LG is playing a big role in the kickoff event this Sunday in Washington of the "Broadcast TV Liberation Tour" to trumpet consumer awareness of over-the-air DTV reception through an antenna, the company said in a Tuesday announcement with co-sponsors TVFreedom.org and antenna and accessories merchandiser AntennasDirect.com. The kickoff event runs 1-5 p.m. at Washington’s Eastern Market, the promoters said. "All the way back to our Zenith days, LG has been a big believer in terrestrial broadcasting around the world," John Taylor, LG vice president-public affairs, told us Wednesday when we asked what’s in it for LG to take part in the event. "We view this as part of our efforts to support broadcasting and to help educate consumers that there’s lots of ways to get digital signals today, and one of the best is free, over the air." LG will contribute a 42-inch LCD TV as a contest giveaway at the event, but its "larger role" will be to provide the dozen large-screen Ultra HD and 1080p TVs "around the room," Taylor said. "Each of them will have an antenna attached to it. So that’s 12 different channels so attendees can really understand how much diverse programming and the excellent picture quality you can get over the air. It’s for consumer education more than anything else."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit should deny a writ of mandamus filed by broadcaster PMCM TV in order to keep broadcasting on Virtual Channel 3.10, said the FCC in an opposition filing Tuesday. The Media Bureau had ordered PMCM’s station WJLP-TV Middletown Township, New Jersey, to stop broadcasting on that channel while it considers a proposal to allow the station to share a Program and System Information Protocol with Meredith Corp.’s WFSB Hartford (see 1410200057). WFSB uses RF Channel 3, and the subchannels attached to a radio frequency channel are commonly understood to belong to the broadcaster that holds that RF channel, several broadcast attorneys have told us. On Nov. 10, PMCM filed an application for review of that order with the FCC and asked for an emergency stay, and also filed a writ of mandamus request with the D.C. Circuit the same day, according to court documents. In response, the bureau stayed its own order until Dec. 1 “to permit orderly briefing” and suspended the briefing schedule on PMCM’s application for review, the FCC’s filing said. The FCC order doesn’t cause harm to PMCM because the FCC authorized it to broadcast on virtual Channel 33. Though PMCM had argued that the shift would be confusing to viewers, the FCC disagreed. “The magnitude of such confusion -- for a station that has been on the air just since September 30 -- may be questioned,” the FCC said. “In any event, PMCM plainly has the power to mitigate such confusion by informing its audience,” the commission said. Staying the FCC’s order would “encroach” on the FCC’s authority to handle questions “best considered and resolved in the context of a notice and comment proceeding,” the commission said. “The balance of equities plainly favors the agency’s approach,” the FCC said.

Sinclair’s petition for review of FCC rules barring joint retransmission consent negotiation should be denied, said the commission in an opposition filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Monday. Sinclair filed its petition in September, asking the court to overturn the FCC’s April rule barring differently owned top-four stations in the same market from jointly negotiating retrans deals with pay-TV companies. Sinclair had argued that the FCC rule change exceeded the commission’s authority and hadn’t been supported by the record in the rulemaking proceeding, but the commission disagreed. The Communications Act gives the FCC the authority to regulate retrans negotiation, and to make sure those negotiations are conducted in good faith, the FCC said. The commission pointed to filings in the record by the Department of Justice supporting the ban on joint negotiation and other filings showing that retrans prices rise as a result of joint negotiation as providing the foundation for the rule change. “On the basis of this record, the Commission reasonably concluded that joint negotiation by separately owned Top Four stations in the same market violates the statutory duty to negotiate in good faith,” the FCC said. The commission also attacked Sinclair’s argument that the FCC needed to demonstrate that the joint negotiations had violated antitrust rules to stiffen the rules. “Contrary to Sinclair’s suggestion, the Commission was not required to find a violation of antitrust law before it imposed a ban on joint negotiation,” the FCC said.

A waiver granted to Fox Television Stations to let it to own WWOR-TV Secaucus, New Jersey, and The New York Post is "unprecedented relief" because it allows Fox to extend the duration of the waiver so long as it requests a new waiver after the FCC acts on its 2014 quadrennial review, said the Rainbow PUSH Coalition and United Church of Christ in an ex parte filing posted in docket 07-260 Tuesday. Since FCC proposals for the quadrennial review don't include allowing common ownership of two TV stations and a daily newspaper, "it is a near certainty that Fox will have to request a new waiver, thereby effectively extending Fox’s conditional waiver beyond the end of the 2014 Quadrennial Review," the groups said. The FCC should "hold the Media Bureau accountable" and promote greater transparency for waivers of rules, the filing said. To do so, the bureau could release a list of all outstanding ownership waivers online, and put out public notices when licensees seek new waivers or extensions, the groups said. "Enacting these suggestions would reinforce the Commission’s current efforts in tightening compliance with the ownership rules."

Dec. 13 may be a hard deadline for Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act compliance for full-power stations that received waivers for the original compliance date of Dec. 13, 2012, said a blog post on the Fletcher Heald website by broadcast attorney Dan Kirkpatrick. Two one-year waivers were “expressly provided for by Congress in the CALM Act,” but no more than that, Kirkpatrick said. Though the FCC has the ability to issue a waiver for any of its rules, stations that aren’t yet in compliance with the CALM Act shouldn’t count on a further extension of the deadline, he wrote. When the commission updated the algorithms the CALM Act uses to calculate loudness earlier this year (see 1406050067), it emphasized stations with existing financial hardship waivers for the CALM Act will have to comply “when their financial hardship waivers expire,” Kirkpatrick said. If the FCC considers further waiver requests, it may use the stiffer standards it used in 2012 for waiver requests from companies that didn’t qualify as small businesses, Kirkpatrick said.

A Media Bureau order on WPXA-TV Rome, Georgia, moving down the dial to Channel 31 (see 1410310063) from 51 took effect Monday, said an FCC notice in that day's Federal Register. Ion Media, the station's licensee, will file a construction permit application for Channel 31 as part of the channel substitution, said the notice. It said the move will let the station "serve all viewers currently receiving digital service while eliminating any potential interference with wireless operations in the Lower 700 MHZ A Block located adjacent to channel 51 in Rome."

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s characterization of a draft NPRM to extend multichannel video programming distributor privileges to over-the-top providers as taking away barriers that hindered innovators such as Aereo doesn’t show respect for the law, said NAB Executive Vice President-Strategic Planning Rick Kaplan Monday in a blog post. “Aereo was innovative only in its creative attempt to skirt the copyright laws,” said Kaplan. “Shouldn’t it matter to the FCC, at a bare minimum, whether content is distributed legally or illegally?” Kaplan also took issue with Wheeler's pinning Aereo’ s court defeat on broadcasters and outdated FCC rules. The barrier to Aereo’s success was the Copyright Act, Kaplan said. “Even if the Chairman could unilaterally change the FCC’s ‘old rules’ today, Aereo’s business model would still violate the law,” Kaplan said. Though NAB supports the FCC’s examination of including OTT services under the MVPD definition, “tough questions loom” about the rule change, Kaplan said. Those include “how to handle a deluge of new potential MVPDs, how to avoid further homogenizing news, weather, sports and entertainment, and how to prevent stifling new business models outside of the MVPD context,” said Kaplan. Representatives in Wheeler's office didn't comment.

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau granted a temporary extension from closed captioning requirements for the program Outdoorsmen Adventures. Outdoorsmen Productions has demonstrated that its compliance with the FCC’s closed captioning requirements “would be economically burdensome,” the bureau said in an order Thursday. The exemption is effective until Nov. 13, 2016, the bureau said.

FCC plans for a 2014 quadrennial review of media ownership don't include a crackdown on shared service agreements, said Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker in an email to investors. At a Wells Fargo-sponsored conference in New York Thursday, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake told attendees that the commission is looking to gather information on SSAs rather than tighten rules, Ryvicker wrote. “The FCC understands that shared services arrangements are a benign and sometimes necessary method to improve efficiencies and cut costs (often times the only means of survival for a struggling broadcaster), and for the most part, do not pose a regulatory issue,” Ryvicker said. Though the commission may find aspects of some agreements “problematic,” the FCC “simply wants to be informed,” she said. The proposed new rules for SSAs would require registration, but not a form of approval, Ryvicker said.

The FCC should retain or tighten media ownership rules as a “race neutral” way of creating opportunity for new entrants, said the National Hispanic Media Coalition in a Wednesday meeting with Media Bureau staff, said an NHMC ex parte filing posted in docket 14-50 Friday. “The Prometheus line of cases out of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals prevents the Commission from relaxing any rules without first analyzing the impact that such relaxation would have on ownership rates by women and people of color.” Since radio contributes to viewpoint diversity, cross-ownership rules involving it should not be relaxed, said NHMC. The FCC should begin collecting and analyzing data about broadcast ownership by minorities and women, said the group. That should include an examination of the data collected through Form 323 submissions, a resumption of collection of Form 395 equal employment opportunity data and a public release of that information, said NHMC.