PBS SoCal, licensee of KOCE-TV Huntington Beach, California, is merging with broadcast network KCETLink Media Group, licensee of KCET Los Angeles, they announced Wednesday. It's a “merger of equals” that will create a public media organization serving “more than 18 million people living in the Southern California region,” the release said. The new entity will be chaired by KCET Board Chairman Dick Cook, while PBS SoCal President Andrew Russell will be CEO. (See also the personals section of this publication's issue.) The combination will be governed by a 32-person board of trustees made up of 14 members from each of the parent companies and four new appointees. The new organization will continue to operate from the parent companies’ existing locations in Burbank, Costa Mesa and Los Angeles and there won’t be “immediate changes” to broadcast operations or program schedules, the release said. “The name of the new organization will be announced with the closing of the merger, which is expected to be completed in the first half of 2018” subject to regulatory approval, it said.

Broadcasters’ procedural objections to the American Television Alliance’s petition for reconsideration against the FCC ATSC 3.0 order aren’t valid (see 1804130044), said MVPD groups in replies posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. Though broadcasters argued the ATVA arguments are a rehashing of points already raised during the 3.0 rulemaking, NCTA disagreed. The FCC never specifically sought comment on whether it should sunset “substantially similar” provisions in five years even if no broadcasters had yet started transmitting in 3.0, NCTA said. The petition is legitimate because the 3.0 order contains “material error,” in that it doesn’t sufficiently address MVPD concerns about issues like retransmission consent, ATVA said. Broadcasters using retrans negotiations to pressure MVPDs into carriage of 3.0 is a harm that “can hardly be considered speculative,” said NTCA and WTA. “The Rural Associations agree with the Petitioners that the Commission should reconsider its decision not to order that ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 signals be negotiated separately."

Sharp Electronics and France TV, which plan to demo 8K broadcasts at the French Open tennis championships that begin next month, would like to collaborate with the BBC on 8K trials, their executives told us at an IFA news conference in Rome. Sharp also “would love to do tests at Wimbledon” with BBC for the tennis championships that open July 2 in London, said Sascha Lange, Sharp Europe vice president-marketing and sales. “Sky is another candidate." If "you can make good pictures with sports, you can make good pictures with anything, under any conditions," said Bernard Fontaine, France TV head-technology innovations. With tennis, the action is ideal for testing. "A small ball moving fast is a very good test. You have time to adjust during a match,” he said. Among tests will be comparing H.265 compression with uncompressed signals, and comparing 4K with 8K, said Fontaine. France TV “would like to work with NHK on this but we can’t because of TV rights issues,” he said of the world’s biggest backer of 8K. “The way France TV is funded we can do the ... tests for a month and not need to earn anything. ... What we are doing is not secret, it’s a public test, with shared information. The way NHK is funded is different and they would want to own the material and broadcast some of it by satellite.” BBC and NHK representatives didn’t comment Monday.

An FCC loss in its court battle defending the restoration of the UHF discount could cause local broadcast dealmaking to “grind to a halt,” Barclays Capital emailed investors Monday. The three-judge panel hearing oral argument at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Friday didn't appear to agree with the FCC’s position (see 1804200059). The analysts described an FCC loss as a “monkey wrench in local broadcast" mergers and acquisitions and said the agency’s case appeared to be on “shaky ground.” Since M&A “is one of the last remaining sources of support for local broadcasters, this ruling could have significant repercussions over time,” the analysts said.

The FCC Media Bureau opened dockets for media items set for the May 10 commissioners’ meeting, said public notices Thursday (see 1804180068). Filings on a draft proposal on getting rid of rules requiring the physical posting of station licenses go in docket 18-121; on a draft NPRM on reforming interference rules between translators and full-power FM stations, docket 18-119.

Garmin unveiled Connect IQ 3.0, an open platform for third-party developers to create apps for Garmin wearables, bike computers and outdoor handheld devices, it said Wednesday. It showed new apps from companies including iHeartRadio and Yelp.

The low-power TV displacement application window was extended to June 1, said an FCC Incentive Auction Task Force and Media Bureau public notice in docket 16-306 Wednesday. The window, intended to allow LPTV stations displaced by the incentive auction and repacking to find new channels, was to close May 15. “This brief extension of the Special Displacement Window will allow applicants further time to analyze data and other information and to prepare or make changes to their applications accordingly,” it said. The PN doesn’t give an explicit reason for the extension, but a footnote cites an April 12 extension request from the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition, which complained of conflicting directives and confusing data sets. “Our request to extend the LPTV special filing window is advantageous to a more equitable and fair displacement process, and one which can avoid a flawed process and the legal ramifications of that,” the coalition said.

The FCC Incentive Auction Task Force released an additional $742 million in repacking reimbursement funds Monday, for its second allocation to broadcasters undergoing repacking, said a public notice Monday. The allocation was -- as expected (see 1803080049) -- adjusted upward to reflect the additional reimbursement funds recently provided by lawmakers. With this allocation full-power broadcasters have access to $1.74 billion -- nearly the whole of the original $1.75 billion repacking reimbursement fund. The PN includes a revised cost estimate of $1.88 billion for the repacking based on the funding requests submitted by broadcasters as of April 9. That’s down from the $1.95 billion estimate released by the agency in March, though the PN also says the repacking costs are expected to rise going forward. Broadcasters and broadcast attorneys have said the industry widely estimates the final cost of repacking full-power TV stations will be $2.5 billion. “Only a small fraction” of repacked entities are currently approaching the limit of their initial allocation funding, the PN said, but allocating the additional funds will allow those entities to “execute their post-auction construction.” With the original repacking reimbursement funds largely spoken for, the agency is expected to begin drawing on the additional funds provided by Congress, attorneys said. Though broadcasters welcome the additional allocated funds, the PN isn’t likely to trigger a wave of repacking spending, said Wiley Rein broadcast attorney Ari Meltzer. Broadcasters have been expecting a large second allocation since Congress added the additional repacking funding, he said. NAB praised the release of the funds, in a statement. "This additional repacking funding is critical to the 149 public television stations that are being repacked," said America's Public Television Stations CEO Patrick Butler in a statement. The money will allow noncommercial stations to pursue their goals without "fear of going off the air for lack of sufficient funds to complete the post-auction transition."

Movie theater subscription service MoviePass teamed with iHeartRadio on a $29.95 subscription offer. Participants get a limited MoviePass membership to see four 2-D movies a month for three months and an extended three-month free trial of iHeartRadio’s All Access on-demand offering. The deal lets the companies reach a broader audience, said Ted Farnsworth, CEO of MoviePass parent Helios and Matheson Analytics.

The viral video of Sinclair newsrooms repeating a script about "fake news" (see 1804020056) shows the inevitable result of FCC continued removal of policies that protected localism, former agency Chairman Tom Wheeler blogged Thursday for the Brookings Institution, with which he's affiliated. Axing those rules favor "a new national broadcasting powerhouse with unprecedented reach" over localism, Wheeler said, saying Sinclair, with its planned buy of Tribune Media, is "the consistent beneficiary" of the rule changes. He said the FCC has "one last chance ... to stand up for localism" by blocking Sinclair/Tribune. He said DOJ review of the deal is limited to strict antitrust statutes, but FCC broader public interest standard gives it the opportunity to point to eroding localism as a reason for opposition. The agency didn't comment Friday.