Gannett invested in and partnered with Digg, a web-content and news curator. Gannett said it led the company's Series C investment round "to provide USA TODAY NETWORK access to Digg’s industry-leading data." Digg gets access to the network for personalization and geo-targeting content, Gannett said in a Tuesday news release, and its executive is joining the privately held Digg's board (see 1609130022).

The FCC should “promptly” begin a rulemaking on approving ATSC 3.0, said NAB officials and America's Public Television Stations CEO Patrick Butler in meetings with aides to all regular FCC commissioners Thursday, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. “Broadcasters representing hundreds of stations support Commission approval of broadcasters’ voluntary use of the new standard.” In comments on a petition requesting approval for the new standard, NAB and numerous broadcast filers asked for the NPRM to be issued in October.

Cadence Design Systems claims it has the industry’s first SoC designs approved for use with Dolby AC-4 decoders, the chipmaker said in a Monday announcement. AC-4 decoders will be “critical” for next-generation TV and set-top applications, including those for ATSC 3.0, the company said. In a separate announcement Monday, Cadence also said it's offering immediate availability of an MPEG-H audio decoder for ATSC 3.0 and other global next-gen broadcast systems. MPEG-H Audio “is a future broadcast standard and is expected to be one of the key audio technologies adopted worldwide for new TVs,” Cadence said. Working in “close collaboration” with Fraunhofer, a developer of MPEG-H with Qualcomm and Technicolor, Cadence is first to market with an implementation for a “licensable” MPEG-H digital signal processor, it said. ATSC by year-end “likely” will recommend adoption of AC-4 as the ATSC 3.0 audio codec for North America and MPEG-H for South Korea, ATSC officials told us at the NAB Show (see 1604180080).

The Audio Engineering Society and NAB Show New York will collocate their 2017 conventions at the Javits Center, they said in a joint Monday announcement. AES set its 2017 convention for Oct. 18-21, and NAB Show New York will be Oct. 18-19, they said: “The adjacent location of these events creates the most comprehensive and largest media and entertainment event held on the East Coast with more than 600 exhibitors.”

FoxFur Communications agreed to a $16,000 settlement with the FCC Media Bureau over a “time brokerage agreement” that led to FoxFur's having “an unauthorized attributable interest” in eight radio stations in the Syracuse, New York, area, said a consent decree released Monday. The deals involved the exchange of several stations in March and April and simultaneous agreements to broker 100 percent of the programming for some of the stations.

DOJ withdrew an August request that the FCC defer action on Frontier Media seeking a declaratory ruling allowing it to be 100 percent foreign owned (see 1607080051), said a letter filed in docket 16-212. DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security and the DOD analyzed the application and have "no objection," the letter said.

The lowest unit rate period for the November general election started Friday, 60 days before Election Day, said Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford in a blog post. During that period, candidates buying broadcast advertisements can be charged only the lowest rate that commercial advertisers were charged for the same class of time the candidates are buying. The rule applies to federal, state and local candidates, but not PACs and issue advertisers, Oxenford said. “In setting the lowest unit rates on a station, it must be remembered that virtually no station will have just one lowest unit rate,” said Oxenford. “Almost every station will have several -- if not dozens of lowest unit rates -- one lowest unit rate for each class of time.”

Moody's said it may cut the junk credit rating of Tegna, at Ba1 one notch below prime, on concerns that the spin-off of Cars.com will leave the TV station owner less diversified. "Without these assets, which represent close to 40% of the company's current revenue mix, the company will be significantly less diversified, much smaller in scale, and likely experience slower top line growth," the ratings agency release said Wednesday evening. Earlier that day, Tegna said Cars.com would become a separate publicly traded company, and analysts expect it may sell its stake in CareerBuilder (see 1609070036). The broadcaster didn't comment Thursday.

ATSC members, in balloting completed Wednesday, approved elevating ATSC 3.0's physical layer transmission system (document A/322) to the status of a final standard, ATSC said in a Thursday announcement. “While other ingredients of the ATSC 3.0 standard are still in the final stages of standardization, the approval of the over-the-air transmission system is a foundation for the future,” said ATSC President Mark Richer. ATSC 3.0's framers are “delivering” on the timetable published “early in the process” to finish work on the “complete” ATSC 3.0 standard by the first quarter of 2017, Richer said Thursday in the September issue of The Standard, ATSC’s monthly newsletter. But “as we saw with ATSC 1.0, broadcasting standards are never totally done,” he said. “Great standards continue to evolve with enhancements, modifications and adjustments. Standards development is an ongoing organic process that continues, and the ATSC board already is looking beyond ATSC 3.0.”

Rule changes to streamline foreign ownership regulations will be on the agenda for the FCC Sept. 29 commissioner meeting, Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a blog post Thursday. The item would "extend to broadcast licensees the same streamlined rules and procedures that common carrier wireless licensees use to seek approval of foreign ownership," Wheeler said. The FCC sought comment on changes to make it easier for publicly owned companies to avoid running afoul of foreign ownership rules. Also on the agenda are an item on independent programming and a long-awaited set-top box order (see 1609080085).