The FCC’s 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference Advisory Committee will meet Jan. 27, the FCC said Monday in the Federal Register. The committee is collaborating with NTIA’s Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee Radio Conference Subcommittee on consensus opinions on multiple WRC agenda items, which it will eventually present to the State Department (CD Dec 23 p9). The WRC Advisory Committee’s Jan. 27 meeting will include a presentation of the committee working groups’ preliminary views and draft proposals, the FCC said. The meeting is set to begin at 11 a.m. in the Commission Meeting Room. The meeting will also be webcast on the FCC’s website (http://1.usa.gov/1fW5DG2).

The White House has been “engaged” with the House Intelligence Committee as its members put together a proposal on surveillance and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a White House spokeswoman told us. The status of the rumored bill has been contested within the committee, which has not cleared any legislation or settled on a final bill (CD Dec 30 p4). Privacy advocates have criticized initial indications of what the bill may look like, fearing it will codify phone metadata surveillance practices and resemble the Senate Intelligence Committee’s FISA bill. “The Administration has and will remain engaged with Members and staff of the Committee regarding various proposals for reforming signals intelligence collection authorities, policies, and operations,” the White House spokeswoman said.

Streaming TV service Aereo shouldn’t be allowed to file an amicus brief in its competitor FilmOn’s appeal of the nationwide preliminary injunction imposed by the D.C. district court, said broadcasters in a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Thursday. Aereo had filed a motion for leave to file a brief in support of neither party, but Aereo’s proposed brief is just a duplicate of FilmOn’s arguments, broadcasters said. “Aereo is itself a defendant in copyright cases involving the same plaintiffs and issues” said the broadcasters. “Its proposed brief is simply an effort to circumvent Appellants’ page limits.” Aereo “has a direct interest in the legal principles to be determined by this Court in these appeals,” argued Aereo in its motion. The D.C. circuit has a rule against briefs repeating the same facts and arguments, the broadcasters said. It’s not surprising that Aereo’s interests “are indistinguishable from Appellants’ interests,” said the broadcasters. FilmOn will make all the same arguments in its appeal, the broadcasters said, “obviating any need for a duplicative recitation of these same arguments by the identically-situated Aereo."

Morgan Murphy Media agreed to renew its retransmission consent agreement with Time Warner Cable for KLXY-Spokane, Morgan Murphy Media said in a news release Friday. Morgan Murphy Media also operates WISC-TV Madison and WKBT LaCrosse in Wisconsin, and KAPP Yakima-Kennewick in Washington.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau extended by an additional six months, until June 30, the “true-up” date for calculating whether Sprint owes the government money as part of the 800 MHz transition. When the FCC approved the 800 MHz rebanding in 2004 it required Nextel, before its merger with Sprint, to pay the total value of the 10 MHz national spectrum license it got as part of deal. At the time, the FCC set the price of the license at $4.8 billion. Subtracting the value of the spectrum Nextel agreed to give up, $2 billion, left $2.8 billion Nextel had to cover by paying for the rebanding. The FCC has been extending the true-up deadline in six-month increments since 2008. While the Broadband Auxiliary Service relocation “is now complete and substantial progress has been made in 800 MHz rebanding, a significant number of 800 MHz licensees have yet to complete the process, and rebanding in the US-Mexico border region has only recently begun,” the bureau said (http://bit.ly/1dPhzaV). While Sprint has contended that enough has been paid out that the government can now conclude no money will be owed, the 800 MHz Transition Administrator (TA) has advised that taking this step would be “premature,” the bureau said. “We conclude that conducting a true-up of Sprint’s rebanding expenditures as of December 31, 2013 would be premature. Accordingly, we provisionally extend the true-up date, as recommended by the TA, until June 30, 2014, and direct the TA to file a report by May 15, 2014, with its recommendation on whether the true-up should be conducted as of June 30, 2014, or be further postponed."

Tribune closed on its $2.2 billion purchase of Local TV, Tribune said in a news release Friday (http://bit.ly/19sYNta). The FCC approved the transaction Dec. 20 (CD Dec 23 p3). Tribune now owns 39 TV stations, and provides services through sharing agreements to three former Local TV stations now owned by Dreamcatcher. As a result of the sale, Tribune is both the largest Fox affiliate group and the largest CW affiliate group in the U.S., the release said. “The transaction creates the largest combined independent broadcast group and content creator in the country,” Tribune said.

Continued speculation about a possible Sprint/T-Mobile US merger has been a major boon for Sprint’s stock value, said Seeking Alpha in an email Friday to investors. Sprint’s stock value rose 32 percent between Dec. 13 -- the day The Wall Street Journal first reported speculation about a possible merger -- and noon Friday, Seeking Alpha said.

Comcast petitioned to be excluded from municipal rate-setting for basic-video and some other prices for seven communities in Virginia, said a filing posted in FCC docket 12-1 (http://bit.ly/KamafB). The petition cited video competition from DirecTV and Dish Network. The proposed deregulation would affect about 23,000 households, including the communities of Bridgewater, Harrisonburg and Elkton.

The rebanding of a final group of 800 MHz public safety agencies, those located along the Mexican border, is under way and about 195 licensees there are expected to have to retune their systems, the 800 MHz Transition Administrator said in a report filed Friday at the FCC. The U.S. and Mexico agreed last year to an amended protocol, which takes into account the FCC’s landmark 2004 800 MHz rebanding order (CD June 7/12 p7). “With most non-border licensees and Canadian border licensees having completed physical retuning, the TA’s focus is on those licensees that have not finished,” the TA said (http://bit.ly/1cFRG0S). “Licensees that have not completed physical retuning should expeditiously complete their implementation activities,” the TA said. “A delay in the completion of an implementation task by a licensee that has a downstream impact on other licensees (i.e., by blocking another licensee’s replacement frequencies or because the first touch of its subscriber units needs to be completed before an interoperable licensee can retune its infrastructure) can have a cascading effect and cause delays for other dependent licensees and, in some cases, for an entire region."

Free Press allegations that sharing agreements in Sinclair’s proposed purchase of Allbritton would give Sinclair financial control of ostensibly separate stations are based on “unsubstantiated estimates,” Sinclair’s lawyer said in a letter to the FCC Media Bureau last week (http://bit.ly/1caQ5xe). Free Press had claimed (CD Dec 9 p5) that some of Sinclair’s sharing arrangements involved the affected stations -- which would be owned by affiliated company Deerfield Media -- paying out nearly their entire annual revenue to Sinclair, which would bring the arrangement into conflict with the FCC’s local ownership rules. However, Free Press’s numbers are based on estimates from 2012. “The application of these unsubstantiated estimates to future performance of the stations is wholly speculative and should be dismissed for that reason alone,” Sinclair said. If operated under the terms proposed in the transaction, the stations involved in the sharing agreements will have “more than adequate revenues” to pay the fees involved with the sharing arrangements and “generate a significant operating profit for the licensee,” said Sinclair. The Media Bureau had also asked Sinclair to show how the companies that will own the stations involved in the sharing arrangements will have a financial incentive to control their own programming. “Every station license, whether or not involved in sharing agreements, has an inherent incentive to control programming” to attract more viewers and increase value to advertisers, Sinclair said. Since the “key costs” of a station involved in a sharing arrangement to receive services are fixed, “operating profits will increase if the revenue increases,” Sinclair said. The Media Bureau has also previously approved sharing arrangements similar to the ones proposed in the Allbritton transaction, and with a similar profit sharing breakdown, Sinclair said. That’s one of the reasons behind Free Press’s challenge of the transaction, Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood told us. Such transactions are a workaround for avoiding the commission’s ownership rules, he said. “This is why we want the full commission to take this up,” he said. Sinclair also disputed the Media Bureau’s contention that the company violated reporting rules by not including copies of local marketing agreements in its submission to the commission. Since the agreements cited by the bureau don’t involve stations involved in the Allbritton transaction, Sinclair had no reason to include them in the submission, the broadcaster said. The Department of Justice review of the Sinclair/Allbritton deal has been put on hold pending the FCC and Sinclair resolving the dispute over the sharing arrangements, Sinclair said. “It is vital that there be a prompt resolution of these matters so that antitrust review can be completed,” Sinclair said.