The FCC should exempt the very smallest radio stations from online public file requirements, NAB said in a Jan. 13 meeting with an aide to Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, according to an ex parte filing in docket in 14-127. The new requirement should be limited to stations with five or more employees, NAB said. The broadcast association also asked the agency to change the threshold for phasing in the new requirement. NAB proposes that “the initial online filers be commercial radio stations within the Top 50 radio markets that have 11 or more employees,” it said. The FCC previously applied that standard “in exempting certain stations from certain Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) program requirements,” NAB said.

Shifting the responsibility for caption quality from video programming distributors to a combination of VPDs and programmers will be more effective if VPDs' pass-through of captions and customer service are held to high standards, said Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in an ex parte filing posted online in FCC docket 05-231 Thursday. Programmers should be required to certify they're complying with caption rules, and VPDs should be required to verify that programmers are certified, TDI said. “Because consumers have a direct relationship with VPDs and will continue to rely on them to solve many captioning problems regardless of where the ultimate responsibility falls, the Commission should ensure that VPDs remain fully engaged with the provision and quality of the captions they deliver.”

A three-day blackout of Cordillera Communications-owned stations on Dish Network ended Sunday as the sides signed a new multiyear carriage agreement, they said in news releases Sunday. Terms weren't disclosed, though each side had complained the other wasn't seeking fair, market-based rates (see 1601070057). The blackout involved 11 channels in eight states.

Ultra HD Blu-ray content is coming, and it may be more plentiful than 3D was at first, Samsung executive Dan Schinasi, the Blu-ray Disc Association’s U.S. spokesman, told us at CES last week in Las Vegas. “Here’s the box, we’re taking orders, and there will be content,” said Schinasi, Samsung Electronics America senior manager-TV product planning. That the major studios collectively have pledged publicly to supply 100 Ultra HD Blu-ray titles in time for the holiday selling season is “not a bad start,” he said: “Studios are coming together, there’s certification.” Schinasi thinks it’s unlikely industry will see a repeat of the exclusive bundling that gave consumers access to compelling Blu-ray 3D titles only if they bought specific models of 3D TVs. For 3D, he said, "The studio wasn’t going to foot the bill by themselves, and we had to sponsor a large chunk of that.” It’s "a different world” for Ultra HD Blu-ray versus 3D Blu-ray, Schinasi said: “There’s not going to be these bundled titles. There’s going to be a lot more content to choose from. We’re in a different time and place.”

The HomeGrid Forum used CES to promote powerline technology as a “robust networking backbone” for the connected home. G.hn offers a single, widely supported standard for connected networked devices over existing wired infrastructure including powerline, coax and phone line, it said. The expansion of Ultra HD TV content and multiple screens in the average household has created the need for a “high throughput home networking backbone," the forum said. Arris, Brightech, Comtrend, Sigma Designs and Wondertek showed G.hn-based devices.

Eleven Cordillera Communications local channels in eight states were blacked out on Dish Network as part of stalemated retransmission negotiations, Dish said in a news release Thursday. Dish said Cordillera is seeking "above-market rate increases double the current Dish rate" and using the blackout of the NFL Wild Card playoff games scheduled Saturday and Sunday as leverage. “With Dish willing to grant an extension and a retroactive true-up on rates, Cordillera had nothing to lose and consumers had everything to gain by leaving the channels up,” said Warren Schlichting, Dish executive vice president-programming, in a statement. In its statement, Cordillera said Dish "has refused to reach a fair, market-based agreement ... even as we offer terms similar to those of existing agreements with every other cable and satellite provider."

The FCC needs to resolve a reconsideration petition from three Class A broadcasters soon, the broadcasters said in separate meetings with staff from the offices of Chairman Tom Wheeler, Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel, Mike O'Rielly and Ajit Pai Wednesday, according to an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 12-268. The Fifth Street Enterprises, Videohouse and WMTM petition asks the FCC to allow their stations to participate in the incentive auction or be protected in the repacking, and the agency was ordered to resolve it quickly Dec. 30 by a U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit judge (see 1601040055). “A prompt grant of the Reconsideration Petition would obviate the need for judicial review and its attendant costs and risks,” the ex parte filing said. Granting the recon petition won't delay the auction because the Class A's owned by the petitioner are the only “similarly situated” stations entitled to relief, the broadcasters said.

U.S. consumer spending on home entertainment content jumped 0.9 percent in 2015 from a year earlier to $18.1 billion, the Digital Entertainment Group said Wednesday in its year-end report. For Q4, the rise in spending was 1.3 percent to $5.3 billion, DEG said. Subscription streaming was the year’s big winner, rising nearly 25 percent to $5.1 billion, it said. Subscription rentals of physical media was the year’s biggest loser, declining nearly 16 percent to $667 million, it said. Sell-through spending on packaged goods fell 12 percent to $6.1 billion, it said. However, with 8 percent growth in Blu-ray sales, the industry, sell-through-wise, “saw its best year over year physical retail performance since early 2014,” DEG said. “The strength of the premium experience bodes well for the introduction of Ultra HD Blu-ray in 2016.”

Phase two for the UHD Alliance will "probably include live broadcasts -- sports, news and all that," said President Hanno Basse in an interview in Las Vegas, where its Ultra HD Premium logo program was officially unveiled. On the device side, "we’re discussing to what extent we should go and look at mobile devices," he said Monday. "Those discussions have just started, because we were so focused on getting this first version out. The reason why we felt there was an urgency here is because we really thought the industry needed an answer. We needed an answer by this CES, seeing what’s going on in the consumer electronics industry.”

Audio equalization technology that Gracenote is introducing at CES to enhance music playback in the car is based on offering automated help for people who don't know how to manually adjust their music players, or don’t want to fiddle with manual controls while driving, we found in a patent search from the unit of Tribune Media. Patent filings from September 2013 (US 20150073574) and January 2014 (US 20150194151) cover the automatic adjustment of audio playback settings to suit the environment. Music players problematically provide the same listening experience, regardless of type of music. Listeners may not know what audio content is coming up next, forcing them to make changes on the fly after the next song has already begun, it said. Gracenote’s idea is to help the music player identify music or speech by its mood or style immediately when it's played and automatically optimize the player controls by embedding a fingerprint of “profile information” in the content, it said. The content can be audio or video, and come over the air from a radio or TV broadcaster, from an ISP or from a download, it said. The company didn't comment Monday.