The FCC Wireless Bureau issued a limited waiver until Dec. 13 for all active Lower 700 MHz band A-block licensees with an interim four-year construction benchmark deadline before that date. In a public notice in WT docket 12-332, the bureau took the action on its own motion, finding it’s “in the public interest to briefly extend the construction deadline” given interoperability issues that have yet to be resolved.
The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council backed a broadcaster request for the FCC to let an AM station use an FM translator it’s buying farther from the AM’s main transmitter to rebroadcast the buyer’s programming within a market (CD Nov 20 p6). Hancock Communications’s request for a waiver to use an FM translator in Central City, Ky., for WTCJ(AM) Tell City, Ind., comes as WTCJ “and many other AM stations” fell “victim” to a rule “that restricts FM translator moves based on a minimal miles radius calculation,” MMTC said in a filing Tuesday. “AM revitalization can benefit the communities the stations serve.” As WTCJ contends, “there are enough FM translators, both licensed and applied-for, that removing these regulatory barriers would be a win for AM revitalization” and listeners, the council said.
Sprint Nextel responded to petitions to deny its acquisition by SoftBank, arguing the “potential public interest benefits” are “substantial” and the “potential for competitive harm is non-existent” (http://bit.ly/Vbf4f6). After the deal, which would also see a Sprint purchase of the Clearwire shares it doesn’t already own, “the combined entity will have the scale and resources to better compete” with AT&T and Verizon Wireless on price, service, technology and availability of consumer devices, Sprint said. The various petitions to deny “seek to raise private business disputes that have nothing to do with these transactions,” or attempt to “bolster positions in pending shareholder litigation that lie well beyond this Commission’s jurisdiction,” Sprint said. “Tellingly, not a single competitor of Sprint or Clearwire raises any concern that these transactions will harm competition.” The transactions raise no spectrum aggregation concerns, and there is “no justification” to revise the spectrum screen as proposed by Verizon Wireless, Sprint said. Many of the remaining issues raised in the record are either non-transaction specific, or are beyond the commission’s jurisdiction, Sprint said.
Clear Channel said it reached an agreement with Robbins Entertainment, a record label, under which the company will share in some of Clear Channel’s radio revenue. The deal is the latest Clear Channel has reached with record labels, including Big Machine, Glassnote, and Naxos, Clear Channel said. They're designed to help Clear Channel build “a sustainable Internet radio industry,” Clear Channel said.
Officials from CEA, Samsung and LG told FCC Media Bureau staff it should limit the scope of new video description rules for on-screen emergency alerts with respect to mobile DTV broadcasts, an ex parte notice said (http://bit.ly/12A7KY5). “Mobile DTV service is nascent, and ... very few devices are currently able to receive mobile DTV transmissions,” the notice said. “CEA urged the Commission to provide sufficient time for the consumer electronics industry to implement the changes needed to comply with any new rules for broadcasters by adopting a phase in period” of two years after the rules are published in the Federal Register, it said.
Maine government agencies now have access to frequencies normally reserved for transportation needs, said attorney Robert Gurss of Fletcher Heald on the firm’s blog Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bogr2n). The law firm represented the state of Maine and Harris Corp., the post said. “The VHF [150-170 MHz] band has propagation characteristics that make it ideal for land mobile radio use in sparsely populated, mountainous, and heavily forested areas,” the blog post said. “Other available land mobile frequency bands, such as UHF and 700 MHz, require far more transmitter sites to provide comparable coverage.” These VHF public safety assignments are not common and are “limited, especially in areas near the Canadian and Mexican borders,” it added. Maine contracts with Harris on a statewide VHF network, however, and the FCC granted a waiver for the network to use these frequencies normally intended for railroad companies earlier this February (http://bit.ly/UfRTib), the post said.
Comments are due Feb. 27 on USTelecom’s petition seeking a waiver of rules on “no-exogenous cost data filing requirements for the Short Form Tariff Review Plan,” said an FCC public notice (http://bit.ly/WIYLVr). USTelecom also asks that the deadline for the short form plan be moved to May 17 to give price cap carriers additional time to prepare their cost data. Replies in docket 13-42 are due March 11.
The California Public Utilities Commission wants to be more transparent with its public safety documents, it resolved Wednesday. Commissioners voted in support of “providing the public with more immediate access to records of safety inspections, audits, and investigations,” the resolution said (http://xrl.us/bogrya). The increased disclosures will include “routine safety-related records after any appropriate redactions, without requiring a vote of the Commission or an Administrative Law Judge ruling: (1) CPUC-generated reports, summaries, and correspondence regarding completed CPUC safety-related inspections, audits, and investigations; and (2) annual reports that gas operators file with the United States Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration,” the CPUC said. The commission will open a rulemaking soon focused on improving the public’s access to records, it said.
LIN TV said it reached a deal with Comcast and NBCUniversal that will let it out of a joint-venture that has been an overhang on the company’s valuation. LIN will make a $100 million contribution to the joint venture in exchange for being released from its guaranty of the $815.5 million note payable to General Electric Capital Corporation, it said. The next step is for LIN to form a new limited liability company and merge with it, LIN said. That will help protect it and shareholders from future tax liabilities, it said. In connection with the deal, LIN said it renewed the affiliation agreements for the seven NBC-affiliated TV stations and two satellite stations it owns. The affiliation agreements started Jan. 1 and expire Jan. 1, 2017. Resolving the joint venture could help LIN buy more stations in the future, CEO Vincent Sadusky told analysts during a teleconference Wednesday. “We had traded at a discount to our peers so it was very hard for us to have a transaction be necessarily accretive,” when other prospective buyers could use more valuable stock as currency, he said. “If we make a decision to become more active in the television space, I think it will be helpful,” he said.
Cable operator Suddenlink launched the TiVo Mini in its markets this week, charging an additional $6 monthly rental for the device, a Suddenlink customer service representative said Wednesday. Customers taking the TiVo Mini need to have an HD set, wireless router and broadband service with 15 Mbps speed, the customers service rep said. TiVo’s four-tuner Premiere Q DVR also is recommended since the Mini uses one tuner, the rep said. A Suddenlink spokesman declined to comment. Suddenlink would be among the first cable operators to offer the TiVo Mini, a non-DVR device that allows streaming from the main TiVo DVR to TVs and other products within the house. It uses Multimedia over Coax (MoCA) for networking and multi-room applications. Suddenlink is planning to use TiVo Mini as part of a whole-home system that also includes the TiVo Premiere DVR. Suddenlink was an early supporter of TiVo DVRs and introduced TiVo Stream in its Lubbock, Texas, market in October. Stream, which was introduced in June, is a module that provides access to content across tablets and smartphones. DVRs were deployed to 47.1 percent of Suddenlink’s 832,600 digital subscribers as of Sept. 30, the company has said. Suddenlink ended September with a total of 1.37 million subscribers across Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia.