The Department of Justice should ensure that the terms of a settlement between federal prosecutors and tobacco companies direct advertising dollars to black-owned broadcasters, said the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) in a newsletter to members Friday. A proposed consent order in the fourteen-year-old U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia case requires the tobacco company defendants to fund commercials informing the public of the harmful effects of smoking, and includes a list of TV networks and newspapers where the campaign must run. However, the settlement doesn’t require the companies to “place any commercials on Black owned media, or even media targeting the African American community,” said NABOB. That’s irksome to NABOB because the DOJ case “demonstrated that the tobacco companies had specifically targeted African American communities, particularly young people, with advertising and promotions designed to increase smoking,” said the newsletter. NABOB, the National Newspaper Publishers Association and the NAACP filed amicus briefs asking the court include black-owned media in the consent decree. That request came too late, said the tobacco companies in a response. “It has been more than seven years since this Court first specified the newspapers and television networks in which Defendants would be required to place corrective statements,” said the tobacco company filing. The companies also said changing the list of stations to receive the advertising would nullify the settlement agreement, “leaving the parties back at the negotiating table to see if a revised agreement can be reached.” The ability of the corrective advertising to “reach all affected Americans” is one of the concerns about the proposed settlement raised by the federal judge who would need to approve it, NABOB said. “The settlement can be set aside and the parties can be forced to consider adding Black owned media to the advertising plan if the Department of Justice tells the judge that it agrees with her that the plan needs to be amended to target Black consumers,” said NABOB. To make that happen, NABOB wants all black-owned broadcast stations to publicize the matter on their airwaves. “The DOJ will only change its position and oppose the current advertising plan if there is a vocal outcry from the African American community,” said NABOB. A similar NABOB effort to get advertising dollars from publicity efforts connected to the Affordable Care Act to go to black-owned broadcasters (CD Oct 4 p1) was stymied by the “disarray” of the ACA, said NABOB Executive Director Jim Winston. The association is still pursuing the matter, he said.

The Association of Public Television Stations stressed the importance of the FCC conducting feasibility and optimization processes to determine the best repacking scenarios during the broadcast incentive auction. This would allow the commission “to consider plans developed by broadcasters on a state-wide or market-wide basis,” APTS said in an ex parte filing in docket 12-268 (http://bit.ly/1eYbhqj). The FCC should “give deference to these state and market plans developed by all impacted broadcasters,” it said. APTS reaffirmed the importance of advance funding and priority given to public broadcasters and the importance of translators during repacking, it said: “We believe that fill-in translators should be accommodated as they are key to maintaining the current coverage of stations.” APTS met with Chairman Tom Wheeler, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake and other FCC staff, it said.

The FCC International Bureau granted O3b a waiver of the table of frequency allocations and Ka-band allocation plan in connection with the satellite company’s plan to test and demonstrate 2.2-meter and 1.2-meter antennas aboard maritime vessels. The ships are registered to the Bahamas and they will operate in and near U.S. territorial waters, the bureau’s Satellite Division said in a letter to O3b (http://bit.ly/19QMua3). O3b seeks a waiver for a six-month testing period, the division said. Because the commission has not adopted technical rules governing satellite operations in the Ka-band non-geostationary orbit fixed satellite service bands aboard maritime vessels, “we view O3b’s planned tests as requiring a waiver of the commission’s table of frequency allocations and the Ka-band plan,” it said.

The FCC needs to provide incentives “to attract and maintain the commitments of broadcasters” considering participating in the incentive auction, said Class A broadcaster Watch TV in an ex parte filing this week (http://bit.ly/1mxNFvj). “Without more timely incentives, some of these broadcasters will change their minds and pursue other business options,” said the filing. Those incentives should include allowing stations planning to sell their spectrum to “go dark” to save operating expenses, and less intensive enforcement of the rules governing Class A stations. Uncertainty about the auction and whether to spend money on capital improvements is pushing broadcasters away from the auction, Watch TV said. As Watch TV invests in its stations, it has less incentive to participate in the auction, and more reasons to set its price higher if it does participate, said the filing. The commissioners should press the Incentive Auction Task Force for more detailed plans for the auction at the FCC’s Jan. 30 open meeting, said Watch TV.

The FCC needs ownership impact studies of the same caliber as it’s study of critical information needs (CIN) to make an informed decision on media ownership rules, said the Leadership Conference on Human and Civil Rights in an ex parte filing Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1ffvAzZ). The conference also urged Commissioner Mignon Clyburn to ensure that the tests of the CIN research protocols are finished on time and that the full study is completed by the end of 2014. The commission should also take an accurate measure of the impact of the incentive auction on broadcast ownership diversity, the filing said. The incentive auction “has already had a devastating impact on diverse broadcast ownership, as many broadcast owners of color have already sold their stations to private equity firms,” said the conference. The commission should “find ways to increase participation in the forward looking auction by women and entrepreneurs of color."

The FCC should review and overturn the Media Bureau approval of Tribune buying Local Media and Gannett buying Belo, said Free Press and several other public interest groups in a pair of applications for review filed Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1kZ028k). Though the bureau said it was within commission precedent for both transactions to be handled at the bureau level (CD Dec 23 p3), Free Press is arguing that the full commission has never ruled on the sharing arrangements and ownership issues involved in the two transactions. “The so-called precedent is only at the bureau level,” said Free Press Policy Counsel Lauren Wilson in an interview. Previous transactions that raised similar ownership issues -- such as Media Council Hawai'i’s dispute with Raycom -- have applications for review that have been pending for years without being taken up by the full commission, she said. “The full commission hasn’t ruled on this,” Wilson said. “The Bureau assumed that because the transaction fit with staff-level Bureau precedent -- that has never been reviewed by the full Commission -- it was in the public interest,” said the review application for Gannett/Belo. “The Commission should overturn Bureau precedent regarding sharing arrangements crafted to circumvent its broadcast TV ownership rules and provide guidance on whether these sharing arrangements can be consistent with the public interest.” Along with the arguments against sharing arrangements previously raised in the public interest petitions to deny the Tribune/Local and Gannett/Belo (CD Aug 12 p9), Free Press also pointed to Department of Justice concerns about Gannett’s influence over the ostensibly separate companies it has sharing arrangements with (CD Dec 17 p6). “The Bureau did not address any of the DOJ’s conclusions or rationale, or whether the DOJ’s decision affected the Bureau’s broader determination of whether the assignments serve the public interest,” said Free Press. The commission needs to examine both transactions, because without intervention, “the Bureau will continue to simply check whether the contracts contain language giving ultimate authority to the licensee, rather than evaluate the proposed transaction as a whole” against a public interest standard, said the filing on the Tribune deal. “Broadcasters will continue to exploit the sharing arrangement loophole so long as the full Commission remains silent,” said Free Press’s Gannett/Belo application for review. Gannett, Tribune and the bureau didn’t comment.

A “healthy” 2012 for the broadcast industry led to a sharp increase in TV station transactions in 2013, said BIA Kelsey on its website Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1cWd8t9). Close to 300 TV stations were sold in 2013, up 205 percent from 2012, BIA Kelsey said. The value of TV stations is also on the rise, the analysts said. The “total sale valuation” for television stations increased by 367 percent, BIA Kelsey said. “Strong political advertising revenues from the previous year, retransmission consent revenues and continued historically lower interest rates were all contributing factors to this strong showing,” said the analysis. Radio transactions stayed the same in terms of the number of stations sold and the total value, said BIA Kelsey. The year’s largest radio deal was for 53 Cumulus Media stations bought by Townsquare Media, “estimated to be $238 million,” BIA Kelsey said. “Overall, radio’s continued position in the marketplace is encouraging existing groups to grow and some new groups to enter,” said the Web posting. “We anticipate that 2014 will bring a slight increase as the economy gathers some strength."

Broadcaster concerns about Aereo are “overdone,” said Guggenheim analyst Paul Gallant in an email to investors Tuesday. Despite the case being taken up by the Supreme Court, Aereo still faces “hurdles,” Gallant said. The high court decision is a “coin flip” that could come out in broadcasters’ favor, and if the court sides with Aereo, broadcasters would have “home court advantage” in trying to have Congress pass a bill limiting Aereo’s disruption, Gallant said. “Broadcasters have been dealing with Congress for decades and have TV stations covering virtually every congressional district,” said Gallant. “We wonder how willing cable would be to adopt Aereo if that strategy was under constant threat of Congress declaring that strategy illegal?” A Supreme Court decision may not ultimately get Aereo out of legal danger, Gallant said. Broadcasters could also attack Aereo by saying the service violates retrans law, said Gallant. “Broadcasters don’t need to ultimately win this additional legal argument, they just need to make the argument credibly so that cable operators will think very carefully before adopting Aereo (given the potential damages if cable guesses wrong).” Even if cable tried to adopt Aereo’s system, it may not be easy, Gallant said. “For cable to use Aereo as a broadcast replacement, it would probably need to purchase and roll out many new set top boxes that could deliver Aereo’s IP-based signals to TV sets somewhere near as seamlessly as pay TV service,” Gallant said. “Not cheap or quick."

Arguments that broadcasters received their spectrum for free from the government aren’t true, according to a recent Navigant study (http://bit.ly/1aoieDY), NAB said in a press release Tuesday. “Nearly all TV station owners paid market value for their spectrum licenses through private transactions,” the release said. The spectrum auction won’t be a “windfall” for broadcasters “just because the checks they wrote to pay for those licenses were made out to private companies, rather than to ‘Uncle Sam,'” the study said. It found 92 percent of all full-power television stations have been bought and sold since receiving their initial licenses. Transactions involving those stations have a cumulative value of more than “$50 billion, which includes the market value paid for the stations’ spectrum licenses,” said the release. The fact that the broadcast licenses originally given out free by the government can be transferred to a new holder is “irrelevant,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood in an email. “Say the government gives you land to use for free, and also gives you the possibility to sell that right to someone else. Does exercising that ability to transfer the license mean it wasn’t free in the first place?” Wood asked. The Navigant study also “refuted” the idea that broadcasters are unique in having been granted government spectrum, by pointing to cellular and satellite licenses, NAB said. Recognizing that broadcasters have “property rights” over their spectrum “will promote efficient spectrum usage, a robust private market-based system to reallocate spectrum, and technological innovation,” the study said.

The FCC should limit broadcaster use of real-time closed captioning “to situations where offline captioning is logistically or technically infeasible,” said Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in comments filed in docket 05-231 (http://bit.ly/1dRP2UG). “We recommend that the Commission set a hard limit requiring programming recorded more than double its length prior to its airing -- e.g., two hours before the airing of a one-hour program -- to be captioned offline,” said TDI. Offline captions should be held to a higher standard than real-time ones, and contain proper punctuation and capitalization, TDI said. However, all captions should be held to high standards for synchronization, readability and completeness, TDI said. To improve captioning standards, the FCC should create metrics for measuring their quality, TDI said. The consumer group proposed a formula that rates accuracy as the number of words captioned minus the number of errors, divided by the number of words in the dialog, multiplied by 100. For offline captions measured with this formula, “the accuracy threshold should be 100% in nearly all circumstances,” TDI said. The consumer group said it would support a phase-in period of three years for captioning to reach that level of accuracy. The FCC should also phase out the use of electronic newsroom technique (ENT), TDI said. ENT captions are captions created for newscasts from a pre-written script or teleprompter, and therefore don’t capture breaking news or unscripted dialogue. Continuing its use in smaller markets would prevent hearing-impaired consumers in those areas from receiving “equal access to breaking news, on-scene, and weather reporting,” TDI said. ENT may also be responsible for a shortage of qualified captioners, TDI said. Stations that found adding live captioning to be “an untenable economic burden” could request waivers from the FCC, TDI said.