The FCC should settle its dispute with Latina Broadcasters and allow WDYB to participate in the incentive auction rather than continue with litigation, the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) said in an ex parte filing posted online Tuesday in docket 12-268. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stayed an FCC decision to exclude Latina and ordered the FCC to provisionally include Latina in the auction, pending a final decision on Latina's appeal of the order. Latina's owner, Nora Soto, is one of only four Latina TV station “majority-owners” in the country, NHMC said. “She has expended considerable resources fighting her case in the courts when she could be utilizing these same resources to grow her station and continue to provide much needed programming,” NHMC said.

The Class A challenge of the incentive auction “boils down” to a question of whether the FCC abused its discretion by excluding Fifth Street, Videohouse and WMTM from the incentive auction, the commission said in a respondent's brief filed in the case. “The answer is no,” the FCC said. The commission had good reason to reject the Class A's, the brief said. “Petitioners neither requested Class A status, nor demonstrated that they were providing Class A service, until after passage of the Spectrum Act created the potential for Class A status to yield substantial financial rewards through auction participation,” the brief said. “Given petitioners’ lack of diligence in seeking Class A designation, the FCC was fully justified in concluding that the equities did not weigh in favor of granting discretionary protection,” the brief said.

April Fools' Day can cause broadcasters to come into conflict with the FCC's rule against on-air hoaxes, Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford said in a blog post Monday. The rule prevents stations from broadcasting information about a crime or catastrophe if the broadcaster knows the information is false, “it is reasonably foreseeable that the broadcast of the material will cause substantial public harm” and public harm is actually caused, Oxenford said. Public harm can be damage to property or the health of the public, and includes diverting public safety officials from their duties, Oxenford said. Beyond concerns about FCC fines, broadcasters should also worry about possible liability implications to April Fools' pranks, Oxenford said. “If some April Fools’ stunt by a station goes wrong, and someone is injured either because police, fire or paramedics are tied up responding to a false alarm, or if someone is hurt rushing to the scene of the non-existent calamity, the victim will be looking for a deep pocket to sue,” he said. “Even a case that doesn’t result in liability can be expensive to defend and subject the station to unwanted negative publicity.”

The FCC should wait until after the incentive auction and repacking to decide whether it will reserve one or two vacant TV channels for unlicensed use, said the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, according to a filing on a meeting with Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Wednesday. Licensed services should take precedence over unlicensed; waiting will help preserve low-power stations, NABOB said. Since the auction is likely to reduce the number of minority-owned full-power stations, preserving low-power TV afterward is of heightened importance, NABOB said in the filing posted Friday in docket 12-268. Various broadcasters and other industry officials attended the meeting.

The LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition offered its own concerns and said “repacking ‘all’ broadcasters, both those eligible for repacking protection, and those that are not, into a smaller portion of the UHF and VHF bands after the close of the incentive auction, will present unprecedented logistical AND financial challenges to our industry.” The comments came in a letter to the FCC, noting the repacking could start in less than a year. The coalition complained that low-power TV stations and translators will have to move with no compensation. “Our impacts will range from $500 to $900 million at a minimum just to move,” the group said, using an industrywide figure. “The damages over the past four years of regulatory overhang and non-eligibility in the auction have devastated our balance sheets and pocket books, and has ruined many a retirement plan. Our industry is determined not to let that happen to us in any new legislation or rulemaking.” The coalition said it must be “at the table” as transition planning evolves. “Unless our industry is at the table for the transition planning, we will go to court and Congress to intervene,” the group said. “We know our status; we know what the rulemaking says. But for too long the FCC has neglected its obligations to the owners of the spectrum to make sure they are getting the best they can from it.” The letter was filed in docket 12-268.

Media General and Nexstar are seeking a 14-day extension to file their oppositions to petitions to deny Media General's takeover by Nexstar, or for conditions that were filed last week by public interest groups, the American Cable Association, Dish Network, ITTA and Cox Communications (see 1603210045). In a joint motion for extension of time Thursday in docket 16-57, Nexstar and Media General said their oppositions to the petitions would be due March 31 but they need more time since March 29 is the initial commitment deadline for the broadcast incentive auction, asking that the time for opposing the petitions be extended to April 14. The transaction partners said none of the petitioning lawyers opposed the request.

The FCC should protect Latina Broadcasters station WDYB in the incentive auction and admit it made a mistake trying to exclude the station, Commissioner Ajit Pai said in a speech to the Hispanic Radio Conference Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled the FCC must allow Latina to participate. Pai dissented from the order that disqualified Latina. The commission also should act this year on proposed changes to its rules for foreign ownership of broadcasting outlets, he said. Making it easier to secure foreign investment would be a boon to Hispanic stations and could help with efforts to revitalize the AM band, he said. According to Pai, the FCC has had more than 500 applications for FM translators from AM stations, and 400 of them have been granted. Pirate radio “needs to be a top priority” for the FCC Enforcement Bureau, Pai said. Unlicensed broadcasters “inflict economic damage on licensed radio broadcasters, and they also interfere with public safety communications, such as emergency alerts and weather forecasts,” he said. Congress should give radio broadcasters power to “directly sue” pirates interfering with their signals, Pai said. “No longer would a broadcaster need to wait for the FCC to take action,” he said.

In wake of Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels and the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, NAB is “adding guard dogs in Las Vegas in strategic locations and monitoring the situation locally, nationally and internationally” for enhanced security at the NAB Show, Dennis Wharton, NAB executive vice president-communications, emailed us Tuesday. The event opens April 16 at the Las Vegas Convention Center for a six-day run. “We are in contact with Las Vegas authorities to determine what additional safety precautions might be taken,” said Wharton. “Nothing to report on that just yet.” The Paris attacks prompted CES to impose stringent security measures at the January show, including bag restrictions, stadium-style bag searches, the use of metal detectors and pat-downs (see 1512180053).

The FCC proposal to reserve a vacant band for unlicensed use and displace many low-power TV stations after the incentive auction reverses decades of the commission's own policies, said a reply brief from LPTV broadcasters Free Access & Broadcast Telemedia, Mako Communications and Word of God filed Wednesday. It said LPTV broadcasters are caught in a “Catch-22” between the FCC's argument that a delayed auction will cause irreparable harm to the public interest and its claim that since LPTV broadcasters can't know they'll be displaced, no stay should be granted. The commission “inexplicably asserts that petitioners are at the same time too early and too late to seek interim relief from this Court,” the LPTV broadcasters said in a filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. "The FCC cannot have it both ways; its position is wrong and unsubstantiated.” The FCC argued in its brief opposing the requested stay that the auction is too close to pause without causing harm to many other broadcasters (see 1603150069).

Public TV stations have the capacity to connect public safety officials with each other and the public, said America's Public Television Stations CEO Patrick Butler and officials from CPB and PBS in a meeting Thursday with Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson and bureau staff, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday. Next-generation 911 should take advantage of this capacity, the officials said. APTS member stations “pledged in principle to devote 1 Mbps of digital capacity by public television stations for participation in the FirstNet public safety network,” the filing said (see 1602220069). Public media can play a role in “educating individuals in communities before and after EAS [emergency alert system] and WEA [wireless emergency alert] testing and in convening community entities who can contribute to the relevance of the testing.”