A Massachusetts radio station's license was revoked for failing to pay regulatory fees 2014-2018, said a revocation order from the FCC Media Bureau and Office of Managing Director in Friday’s Daily Digest. Deane Brothers Broadcasting -- licensee of FM station WJDF Orange -- didn’t respond to attempts by the FCC and Treasury Department to collect its unpaid regulatory fees or to warnings that its license could be revoked. Neither the station nor the Deane brothers -- Jay, Donn and Fred -- could be reached for comment. A 2016 Worcester Business Journal article says the three brothers opened the station in 1995 to try to make the North Quabbin region more visible to the rest of the state, and its call sign was based on their initials.

There’s “big news afoot” involving the ATSC 3.0 commercial rollout at a Pearl TV-organized news conference planned for Monday at the NAB Show (see 1904040075), said a spokesperson Thursday. NAB President Gordon Smith, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, plus “a large group of U.S. broadcasters, and other industry participants,” will be on hand to discuss “near-term deployment plans” for 3.0, said a media advisory. It’s scheduled for 11:45 a.m. at the 3.0 presentation stage in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s North Hall.

The FCC Media Bureau approved E.W. Scripps’s $521 million buy of 12 TV stations from Cordillera Communications, said a letter to Scripps posted Thursday. Antitrust regulators signed off on the deal last month. As part of the agreement, the bureau approved the continued satellite status of KBZK Bozeman, Montana, and the transfer of KVOA Tucson to Quincy Media. The transaction didn’t include any overlaps and was expected to be approved (see 1810290060).

Tribune Media's WJW Cleveland transmitted a Nielsen audience measurement watermark using ATSC 3.0 last week, NAB said Wednesday. The outlet is a 3.0 test station that NAB and CTA agreed in 2017 to run jointly as a 3.0 "living laboratory" (see 1711070038). The inaudible signals in a program’s audio help identify a show for audience measurement, NAB noted now. Nexstar is buying Tribune (see 1903200058). Opponents to the deal don't present fresh facts, the combining companies said (see 1904030072).

Former Nexstar divestiture buyer Marshall Broadcasting (MBG) is suing Nexstar for allegedly sabotaging the three stations Marshall bought in connection with Nexstar deals to purchase stations in 2014 from Communications Corporation of America, White Knight Broadcasting and Grant Broadcasting. The lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court accuses Nexstar of interfering in MBG’s operations, overcharging MBG -- which is minority-owned -- for the stations, and reneging on a credit guarantee promised to the FCC. “The allegations made by MBG in its lawsuit against the Company are spurious and without merit,” a Nexstar spokesperson emailed. “The Company intends to vigorously defend itself." According to the complaint, changes in 2013 to FCC treatment of joint sales agreements motivated Nexstar to seek a deal with MBG. It has “become clear that our only value to Nexstar was diversity optics at the FCC,” said MBG CEO Pluria Marshall in a news release. Nexstar “never intended the transaction to be a permanent divestiture,” and “executed a scheme” to make it difficult for the MBG stations to operate so it could reacquire them if ownership rules changed, the complaint said. MBG accuses Nexstar of withholding retransmission consent fees belonging to MBG and setting commercial terms at rates that hurt MBG’s business. MBG is seeking “an appropriate amount in monetary damages as determined at trial.”

Opponents of Nexstar buying Tribune lack standing, rehash old and unrelated arguments, and seek FCC actions outside the agency’s authority, Nexstar and Tribune said in an opposition filing posted in docket 19-30 Wednesday. “In the face of Nexstar’s extensive demonstration of rule compliance and public interest benefits, the Opposing Parties are left to seek evaluation of the Applications under rules that do not exist," said Nexstar and Tribune. MVPD opponents such as Dish Network made no attempt to establish standing, while anticonsolidation groups pegged their standing to a single member of one group who was a viewer of a Chicago station involved in the deal, Nexstar and Tribune said. The joint filing dismissed all retransmission consent arguments raised by MVPD commenters as concerned with issues in other proceedings: “The FCC has a settled policy of refusing to address industry wide issues in an adjudicatory licensing proceeding such as this one.” Since Nexstar and Tribune have now announced nearly all the divestitures connected with the deal (see 1903200058), allegations from opponents that the transaction wasn’t ready for review are no longer valid, the joint filing said. “It is anticipated that the final divestiture application will be submitted to the Commission within approximately the next week,” said a footnote. The deal doesn’t include any joint sales agreements and its only top-four combination already exists, Nexstar/Tribune said. “There cannot be any legitimate question that the Transaction and related divestitures are designed to ensure clear compliance with the Commission’s rules.”

There were 33,436 licensed stations as of Sunday, the FCC said Tuesday. There were 33,054 at the same time in 2018, according to the previous year's March count. The new release lists 10,901 full-power FM stations, 6,762 of which are commercial. There are 4,613 AM stations, 1,761 full-power TV stations, 1,908 low-power TV stations, and 387 Class A TV stations. There are 8,048 FM translators.

The FCC shouldn’t let broadcasters use vacant spectrum channels for the ATSC 3.0 transition, said Consumer Reports and the Open Technology Institute at New America in a meeting last week with an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, recounted a filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. Doing so would harm the public interest and prevent TV white spaces from being used “to bridge the digital divide,” the groups said. Comparing the use of vacant channels to “doubling a station’s free spectrum assignment,” the groups said letting broadcasters use the spectrum isn’t needed to protect consumers, even if it would help broadcasters. The FCC should instead adopt a further notice to allow the use of location data to determine what sort of interference protections are needed to protect WMTS operations on channel 37, the filing said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will use next week’s NAB Show to demo HD Radio’s emergency alerting functionality for the agency’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), emailed a representative for HD Radio parent Xperi. The demos will be at FEMA’s IPAWS booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s Central Hall, he said. Xperi also will demo HD Radio at its North Hall booth and will participate with NAB Pilot showcasing digital AM technology in the Future’s Park pavilion on the main show floor, he said. More than 320 HD Radio stations in 85 U.S. markets in January transmitted “emergency alert text notifications” to HD Radio receivers, said an Xperi white paper. HD Radio can enhance emergency alerting with many “advanced features and attributes,” including the ability to wake up receivers in sleep mode, “to provide greater resiliency, redundancy, and accessibility in the nation’s public alerting ecosystem,” it said.

“Myriad” ATSC 3.0 demos, sessions and technical papers will prevail at next week’s NAB Show, said ATSC Monday. Activities will include a “Ride the Road to ATSC 3.0" stage exhibit in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s North Hall featuring more than 20 free sessions on 3.0 deployments and future potential, it said. ATSC, CTA and NAB will be the exhibit’s lead sponsors, it said. NAB, with support from a number of technology companies, also will use the show to demo 3.0's single-frequency-network capabilities, it said. The SFN demos will show how reception “can be improved in difficult locations and in moving vehicles by deploying multiple broadcast towers transmitting the broadcast signal on the same channel,” it said. Four low-power transmitters will be deployed in the LVCC, and special 3.0 SFN “viewing kiosks” are planned for the LVCC lobby and the NAB Pilot exhibit in North Hall exhibit, plus at the Ride the Road stage at N2512, also in North Hall, it said. A guide to 3.0 activities and exhibits at the show is available for download, and will be distributed at a 3.0 information booth in LVCC’s Central Lobby, it said.