Tegna sold advertising tech company PointRoll to Sizmek, for undisclosed terms, Tegna said in a news release Thursday. “PointRoll is a multi-screen digital ad tech and services company and was part of TEGNA Digital’s Cofactor brand,” said the release.

The FCC Media Bureau approved Ironwood Communications' request for a failing station waiver of the multiple ownership rules, allowing the company to own both struggling MyNetwork TV WPME Portland-Auburn, Maine, and CW affiliate WPXT Portland-Auburn, said a letter released Tuesday. The stations are involved in a joint sales agreement and a shared services agreement that would both be terminated with the approval of the waiver. WPME has reported operating losses for the past three years, and granting the waiver will serve the public interest, the Media Bureau said.

The FCC shouldn’t treat the board members of noncommercial educational (NCE) stations as owners or collect their demographic information, NPR said in a phone call with an aide to Commissioner Mike O’Rielly Tuesday, according to an ex parte filing posted in docket 07-294 Friday. The FCC had proposed treating NCE board members as owners in a Further NPRM on changes to the way the commission assigns FCC registration numbers (see 1502120066).

The FCC could “contribute to a healthy system of local broadcasting” by updating ownership rules, Raycom Media said in a meeting with Commissioner Ajit Pai Wednesday, according to an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 09-182. The current FCC rules “incongruously” treat broadcast TV consolidation as a “threat” despite increasing competition and pay-TV consolidation, it said. The public interest “would be better served by ownership rules that bolster stations’ ability to invest” in creating locally focused content, Raycom said.

There needs to be “a business entity” that drives the commercial adoption of ATSC 3.0, and “those pieces are being lined up,” Mark Aitken, Sinclair vice president-advanced technology, told us. “If you ask me, what’s going to drive this thing forward, it’s going to be the equivalent of something like the Wi-Fi Alliance,” Aitken said of the group formed by big tech companies in 1999 as the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (see 0209170020) and later renamed the Wi-Fi Alliance to promote and certify Wi-Fi products and services. “Think of this Wi-Fi Alliance being called something like the IP Broadcast Alliance,” Aitken said. “There was a standard in the analog days built around being able to convey pictures and sound over the air,” he said. “TV was the one thing.” But in ATSC 3.0, “we’ve got this broadcast platform, and it’s all IP-based,” Aitken said. “It’s a tremendous economic engine, but TV is only one of the services that it has to offer.” Aitken sees ATSC 3.0 as an opportunity to use existing TV services as an economic springboard “to get into new services that are possible because we have a wireless IP platform,” he said. “For me, that is the story. The story is IP broadcast.”

Digital stations’ annual DTV ancillary/supplementary use services report (Form 2100-Schedule G) is due Dec. 1, the FCC Media Bureau said in a reminder public notice Thursday. Forms must be submitted for each station explaining whether they provided ancillary or supplementary services at any time during a 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, the PN said.

Channel 61, licensee of WNMN Saranac Lake, New York, agreed to pay the FCC $30,000, said a consent decree released by the Media Bureau Wednesday. The settlement is for violations of the commission’s public file rules, the decree said. “The Licensee failed during some periods of time to timely place issues and programs lists into its public file and to timely upload elements of station’s public files to the online Commission hosted website, failed to timely file children television programming reports, and to construct at an authorized location,” the consent decree said.

Thirty-four nations at the World Radiocommunication Conference support maintaining the current UHF spectrum allocation for broadcast TV, said the North American Broadcasters Association in a news release Wednesday. “A large and diverse group of countries continue to recognize the importance of broadcasting as an instrument of freedom of expression and the most effective and efficient means of using spectrum to deliver educational and emergency information to an entire population,” said NABA. “Despite some pre-emptive efforts from the wireless industry to spin the facts, only a handful of countries actually support reallocation.” The WRC is ongoing in Geneva, with FCC and other officials (see 1511030062).

High dynamic range “will ultimately be part of the ATSC 3.0 video specification, allowing broadcasters to compete effectively with other distributors of HDR content,” such as over-the-top (OTT) video providers and marketers of Ultra HD Blu-ray players and discs, said Alan Stein, Technicolor vice president-research and development, in an interview in the November issue of The Standard, ATSC’s monthly online newsletter. The S34-1 ad hoc group on video technology that Stein chairs reached consensus on the use of the H.265 video codec and its Main-10 profile, Stein said. “HDR solutions will need to be 10-bit and compatible with this specification." Stein agrees “there’s huge interest in broadcast HDR,” he said. But over-the-air HDR faces “some particular challenges” that are “quite different” from streaming HDR over the top or delivering HDR through physical media like Ultra HD Blu-ray, he said. Broadcast TV’s live production environment, regional opt-outs and interstitial advertising all “contribute to an environment that is quite different from offline-produced content,” he said. “That said, there is a real fear of fragmented HDR solutions entering the marketplace, which could confuse consumers and hurt adoption. It’s important that ATSC specify technologies that are adapted to our unique environment and can be deployed at scale across various devices when ATSC 3.0 launches.” So elusive was consensus within S34-1 on HDR that it’s possible the candidate standard draft for ATSC 3.0 video wouldn't have HDR included, Stein told the ATSC 3.0 Boot Camp conference in May (see 1505130058). ATSC President Mark Richer thinks his group is “still on track to have most ATSC 3.0 elements approved or balloted for Candidate Standards by year end,” Richer said in his “President’s Memo” column in The Standard. Coming soon to ATSC 3.0 “are middle and upper layer standards for video and audio coding, closed captioning, and more,” Richer said. “Although ballots for some areas like interactivity and transport are expected in early 2016, the majority of the overall ATSC 3.0 Candidate Standard will be in place for manufacturers to build equipment to support field testing as the standard moves to Proposed Standard status next year.”

NAB Labs is joining Maryland-based incubator program Dingman Center Angels as an angel investor, NAB said in a news release Tuesday. The incubator invests in early stage companies and startups in the mid-Atlantic region, the release said. “We will be on the lookout for new technologies and ideas that could help shape the future of broadcasting.” The Dingman Center Angels portfolio includes Astrapi, which deals with tech designed to combat interference and improve spectrum efficiency, NAB said.