the HOT List

There's a vacant Class C FM radio station on the table of allotments for a city due south of Houston, nestled along the Texas Gulf Coast. If it's of interest to an operator willing to build out a facility on that signal, you're out of luck, however. Why? The FCC's Media Bureau, on action from its Audio Bureau, wants to delete it.

America's Public Television Stations and PBS believe the FCC should adopt "a locally driven transition" to the new ATSC 3.0 digital television standard, leaving it to "local broadcaster decision-making" rather than a Congressional or Commission mandated change date from the current ATSC 1.0 broadcast signal.

The broadcast TV group that's shepherding the industry toward ATSC 3.0 digital broadcasting services has announced when it will report its Q4 2025 earnings results. What do analysts expect to see from a company that very much wants to merge with The E.W. Scripps Co., despite that entity's firm no?

NBC O&O WMAQ-5 in Chicago and its Telemundo sibling, WSNS-44, earlier this week christened a new state-of-the-art newsroom that NBCUniversal says is "designed to power the next generation of storytelling."

Across the last week, no less than six ECFS submissions have been presented to the FCC on behalf of NCTA-The Internet & Television Association.  One filing begs attention: As the association sees it, extending mandatory carriage rights to ATSC 3.0 TV stations "would violate the Constitution."

The FCC's lone Democratic Commissioner derided the "misleading announcement" distributed by the Media Bureau of guidance "on the application of the statutory equal opportunities requirement and the bona fide news exemptions to broadcast television stations, including their airing of late-night and daytime talk shows."

In April 2023, Audacy Inc. announced that would be closing its Warwick, R.I., office and consolidating its operations with its larger Boston hub, ceasing a 19-year term of sales and marketing independence for a simulcast partner of WEEI-FM. Audacy is now moving forward with the sale of that Rhode Island FM.

It's a Class A digital over-the-air television station serving a portion of the Orlando DMA. And, in just a few weeks, it will become a MediaCo-operated home to its Estrella TV network, shifting from a digital multicast signal tied to a Hearst Television station serving Central Florida.

In a further rebuke of overtures from a spurned Paramount Skydance that it wants its own deal to get a relook and serious consideration, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday revealed that they've tweaked their merger agreement. 

Seven radio broadcasting companies have united to express their quest for FCC rule modernization — or, as they put it, the removal of "archaic regulatory burdens that restrict radio's ability to compete in the modern marketplace." In a separate filing, the National Association of Broadcasters offered a similar argument.

What do Black consumers have in common with fellow multicultural cohorts Hispanics and Asians? They cannot be lumped into a single group when it comes to media behavior preferences, states a new "Diverse Intelligence Series" report released on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day by Nielsen.

The E.W. Scripps Co. has said no. Sinclair Inc. appears it will not easily take no for an answer, as the broadcast TV station ownership group and parent of broadcast tower manufacturer Dielectric has provided investors with an update on its one-sided merger proposal discussions with the company led by Adam Symson.

Urban One's Board of Directors has moved forward with a reverse stock split of all its classes of its common stock — including its publicly traded Class A and Class D common stock. What does this mean for Urban One shareholders?

The FCC "has outlived the economic and technological conditions that justified its creation." That's the view of American Enterprise Institute nonresident senior fellow Mark Jamison. In a "working paper," Jamison explains how the Commission is presently in a "mission vacuum," and should disappear.

The NAB has distributed a communiqué touting how "free, local broadcast television and radio stations are more than trusted sources of news, emergency updates and community connection." For the association, radio and TV stations "are a vital infrastructure supporting every corner of American life."