- “particularly if Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed to the Court” -- but it's “certainly no sure thing,” wrote Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Dan Kirkpatrick in a blog post Thursday (see 2010020059). A SCOTUS decision that reestablishes the broadcast ownership rule relaxations knocked down by the 3rd Circuit “could lead to increased broadcast deal-making, and potential consolidation,” Kirkpatrick said. If SCOTUS upholds the 3rd Circuit, the court’s remand to the FCC would proceed, and the matter would likely be part of the pending 2018 quadrennial review, he said. The FCC would likely have to gather the ownership and diversity data required by the court in that scenario, prolonging the review process. “The outcome of any such review would, of course, also be significantly impacted by whether a Republican or Democratic-controlled FCC is conducting that review,” Kirkpatrick said. SCOTUS could also rule separately on whether the case continues to fall under the jurisdiction of the 3rd Circuit, said the blog. Since the statute will still require future quadrennial reviews, “the saga of the FCC’s media ownership rules has a ways to go,” Kirkpatrick said.

Entertainment Studios Network CEO Byron Allen wants to invest $10 billion in acquiring big four network TV and radio stations, he said during a streamed interview for the Radio Show Thursday. Allen said he has invested $500 million in network TV stations over the past 18 months. Radio is “a great business” that's often “underestimated,” he said. “A lot of folks are down on local radio.” Streaming services will have “a tough time” replicating radio’s connection to local communities, Allen said. “I’m chasing Rockefeller,” he said, drawing a line from oil and steel fueling the industrial revolution to “the insatiable appetite” for content on digital platforms. Asked about racism in business, Allen said boardrooms don’t have true economic inclusion. Inequality is hurting the U.S. because the country needs all its citizens to stay afloat in the face of emerging global competition, he said: “Unfortunately, most Americans are set up to fail, especially Black Americans.” Allen wants free healthcare, free education and access to business startup capital, and he described climate change as the No. 1 threat to humanity.

The Society of Professional Journalists is “disturbed” by an NPR report that political appointees at the U.S. Agency for Global Media issued a complaint of bias against Voice of America White House bureau chief Steve Herman, said a release Wednesday. “Editorial independence is ‘enshrined’ in the parent agency’s enabling legislation,” said SPJ National President Matthew Hall in the release. “Bureaucrats bound by law and their better angels should not intrude on VOA’s journalism in any way.”

The FCC Enforcement Bureau reached a $15,000 settlement with a low-power FM licensee that violated underwriting rules, ownership rules and restrictions against transferring ownership of an LPFM license within three years of its issue, said an order and consent decree in Tuesday’s Daily Digest. Marconi Broadcasting Foundation -- licensee of WWRI-LP, Coventry, Rhode Island -- underwent a 100% change in its board in 2016, 14 months after the license was issued, the filings said. Marconi Director Chris DiPaola was also serving on Marconi’s board while owner of WBLQ(AM) Westerly, Rhode Island, and WWRI broadcast at least 17 “announcements on behalf of for-profit entities, in exchange for consideration,” over a 16-month period, said the filings. Marconi will follow a five-year compliance plan that includes training on underwriting rules and reporting requirements. It didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Give Fox a permanent waiver of the newspaper/broadcast cross ownership (NBCO) rule for WWOR-TV Secaucus, New Jersey, the company asked the FCC in an undocketed letter posted Tuesday. The permanent waiver would dispel “a cloud of regulatory uncertainty” hanging over the station since the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Prometheus IV ruling resurrected the NBCO rule, Fox said. The station -- which falls under the rule because of Fox’s ownership of the New York Post -- had received a series of such waivers beginning in 2001. In 2018, the FCC renewed WWOR’s license without the waiver because the NBCO was eliminated in 2017. The 2019 Prometheus IV ruling brought the rule back, though the Supreme Court last week granted certiorari in FCC and NAB appeals (see 2010020059). The FCC “has an opportunity to act now to provide immediate relief from a rule that was appropriately repealed and should never have been reinstated,” Fox said. It has a permanent NBCO waiver for WNYW New York, the broadcaster said: The agency has repeatedly found the NBCO rule isn’t in the public interest, but the 3rd Circuit has reinstated it every time.

The FCC rejected four petitions for reconsideration of changes to the FM translator interference rules, as expected (see 2009150061). Tuesday's order on recon denied and dismissed recon petitions from the LPFM (low-power FM) Coalition, broadcaster Fellowship of the Earth, Skywave Communications and Charles Anderson. The petitions argued that the changes were outside FCC authority and attacked a number of aspects, including standards for what constitutes a valid interference complaint and restrictions on the location of such complaints. The LPFM Coalition argues that listeners were disenfranchised by rules not allowing broadcasters to count multiple complaints from the same building toward the complaint minimum. The FCC is unaware of “any court or agency precedent” supporting the coalition's “assertion that the Petition Clause requires the Commission to accept and consider all listener complaints of translator interference,” the order said. "If a ‘real and consistent’ interference problem caused by a translator should occur, we anticipate that the affected station will be able to readily obtain the required minimum number of listener complaints.”

Two members of a three-judge D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel appeared to side Friday with the Open Technology Fund during oral argument on its lawsuit against U.S. Agency for Global Media CEO Michael Pack. The court temporarily stayed Pack’s bid to purge grantee OTF’s leadership in July, which got scrutiny from congressional Democrats (see 2006240054). OTF lawyer Gregory Beck argued the International Broadcasting Act that sets out USAGM’s mandate doesn’t authorize Pack to make the sorts of leadership changes at OTF that he has attempted because the law didn’t specifically create the entity. DOJ lawyer Gerard Sinzdak countered that USAGM’s Radio Free Asia incubated OTF, and the agency then asked Congress to allow it to be spun off, meaning it’s “clearly” an organization Congress had in mind when it wrote the IBA. Judges Merrick Garland and Cornelia Pillard focused at times on OTF’s bylaws and how they set out USAGM’s authority over the nonprofit versus whether the IBA allows USAGM to have the control Pack attempted to assert. Senior Judge David Sentelle appeared to sympathize with USAGM’s argument that OTF’s incubation within Radio Free Asia clearly shows it’s governed by IBA’s mandate. Pack has repeatedly drawn scrutiny from Capitol Hill, including when he defied a House Foreign Affairs Committee subpoena to testify last month (see 2009240060). Six senior USAGM officials recently filed a whistleblower complaint with the State Department’s inspector general and U.S. Office of Special Counsel, claiming they had faced retaliation for noting their concerns with Pack’s abuses of authority.