Correction: The effective date of an order letting Gray Television substitute Channel 7 for 5 for KYES-TV Anchorage would be Thursday, the planned day of publication of an FCC Federal Register correction (see 1711160016).

The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate joined an advisory committee for the Advanced Warning and Response Network, the AWARN Alliance said Wednesday. AWARN said the Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, National Weather Service and APCO remain on the committee. DHS will “leverage its social science and other expertise to help us design the most effective warning messages,” said alliance Executive Director John Lawson. The group will begin developing “an end-to-end AWARN technical solution” with input from the panel in 2018; a beta version is planned for 2019, it said.

Sinclair's buying Tribune is "a historic opportunity to advance minority ownership and diversity,” said minority-owned broadcaster Howard Stirk Holdings in a letter posted Wednesday in FCC docket 17-179. Howard Stirk is affiliated with Sinclair and has sharing arrangements with the broadcaster. Divestitures from the deal that may be required by DOJ or the FCC could provide ownership opportunities for prospective minority owners, the smaller company said. “It is critically important, however, that the Commission appreciate this unique opportunity and make clear that it would expeditiously review for approval any spin-off assignment to a minority owned entity.” Shared service agreements and joint sales agreements help minority broadcasters get access to capital, the filing said: The FCC “should do all it can” to insure the deal happens and “remove any impediments which might derail this."

The full FCC approved a $100,000 settlement with Florida TV licensee Budd Broadcasting, which owned a station that went off the air for long periods without authorization, violated numerous online public file and children's TV rules, and didn’t have a signal strong enough to reach its community of license, said an order and consent decree released Wednesday. The order also approves the sale of Budd’s stations WFXU(TV) Live Oak, Florida, and WUFX-LD Tallahassee to Gray Television, which will in turn have to abide by the conditions of the consent decree. The order also grants Gray a failing station waiver to allow that transaction to proceed. Under the consent decree, the licenses for the stations are renewed for two years, and they must be operating at correct power levels and following FCC rules within 30 days.

The FCC Media Bureau Audio Division issued a license renewal and $4,000 notice of apparent liability to an FM translator for originating programming, said a Tuesday order. The programming complaints against Tea-Visz’s translator W272AY Park Falls, Wisconsin, were in a petition to deny the renewal filed by Wisconsin small-market broadcaster Heartland Communications, which the order rejected. Tea admitted the violations, saying they stem from territorial restrictions that bar the translator from rebroadcasting its usual partner WIMI(FM) Ironwood, Michigan, when the station airs Green Bay Packers games. “According to TEA, its engineer wanted the Station to be capable of airing emergency announcements during this time,” and “without the prior knowledge of TEA-VISZ, improperly wired [the Station] to air music rather than be silent,” the order said. The error was quickly corrected, Tea-Visz told the agency. “TEA’s attempt to minimize this mistake by emphasizing the limited occurrences and fact that the licensee was unaware of programming originating on the Station, does not absolve it of this transgression or nullify the rule violation,” the order said. The bureau said the violation wasn’t serious enough to merit a hearing, and isn’t a pattern of breaking rules.

The second window for AM stations to apply for FM translator licenses is Jan. 25-31, said the FCC Media Bureau in a public notice in Tuesday’s Daily Digest. It's open to any AMs that didn’t file in the previous windows to relocate or build new translators. The bureau announced a Jan. 18-31 freeze on requests for modifications to existing translators. The FCC treats translator windows like auctions, so broadcasters should be aware of rules on prohibited communications, Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford blogged. “Applicants need to read this notice very carefully to avoid traps -- traps which include having conversations with mutually exclusive applicants outside a future settlement window when engineering solutions to resolve conflicts between applications filed in the window will be allowed."

Reston Translator, which broadcasts Russia-funded radio station Sputnik, registered as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), said the FARA website. Reston Translator’s managing member John Garziglia, a broadcast attorney with Womble Bond, also had to file a registration form under a provision of the act that requires officers and directors of registered companies to do so. In the company’s registration statement, Garziglia argued DOJ was wrong to require registration. “Reston Translator LLC is not an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal,” the form said. “Reston Translator LLC does not qualify for registration under the Act, but is doing so at your direction. We do so because we have been directed to do so, not because it is required by the law.” Neither DOJ nor Garziglia commented.

The filing window for biennial broadcast ownership reports opened Friday, the FCC Media Bureau said in a public notice released Thursday. The ownership reports are due on or before March 2, the PN said.

An FCC Media Bureau decision Wednesday dismissing petitions of reconsideration against FM translator applications affirms the practice of rebroadcasting HD channels on such translators, blogged Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford the next day. “The common practice of rebroadcasting HD signals on FM translators has been blessed once again -- at least for now.” The bureau dismissed petitions from Triangle Access Broadcasting against a number of translators near Raleigh, North Carolina, the order said. Though Triangle argued translator owners Eastern Airwaves and Curtis Licensees needed to make a showing of technical need to rebroadcast HD channels coming from the same station over the translators, the Audio Division said no showing is necessary as long as the channels contain different content. The order says the decision is based on precedent, but uses the phrase “pending further Commission action on this matter,” and could indicate the FCC might in the future limit the use of translators to rebroadcast HD subchannels, Oxenford wrote. “We have no reason to believe that any change in policy is imminent, but thought that we should pass along this warning that the rules on this practice have never been set in stone.”

A company owned by four Italian investors wants the FCC to approve its buy of Florida radio broadcaster Zoo Communications, said a petition for declaratory ruling posted Wednesday. One of the owners of buyer Anco Media Group, Marco Mazzoli, already manages Zoo but doesn’t own an interest, the petition said. “Given the friendly, non-threatening relationship between the United States and Italy over the past 60 years,” the deal wouldn’t raise homeland security concerns, the petition said. Approval has the public interest benefit of encouraging foreign investment, it said. “The public interest is clearly advanced by granting this petition.”