There’s room for TV stations to improve electronic newsroom technique (ENT) captions, said representatives of consumer groups at an FCC-hosted forum on local news captioning Friday. Broadcasters described in-company captioning audits and efforts to internally police caption quality. Advocates from the National Association of the Deaf, Gallaudet University and other consumer groups said more should be done.
Commissioners unanimously approved an order on FM translator interference Thursday. It includes a proposed 45 dBu interference contour and imposes a population-based minimum number on FM stations seeking to lodge interference complaints, Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey said. That was expected, (see 1905070064).
Sinclair executives think broadcasters made a strong case to DOJ on advertising and remain optimistic about ATSC 3.0, saying they also expect a bump from political ads starting later this year. The company's Q1 sales gained 9 percent to $722.1 million from the year-ago quarter and it expects by year-end to start feeling the political advertising boost from the 2020 election, said CEO Chris Ripley and others on Q1 call Wednesday. Ripley said the broadcaster’s recent deal with Disney for 21 regional sports networks was the largest in his company's history (see 1905030059), saying Sinclair is “diversifying its revenue mix.”
Byron Allen-owned content company Entertainment Studios will become a broadcaster through buying Bayou City Broadcasting’s four TV stations in Evansville, Indiana, and Lafayette, Louisiana, said a news release Tuesday. Allen recently partnered with Sinclair in a $10.6 billion deal for regional sports networks (see 1905030059) and is buying the stations through subsidiary Allen Media Broadcasting. Though the deal includes all of Bayou City’s stations, Bayou City CEO Dujuan McCoy will remain in broadcasting through the pending Nexstar/Tribune deal, which if approved will include the sale of divestitures in Indiana to his company Circle City Broadcasting (see 1904080046). Since Allen is a “new entrant” to broadcasting and the deal won’t involve any overlaps, it’s not likely to be held up by regulators, McCoy said in an interview. Since McCoy is staying in the industry, the deal also increases the amount of TV stations with a minority owner, he pointed out. Bayou City's stations are Evansville's WEVV-TV and WEEV and KLAF-LD and KADN-TV in Lafayette, the release said.
The FM translator interference order will require complaint minimums more in line with the 25 requested by NAB than the possible 65 (see 1905010162) that would have been needed from some full-power FM stations to lodge complaints under the draft released in April, industry and FCC officials said in interviews this week.
Panelists from Facebook, Comcast, the NAB and Tegna repeatedly agreed at a DOJ workshop on advertising competition that broadcast commercials and digital ads are substitutes for each other and therefore in competition. “We are a likely substitute or swap for your attention,” said Facebook Vice President-Business Product Marketing Ty Ahmad-Taylor. “We are trying to compete to get those dollars as well.”
Broadcast industry officials, advertisers and academics presented differing stances Thursday at the first day of a DOJ Antitrust Division workshop on whether linear local TV spots compete with digital promotions.
Draft FM translator order rules on the minimum number of complaints required for a full-power FM station to lodge an interference complaint against an FM translator are arbitrary and disadvantage large stations (see 1904180063), said Beasley Media and iHeartMedia in FCC filings posted Wednesday. The order would tie the minimum number of complaints to the population served by the complaining full-power station, with the number required ranging from three for low-power FM stations to 65 for the largest full-power FMs. By basing the requirement on the population served by the full power, that could make it impossible for large stations to find enough complaints, Beasley and iHeart wrote commissioners and told Media Bureau staff, now in docket 18-119. “Basing the number of required complaints on the population being served by the complaining station divorces the required number of complaints from the actual interference.” A station with a highly populated coverage area that experiences interference in a sparsely populated area “may be unable to find enough listeners in that interference area,” said the companies. Tie the number of complaints to the area where interference is occurring, and cap it at 25, they said. Though the draft order also didn’t follow the broadcasters’ recommendations for a 42 dBu contour, Beasley and iHeart said that, outside the complaint issue, the agency has “an exemplary job” balancing between translators and full powers. If the FCC changes the complaint minimums, "set a workable path for the prompt and fair resolution of FM translator interference complaints,” the radio-station owners asked. Bonneville International, iHeart Communications and the Educational Media Foundation also wrote a letter to all five commissioners objecting to questions raised by REC Networks about how the FM translator interference draft order would interact with "super-maximum" class B stations (see 1904250055). "REC’s request goes far beyond the issues proposed in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in this proceeding and would also result in upsetting established listener expectations," the joint letter said. REC had suggested the interference rules for the high-powered, grandfathered Class B FM stations wouldn't calculate such station's interference limit using their maximum range, but instead the range of other stations in their class. "Such an action would be contrary to the mission of the Commission’s rules in protecting the reception of existing stations’ service to people in populated areas from potential interference caused by secondary stations," the joint letter said. "The NPRM in this proceeding did not suggest any special treatment of super-power FM stations, nor did the Draft Order." In its own letter to the FCC on translator interference, the New Jersey Broadcasters Association urged the FCC to postpone the planned May 9 vote on the interference order and "extend the time period in which to file further responses by 30 days." NJBA wants a 40 dbU contour and a maximum of 12 complaints. New Jersey broadcasters have historically dealt with unfair allocations of frequencies, compared with New York and Pennsylvania, and that issue "should not be exacerbated by new rule changes that would negatively impact our broadcasters and the audiences," the group said.
The completion of a bankruptcy restructuring by iHeartMedia Wednesday is expected to be followed by a sale or public offering for the broadcaster and improved health for the radio industry as a whole but isn’t expected to lead to iHeart binge-buying stations, radio attorneys, consultants and analysts told us. The restructuring process reduced iHeart’s debt by more than $10 billion, it said in a news release Monday. “The perception (and reality) that iHeart is now an independently functioning company out from under the scrutiny of bankruptcy court will greatly improve its image and the image of radio, too,” emailed media broker Robert Heymann, from the Chicago office of Media Services Group. The FCC OK'd the restructuring plan last week (see 1904240054).
Broadcasters, diversity groups and organizations opposed to media consolidation squared off in many combinations in docket 18-349 Tuesday. Monday night was the deadline for comments on the FCC 2018 quadrennial review.