The FCC released drafts Tuesday of proposed items for the March 31 commissioners’ meeting, including details of proposals to deregulate voice incumbent pricing and require authentication of caller ID information, plus Media Bureau proposals on ATSC 3.0 and program carriage. Chairman Ajit Pai outlined the agenda Monday (see 2003090050).
Chairman Ajit Pai plans to further deregulate voice service providers and "examine whether certain pricing and tariffing regulations that the FCC imposed on incumbent phone companies when they held a monopoly on local telephone service still make sense today," he blogged Monday, outlining his agenda for the March 31 commissioners' meeting (see 2003090044). The meeting will also have a vote on robocall/caller ID authentication, as Pai disclosed last week (see 2003060055). Three Media Bureau items also were tentatively scheduled, including related to ATSC 3.0.
A dozen models in four series spanning sizes 65-85 inches make up Samsung’s QLED 8K TV line for 2020, announced the vendor. All the 8K models will have ATSC 3.0 functionality "ready out of the box," emailed a spokesperson Friday. Samsung said at CES it will offer 3.0 across its 2020 8K QLED lineup but wasn't specific on the number of models or the screen sizes. Pricing wasn't available for most of the 2020 models, including for three sets in the flagship Q950T 8K series. Samsung is pricing one 65-inch 8K model at $3,499 for April 10 availability. It’s one of three models in the Q800T series at the bottom tier of the 2020 8K offerings.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated a plan to deregulate what he calls telephone access charges, among items tentatively up for a vote at commissioners' March 31 meeting. It would detariff "the last handful of interstate end-user charges that remain subject to FCC regulation," he blogged Monday afternoon.
An analysis of ATSC 3.0 transmission technology since the FCC approved its voluntary deployment in 2017 (see 1711160060) found the 3.0 “emission mask” may not adequately protect reserved-band FM noncommercial educational stations from interference, NPR told Media Bureau staff Monday. That’s because 3.0 transmissions “occupy additional bandwidth” beyond ATSC 1.0, and the interference risk “is particularly heightened at the perimeter of a DTV station’s coverage area,” it said in a notice posted Thursday in docket 19-193. NPR urged the commission to consider requiring DTV channel 6 stations to use “additional signal filtering” as it does for channels 14 and 17.
Nexstar and Sinclair expect a 2020 political advertising boom and didn’t lay out any immediate merger and acquisitions plans, in respective Q4 calls Wednesday. Nexstar CEO Perry Sook and Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley have opposite views on the upside of sports betting. Executives of both companies said their stocks are cheap. Sinclair ended the day down 15% at $23.36. Nexstar fell 6% to $107.02.
CTA’s application to register the NEXTGEN TV logo as a certification mark for ATSC 3.0-compliant consumer TVs was published for opposition Tuesday, confirmed the Patent and Trademark Office. The application, published in the agency's Trademark Official Gazette, advances to a notice of allowance if no one opposes it at the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board by March 26. CTA would then have six months to file a statement of use as one of the final steps in the registration process. CTA unveiled the logo in the fall as the keystone of its consumer-facing branding campaign for when broadcasters in the top 40 U.S. markets begin rolling out 3.0 services later this year (see 1909190066).
Military training, precision agriculture and immigration enforcement are among possible uses for datacasting using public TV spectrum and ATSC 3.0, America’s Public Television Stations’ summit heard Tuesday. FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly endorsed public TV’s focus on datacasting, in a speech. “You may just be on to something here,” he said. “Please keep me posted.”
The FCC is expected to approve an NPRM Friday, pushed by Microsoft, which would allow white space devices to operate at higher power levels in less congested areas. There likely won't be major changes from Chairman Ajit Pai's proposals (see 2002060013), industry and FCC officials said in interviews. The biggest change is expected to be inclusion of a footnote, which says channels 36 and 37 issues needs to be addressed separately, they said.
America’s Public Television Stations CEO Patrick Butler isn’t concerned about public TV being level funded in the next federal budget, but in an interview Monday conceded that APTS plans to ask for a funding increase might face difficulties. “I want to manage expectations,” he told the 2020 APTS Public Media Summit.