The FCC Media Bureau rejected Entravision objections to a license application from Matinee Media, said a letter in Monday’s Daily Digest. Entravision argued Matinee relied on temporary facilities to satisfy the requirements of a construction permit for a tower in Arizona, but Matinee said local zoning rules hindered its ability to immediately construct the planned facilities, and it plans to upgrade when local permits can be obtained. "Matinee’s construction pursuant to a short-term local zoning permission does not implicate our prohibition on temporary construction,” the bureau said. “The Commission has long declined to consider issues that are more appropriately resolved by a local court.”

The FCC should hold Sinclair buying Tribune in abeyance until after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rules on the UHF discount, said a joint letter in docket 17-179 from many opposed to the deal, including Cinemoi, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-CWA, Newsmax and National Hispanic Media Coalition. They supported a motion by Public Knowledge and Common Cause (see 1806280055). An FCC ruling approving the deal before the court rules “opens the door for the newly-formed company to impose long-lasting public interest harms,” the new letter said. Sinclair has said there is no legal reason for the agency to wait (see 1807060033).

Bidding credits for new entrants in FM auctions have been “a poor tool” for increasing participation by women and minorities and shouldn’t be used as evidence to support using the new entrant standard for an FCC incubator program, Free Press said in an ex parte filing in docket 17-289. Comparatively few women or minorities received construction permits through new entrant bidding credits, Free Press said. It also opposed the FCC’s proposed incubator program in general. “There is no reason to expect, even were the incubated licensee a woman or a person of color, that the incubation would lead to actual ownership,” Free Press said. The planned program would reduce the number of independent stations and increase station ownership by larger “conglomerates” by granting them waivers, Free Press said. “Incubators will do nothing to solve the challenge of independent access to capital.”

Calls to downgrade the FCC’s kidvid draft NPRM to a notice of inquiry are an attempt by Senate Democrats and advocacy groups to inject “unnecessary delay and distraction,” into the proceeding (see 1806290057), Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said in a commentary in the National Review Thursday. The same information gathering results can be achieved by an NPRM, he said. Criticisms that the kidvid proposals would reduce the availability of high quality content for kids aren’t based on evidence, O’Rielly said. Data provided to the FCC shows “only 0.6 percent of American households with children do not have access to either cable or Internet services -- and that number is even smaller for low-income, minority households,” O’Rielly said. The information coming in to the FCC indicates “broadcasters are heavily burdened by our rules, while most American households and children receive questionable benefits from them,” O’Rielly said. “I stand ready to work with anyone, within reason, from now until we vote on this rulemaking to reframe or ask additional questions that will build the most robust record possible.”

The freeze on minor change applications for low-power TV and translators is now lifted, said an FCC Media Bureau public notice Tuesday. The freeze was put in place ahead of the LPTV displacement window, which closed June 1. “Freezes on the filing of applications for displacement, applications for digital companion channels, and applications for new digital LPTV/translator stations and major changes remain,” the PN said. This opens up useful options for such stations, LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition Director Mike Gravino said in an emailed newsletter.

Comments on the FCC proposal to relax rules requiring stations post physical copies of broadcast licenses on their premises are due in docket 18-121 Aug. 1, replies Aug. 16, said a public notice posted Monday.

The FCC auction of 15-year-old mutually exclusive FM translator construction permits raised $574,771, the Media and Wireless bureaus said in a public notice in Monday's Daily Digest. Twenty bidders won 30 permits, the PN said. The permits in Auction 83 were those with interference conflicts that couldn’t be resolved after a 2003 filing window and have been stalled ever since (see 1801170031). Downpayments from the auction are due July 16, final payments July 30. Winning bidders must submit long-form applications by Aug. 8.

The FCC should delay consideration of Sinclair buying Tribune until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rules on the revived UHF discount, said a motion from Public Knowledge and Common Cause filed Thursday in agency docket 17-179. “Disassembling a transaction that has been consummated, or bringing it in compliance with a significantly lower ownership cap, would be very difficult or impossible.” Though the deal’s shot clock has been stopped while the FCC collects comments on Sinclair’s latest amended application, “only 13 days remain on the clock,” PK and Common Cause said. The final filing deadline for the Sinclair/Tribune proceeding is July 12. “If the Commission were to restart it at the close of the current pleading cycle, that could lead to action in this proceeding that would be uninformed by the Court’s decision,” said Common Cause and PK said. “Jumping the gun” and approving the deal before the court ruling could allow the combined company to obtain “long-lasting concessions from distributors” based on “a heft that it will have to shed shortly thereafter,” the motions said. Disassembly of the combined company could take “a long time to effectuate” and would be extremely difficult, the groups said. If the UHF discount were to go away after the companies were allowed to combine, they would have to divest stations to reduce their reach by 33 percent of U.S. households, the y said. “Abeyance is necessary to guard against the substantial ‘unscrambling of the eggs’ in the form of station divestitures by New Sinclair so significant that they would amount to an undoing of the merger.” Sinclair didn’t comment.

The “Trump FCC” is allowing Sinclair to turn local TV news “into a coordinated national platform for the delivery of messages” that attack opponents of the president, former Chairman Tom Wheeler blogged for the Brookings Institution Thursday. Sinclair and the FCC didn’t comment. By doing away with Wheeler-era rules that prevented sidecar arrangements, the agency “rubber-stamped” the “charade” that sidecar deals comply with ownership regulations, Wheeler said. “The efforts of the Trump FCC to help Sinclair expand its national political propaganda machine have not even been subtle.” Sinclair’s initial announcement of a Tribune combination that at the time didn’t comply with the national ownership cap “was a strong indicator that Sinclair believed the Trump FCC would conveniently change the law to help them,” Wheeler said. “There is an arrogance in engineering federal regulation to benefit a specific company -- especially when the chairman of the Trump FCC has preached ‘regulatory humility.’”

Salem Media Group reached a $10,000 FCC settlement over subsidiaries consummating a pro forma transaction before it was approved, said an order and consent decree in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. It's connected to applications for a pro forma transfer of licenses between Salem subsidiaries, including Caron Broadcasting and South Texas Broadcasting. Though other parts of the deal were approved in December, the transfers involving South Texas weren’t, but the companies consummated all of them, the document said. When the Media Bureau granted the South Texas transactions in February, Salem revealed the deal had already been consummated, the bureau said.