Gray Media will buy Block Communications’ seven TV stations for $80 million and separately acquire two stations from SagamoreHill Broadcasting, Gray announced in two news releases Thursday and Friday. The Block deal includes Fox and CW affiliate stations in Louisville, where Gray already owns an NBC affiliate. The sale also involves Block’s NBC affiliates in Decatur, Illinois, and Lima, Ohio, and three low-power TV stations, some of which are also network affiliates. That could mean the deal would require a waiver from the FCC, though the top-four prohibition was recently vacated by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (see 2507230063). “Gray anticipates closing these transactions in the fourth quarter of this year following receipt of regulatory approval, including certain waivers of the FCC’s current ownership rules, and other customary closing conditions,” a release said.

Skydance’s agreement to appoint an anti-bias ombudsman in order to secure merger approval isn’t a violation of press freedoms, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in an interview Thursday with PBS NewsHour. He noted that the bias monitor will report directly to CBS, not the FCC. “It's going to be for the broadcaster in the first instance to deal with it. If there's a complaint around news distortion ... then we would look at that complaint as it comes in,” he said. “It's not direct regulation by the FCC in terms of regulation of the newsroom itself. It's the company saying we want to put forth an ombudsman to help us do our job.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has rejected NAB’s challenge of the FCC’s 2024 foreign-sponsored content rule, said an opinion Friday. “We reject NAB’s challenges,” wrote Judge Karen Henderson (see 2504070019). “Procedurally, the rule complied with the [Administrative Procedure

Ending the collection of biennial ownership data through Form 323 would eliminate virtually the only source of information about broadcast-ownership diversity, several civil rights and public interest groups told us. The FCC Media Bureau on Tuesday announced an 18-month pause on collecting Form 323 and seemed to indicate that the requirement to submit the data will be permanently deleted (see 2507300070). Halting Form 323 collection would be “yet another structural policy decision to brush civil rights under the rug, to obscure discrimination in the broadcast industry,” said Free Press co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez in an email. “It's a shameful and brazen dereliction of the FCC's duty to serve all Americans.”

ABC and NBC “should look to the Paramount precedent recently set by this Commission,” said Center for American Rights President Daniel Suhr in a letter Thursday praising the FCC’s probe into Comcast NBCUniversal’s relationship with affiliates. “At a time of New York-Hollywood-Silicon Valley dominance over the vast majority of news and entertainment content, what makes local broadcast stations special is precisely their localness,” Suhr said. “The networks should be encouraging that unique market advantage, not undermining it with programming diktats or must-carry contract provisions.” Because Carr warned ABC about its relationship to affiliate stations in December, it would be “doubly disappointing” if Comcast “ignored those concerns after they were on the record regarding another network,” Suhr said. "The Center for American Rights applauds your decision to direct the Media Bureau to open an inquiry into Comcast’s treatment of NBC’s local affiliates."

Comments are due Aug. 29 on a proposed swap of seven stations between Gray Television and E.W. Scripps, said a public notice Wednesday. The no-cash deal involves swapping Gray stations in Colorado and Idaho for Scripps stations in Michigan and Louisiana, creating top-four duopolies in multiple markets (see 2507070028). The companies initially anticipated receiving waivers of the top-four prohibition to allow the deal to proceed, but last week the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the rule (see 2507230063). After that ruling, which doesn’t take effect for 90 days, the broadcasters asked the FCC to either wait for the court’s mandate, grant the applications using the anticipated waiver process, or approve the deals without waiting for the court using a temporary waiver. Opposition filings are due Sept. 15, replies Sept. 25.

The FCC Media Bureau has waived the requirement that broadcasters file biennial ownership reports for 18 months, in apparent anticipation of that requirement being eliminated, said a public notice late Tuesday. Multiple commenters in the agency's "Delete" proceeding “urged the Commission to revisit the current biennial ownership filing requirement, which they maintain is a costly and burdensome requirement without a sufficient offsetting public benefit,” the notice said. “With the next filing window approaching, we find there is good cause to waive the biennial ownership report filing requirement.”

Concerns about ATSC 3.0 encryption of broadcast signals are “overstated," said NAB in an ex parte filing and presentation to FCC Media Bureau Chief Erin Boone, who is also an aide to Chairman Brendan Carr. In the presentation, NAB urged the FCC to act quickly to require a transition to 3.0. “Viewers can still watch/record programming for free. A3SA [the ATSC 3.0 Security Authority] has adopted encoding rules to ensure this remains the case,” said one slide in the presentation. Concerns about encrypting broadcast TV have been raised in docket 16-142, and recently ATSC 3.0 device maker SiliconDust accused the A3SA of seeking to block independent device manufacturers (see 2507220075). “To the extent that discrete implementation questions remain, those issues can be appropriately and effectively addressed through the rulemaking process and should not be treated as a barrier to initiating the process,” NAB said. “Further delay only deepens regulatory uncertainty, slows manufacturer investment, deprives consumers of the full benefits of ATSC 3.0 and undermines the broadcast industry’s ability to compete in a rapidly evolving video marketplace.” An order from the FCC “is needed now, before content owners make decisions on long-term rights contracts and in time for manufacturers to make decisions about their 2027 product lines,” the filing said.

The FCC Media Bureau and Office of Managing Director revoked Pedro Arce’s license for WCND(AM) Shelbyville, Kentucky, over $9,261.41 in unpaid regulatory fees, according to an order Friday. WCND had delinquent fees from FY 2013-16 and FY 2022-23. The order also dismissed pending renewal applications for the stations.

The FCC's 2022 quadrennial review will be "inspired" by the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals decision on the 2018 QR (see 2507230063), said FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in a news conference Thursday. Carr pointed to the court's analysis of statutory language as informing the FCC's review. The 8th Circuit ruled that the language requiring FCC quadrennial reviews allows the agency only to loosen rules that are no longer in the public interest, not expand existing rules. The decision's elimination of the top-four prohibition means the agency's QR inquiry can be narrower, he said. The agency "obviously has to move forward with the quad," Carr said.