New set-top box rules could put smaller pay-TV providers out of business, dozens of small multichannel video programming distributors told the FCC in similar filings in docket 16-42 in recent weeks. “We are troubled by the Commission's proposed rules,” said Panhandle Telephone Cooperative, a cable company with 4,000 subscribers in Oklahoma and Texas. Panhandle's letter uses similar and in some places the exact same language as the submissions from 7,000-subscriber Glasgow Electric Plant Board in Kentucky and 1,300-subscriber TrioTel in South Dakota, as do many of the other small MVPD filers. The American Cable Association assisted the MVPDs with making the filings, ACA told us. “Our company cannot afford the additional regulatory costs of the proposed Navigation Device rules, estimated to be at least $1 million per system, or any other proposals that require such substantial costs,” said 750-customer Nelson County Cablevision, of Lovingston, Virginia. “We could not offset or otherwise tolerate these costs even if we diverted our limited capital spending and spent our cash reserves.”

More pay-TV subscribers -- at 17.9 percent -- cut services such as premium channels or premium sports packages during Q2 than added such services (16.4 percent), Digitalsmiths reported Tuesday. Among pay-TV subscribers planning to make a change in their subscriptions over the next six months, roughly 7 percent plan to end the service -- roughly the same percentage as those who plan to switch to another provider, it said. Digitalsmiths said of those it surveyed planning to change their pay-TV subscriptions, another 3.7 percent plan to go to an online service or app and 31.8 percent are considering making some unspecified change. Digitalsmiths said about 50 percent of survey respondents planning to cut, change or switch pay-TV services in the next six months would stay if the provider added some functionality to make searches easier -- an increase of 8.8 percentage points year over year. Digitalsmiths said 77.2 percent of respondents are satisfied or very satisfied with their pay-TV service, relatively flat year over year. For those who are dissatisfied, the biggest reasons given were cost, followed at distant second and third by bad channel selection and poor service, it said. Nearly 77 percent of survey respondents said they wanted a la carte model, with the most-desired channels being Discovery, ABC, CBS, History Channel and NBC, Digitalsmiths said, saying average respondents' ideal bundles are made up of 19 channels. The average price that respondents want to pay is $3.60 per channel monthly, Digitalsmiths said. The amount of "cord cheating" -- pay-TV subscribers who seek on-demand video content from third party and over-the-top sources -- is growing, with 57.2 percent of respondents with pay-TV service going such routes, Digitalsmiths said. The biggest cord cheating option is with a subscription VOD service, it said. The survey was of 3,114 participants in the U.S. and Canada.

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO, Local Union No. 3 violated its contract with its 2014 work stoppage and "has been attempting to avoid the consequences of its mischief" by focusing on a technicality, Time Warner Cable said in a brief (in Pacer) Monday in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That technicality is the ostensible retroactive nullification by the National Labor Relations Board of Local 3's collective bargaining agreement with TWC to arbitrate disputes, the company said. The NLRB didn't invalidate the entire contract, but instead decided the parties failed to agree on a tangential issue, TWC said. Federal appellate precedent is that when a party repeatedly acknowledges its collective bargaining arbitration obligations and submits a dispute to arbitration without objection, that party is bound by the results of that arbitration, TWC said. Local 3 is appealing a U.S. District Court in Brooklyn ruling upholding an arbitrator's award of damages to TWC, and the company is cross-appealing the portion of the Brooklyn court's judgment that denied confirmation of part of a 2015 final arbitration award ordering the union to refrain from further violations. TWC said Brooklyn court was entitled to adjudicate the case and it should have confirmed the NLRB arbitrator's award in full or at the least confirmed the monetary portion. A union brief (in Pacer) earlier this month said there was no valid collective bargaining agreement when the arbitrator used that agreement as the basis for ruling Local 3 had violated it.

Goshen is the first New York municipality to grant a video services franchise to Frontier Communications, the telco said in a news release Monday. Frontier said the franchise agreement now needs New York Public Service Commission review and approval before it can launch its IPTV Vantage TV platform in the Hudson Valley community.

Q2 had the weakest subscription results for pay-TV, worse than the record drop a year earlier, SNL Kagan said in a news release Monday. Most of the drop was among telcos, while cable -- with decelerating loses -- accounted for a third, SNL Kagan said. Combined, telcos, cable and direct broadcast satellite lost 812,000 video customers, it said. The 298,000 lost cable subscribers were a 13.6 percent decrease in losses year-over-year and the fifth consecutive year of decreased losses for the period ending June 30, SNL Kagan said. Satellite lost 26,000 subscribers, with Dish Network losses offsetting DirecTV net adds, it said. Telco losses gained steam as AT&T shifts from U-verse, with its subscription numbers down nearly 1 million since mid-2015, SNL Kagan said. Some pay-TV industry watchers and insiders see pay TV having peaked and now being in an ongoing decline (see 1608100040).

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a U.S. District Court decision to send a pair of putative class-action complaints against Cox Communications regarding set-top box policies to arbitration. Citing "a strong presumption the dispute is arbitrable" due to the Federal Arbitration Act, the three-judge panel said in an opinion (in Pacer) Friday there's no basis for inferring that the plaintiffs must have believed the arbitration language in the subscriber agreements didn't encompass a set-top dispute or else they would have consulted counsel. The appellate court rejected plaintiffs' arguments Cox waived its right to arbitration, saying Cox actions in the two cases "were consistent with an intent to arbitrate." That waiver argument seems to be based on Cox's agreement to stay the litigation while the bellwether Healy v. Cox Communications case proceeded, the 10th Circuit said, adding that the preference to litigate one case "does not mean it will want to litigate a future case." The court also rejected the plaintiffs' argument the Cox arbitration clause was unenforceable because language in it seems to indicate Cox could change the agreement terms at any time, since that argument challenges the contract as a whole should be decided in arbitration. The twin lawsuits claimed Cox violated antitrust law by tying its premium cable service to set-top rental. The panel's judges were Harris Hartz, Gregory Phillips and Nancy Moritz, with Hartz writing the opinion.

Referencing quantum theory, the CERN Large Hedron Collider and 1960s sitcom Bewitched, Mediacom criticized FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's opting not to reform retransmission consent rules as "doom[ing] consumers to continued pummeling from the double whammy that congress unambiguously directed the Commission to prevent" service interruption and significant increases in subscriber costs at unprecedented rates. The 12-page filing Friday in docket 15-216 by Mediacom General Counsel Joseph Young likened Wheeler to Bewitched's Samantha and her evil, nearly identical cousin Serena: "The dramatic inconsistency between the Commission's recent actions and the expectations created by Chairman Wheeler's early pronouncements on policy and process suggests the possibility of distinct Chairman Wheelers -- the equivalents of Samantha and Serena." Touching on Don Quixote and the psychological phenomenon of inattentional blindness, Mediacom decried the set-top box and ISP privacy proceedings as "correcting problems that either don't really exist or are of no real consequence to the vast majority of Americans." But much of its critique involved the agency's totality of circumstances test review and subsequent decision not to amend a rule (see 1607140047). While one of the Wheelers -- Chairman 1 -- expressed sympathy for pay-TV subscribers, Mediacom said, "Chairman 2 ... turned the policies articulated by Chairman 1 on their head" by ignoring the need for addressing retrans. "If the rules are really adequate for the job, then why, as the Chairman himself noted in his March 6, 2014, blog entry, are blackouts continuing to occur and prices continuing to rise without abatement?" Mediacom said. "All of this suggests that Chairman 1 has, indeed, gone missing. We need to get him back." The FCC didn't comment.

Any NPRM on programming diversity should seek comment about the effects of forced bundling and penetration requirements and potential restrictions on those practices, the American Cable Association told FCC staff in a meeting, said an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 16-41. The agency also should seek comment about most-favored nation (MFN) language aimed at online providers and multichannel video programming distributors, the definition of "independent" programming and sources of FCC authority for action, ACA said. Bundling and penetration questions ACA wants to be asked include ascertaining the prevalence of such practices and how they inhibit MVPDs from carrying indie programming, and whether penetration requirements hinder cord shaving, which hurts broadband deployment, ACA said. The group said the FCC should seek comment on such possible sources of agency authority as Communications Act sections 257(b), about promotion of diverse media voices, 616(a), regarding establishment of rules governing program carriage agreements, 628(b), banning unfairly hindering competition in favor of affiliated programming, 325(c)(3), covering broadcast retransmission consent, and Telecom Act Section 706, directing the FCC to take action when telco capability is being deployed inefficiently. The meeting attendees included ACA Senior Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman and Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake. Bundling and MFN language was the subject of indie programmer vitriol in the agency's programming diversity notice of inquiry proceeding earlier this year (see 1603310044).

Fox Sports’ Go live streaming platform launched on Apple TV Friday bringing Multiview Display for up to four streams of Fox Sports live content along with a 60-frame-per-second streaming rate, said the network in a Friday announcement. Owners of fourth-generation Apple TVs in the U.S., who receive Fox Sports TV networks as part of a pay-TV subscription, can access Fox Sports, FS1, FS2, Fox Sports Regional Networks, Fox College Sports, Fox Deportes and Fox Soccer Plus through the Fox Sports Go app on Apple TV, it said. More than 95 million U.S. users have access to Fox Sports GO through participating pay-TV providers, said Fox.

Windstream wants to broaden its Kinetic TV fiber-based video offering footprint to more than 50,000 homes in North Carolina. The company said in a news release Thursday it submitted a formal bid to the North Carolina secretary of state for a cable TV franchise covering 13 communities primarily in and around the Charlotte area. The telco said North Carolina would become the fourth Kinetic market since the service's 2015 launch in Nebraska (see 1410030050), joining Kentucky and Texas. In its application, Windstream said it expects to start service Oct. 3.