The FCC Media Bureau approved Gray Television's $442.5 million buy of Schurz's stations, and some related waivers of the duopoly rule, said a letter posted online Friday. Gray had asked the bureau to allow an existing joint sales agreement involving a Wichita, Kansas, Schurz station to be grandfathered until 2025 as though it hadn't been transferred. The bureau denied that request as not being in the public interest. Instead, Gray has one year to unwind the JSA. The bureau did allow Gray to hold onto a duopoly of stations in Augusta, Georgia, with the condition that Gray must sell WAGT Augusta if its license isn't surrendered in the incentive auction. The bureau also granted a waiver to allow Gray to own two stations in the Cheyenne-Scottsbluff market in Nebraska, while one undergoes a community of license change proceeding to be moved into the Denver market. The bureau also granted a failing station waiver and a satellite exception.

Univision said it and Republican presidential contender Donald Trump settled litigation over the company's decision to stop broadcasting the Miss Universe and Miss USA beauty pageants. Terms weren't disclosed in a Univision news release Thursday, and Trump's company had no immediate comment. Trump and Univision CEO Randy Falco mentioned their yearslong business relationship in the statement. The broadcaster reportedly dropped the pageants last year over Trump's derogatory remarks about Mexicans.

Multichannel video programming distributors' complaining about retransmission consent matters doesn't reflect an unbalanced marketplace, merely "that they are finally feeling the pain that competition can bring," CBS CEO Leslie Moonves and other top executives told FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler and General Counsel Jonathan Sallet, according to a CBS ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 15-216. At the meeting, CBS said Moonves urged the FCC to end its consideration of changes to the totality of circumstances test of good faith negotiating, saying MVPDs will use the open proceedings as an excuse not to negotiate in good faith with broadcasters "in the hopes that the government will rescue them from an experience that is new to them: The rough and tumble of the marketplace." The only leverage broadcasters have is "desirable, high quality content," CBS said, saying broadcasters "should not be penalized or handicapped because they invest billions of dollars in creating and acquiring programming that MVPDs desire." Meanwhile, given broadcast and over-the-top distribution platforms, it said, "the content is never 'blacked out' completely." According to CBS, Moonves said the totality of circumstances proposals -- along with the FCC proposal regarding the network nonduplication and syndicated exclusivity rules -- will result in "precious agency resources [spent] in oversight and enforcement of negotiations that are best left to the marketplace."

PMCM plans to pursue its must-carry complaint against Time Warner Cable "until we are universally carried on Channel 3 throughout the New York market," CEO Robert McAllan said in an email Tuesday in response to a TWC opposition to the complaint in docket 16-27 (see 1602090043). McAllan said TWC's carriage of WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey, is problematic because it's carried only on its starter tier and not on every other tier like every other commercial station in New York. He also said TWC's program and system information protocol/over-the-air arguments in the opposition were inconsistent and "if PSIP is our 'channel' then the FCC has to deal with the pesky prohibition in the Spectrum Act that specifically prohibits involuntary changes in 'channels.’”

Starting March 31, stations can no longer use the Children's Television Online Filing System (KidVid) for filing or amending children's TV programming reports, and instead must use the FCC's Licensing and Management System (LMS), the agency said in a public notice Tuesday. The link to filing KidVid reports will be disabled, it said. The KidVid change is part of the FCC updating application filing systems, it said.

FCC precedent is clear that a DTV station's virtual channel assignment -- not its RF channel assignment -- is the relevant channel number for deciding the station's on-channel cable position, Time Warner Cable said in an opposition posted Tuesday in docket 16-27 to a must-carry complaint. PMCM last month filed must-carry complaints against TWC, Service Electric Cable TV and RCN Telecom Service over carriage of its WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey (see 1601210044). In its opposition, TWC said WJLP has no right to carriage on cable channel 3, as it seeks, and TWC's placing it elsewhere is well within the FCC 2008 order on cable operators' post-digital transition responsibilities. Since the digital transition, TWC said, viewers see Program and System Information Protocol channel numbers rather than RF channel numbers as representing a station's "over the air" channel number. Thus, it said, PMCM's "over the air channel" is channel 33, which corresponds to WJLP's virtual channel, while TWC's carriage of WJLP on cable channel 1239 reflects PMCM's demanding carriage on a cable channel other than one on which it has a right to carriage, meaning it was up to TWC to choose a channel for WJLP. PMCM didn't comment.

The FCC’s proposal to preserve a vacant channel in each market for unlicensed use after the incentive auction would have a “negative and disproportionately devastating impact” on multicultural programming and minority station ownership, said the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council in a letter to the FCC Sunday. Low-power TV has been a very successful venue for minority TV station ownership and multicultural programming, and the vacant channel proposal will “potentially extinguish” it, MMTC said. The FCC has “downplayed” the impact of this proposal by claiming most markets will have two vacant channels after the repack, MMTC said. The FCC should consider the vacant channel proposal’s impact on minority programming and ownership, and the mandate from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the FCC assess the impact on minority ownership of changes to its rules, MMTC said. “The public interest” requires the FCC to abandon the vacant channel proposal, MMTC said.

FCC action to block Class A owner Latina Broadcasters from participating in the incentive auction and reject appeals from Class A's Fifth Street, Video House and WMTM is believed “imminent," said letters from Latina's owner to Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel posted in docket 12-268 Monday. The FCC repeatedly has said in filings that Latina would be able to participate in the auction, but the commission is now taking action to block Latina after the appeal from the other Class A cited Latina as being similarly situated to Video House, WMTM and Fifth Street, which didn’t meet a 2012 deadline for Class A's to be eligible (see 1601250060.) “I understand that my business, my significant investment of time and money in that business, and my dream of serving the Hispanic community with targeted programming are in jeopardy because of an imminent action by the FCC that will essentially erase all that I have worked toward,” said Nora Crosby Soto in her letters to the commissioners.

The FCC should use “great care” in replying to GAO requests for information about the incentive auction’s impact on low-power TV, Free Access and Broadcast Telemedia said in an ex parte filing Friday. FAB has requested similar information from the commission through a Freedom of Information Act request. “The GAO and the Comptroller General have significant authority to seek out and obtain all agency facts, trends, and analyses available from any agency on behalf of Congress under the Congress' Constitutional and the GAO's added statutory authority,” FAB said.

The Association of Public Television Stations and PBS lobbied FCC officials to exempt noncommerical educational stations' low-power TV outlets from an FCC-proposed vacant channel demonstration requirement in any communities that lose NCE service because of the incentive auction. "As the Commission acknowledges in the rulemaking, most of the 'vacant' television channels after the auction will be available precisely because it is not possible to operate a full-power television station on such channels without causing harmful interference to other full-power stations," said an APTS and PBS filing posted Tuesday in docket 12-268. On the agency-proposed NCE full-power exemption from the vacant channel demo requirement to be for a community without such service due to the auction, it should apply to a community of license, not a designated market area, executives from the groups reported telling FCC Incentive Auction Task Force Chairman Gary Epstein and Vice Chairman Howard Symons and Office of Engineering and Technology and Media Bureau officials.