Hulu's free ad-supported content will be leaving Hulu.com within a couple of weeks and moving to Yahoo View as the subscription online video distributor focuses on its original content acquisition and its forthcoming virtual multichannel video programming distribution service next year, Hulu told us. Under the Yahoo View partnership with Hulu announced in a news release Monday, the Yahoo View site, starting this fall, will feature the most recent five episodes of ABC, NBC and Fox sitcoms eight days after original broadcast, plus various movies, anime and Korean drama episodes. Yahoo said mobile Yahoo View apps will be forthcoming. Last week, Time Warner bought a stake in Hulu, which also is owned by Comcast, Disney and 21st Century Fox (see 1608030033).

The FCC Media Bureau is proposing an $11,000 fine against Fidelity Cablevision for violating the agency's equal employment opportunity (EEO) rules. In a notice of apparent liability Monday, the Media Bureau said it audited Fidelity Cablevision's EEO compliance in 2015 and found that its Lawton, Oklahoma, operation failed to recruit widely for 13 full-time openings, filling nine of those spots with referrals from existing employees and walk-in applicants -- none of which constitutes a recruitment effort that includes public outreach. "Internal postings do not result in sufficient public outreach to inform job seekers who are unconnected to ... staff" that positions are open, the bureau said, saying the FCC "has made clear that recruiting solely from Internet sources does not satisfy the requirement to widely disseminate information concerning vacancies." Fidelity didn't comment Monday.

Viacom continues to hope to ink a major subscription VOD deal as soon as this quarter, CEO Philippe Dauman said Thursday in a quarterly conference call. Dauman said those SVOD talks have slowed due to uncertainty about Viacom's leadership legal battles "coupled with our evaluation of various new distribution opportunities." The family of controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone plus Dauman and others on the board are engaged in a protracted legal battle over whether Redstone can remove them from their jobs. Many players from traditional distributors to over-the-top providers, are creating virtual multichannel video programming distributor products, he said. "We just want to make sure that we maximize our overall value," Dauman said. "We are having fruitful discussions." He said that during the most recent quarter, the programmer signed long-term affiliation agreements with Dish Network and Cox Communications, "both with solid annual rate increases." The company previously said the SVOD holdup would affect quarterly results (see 1606170013). For the quarter over the year-ago period, Viacom said in a news release, revenue grew 2 percent to $3.1 billion, with license fees up 39 percent from licensing some titles for SVOD services and from revenue from Paramount TV production, but profit fell 27 percent to $432 million. Dauman also said Viacom had winnowed down "to a handful of prospects" in its bid of selling a 49 percent interest in Paramount.

U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson of Los Angeles granted Lions Gate Entertainment's motion for reconsideration and now is denying the Ameritrade/Havas Worldwide motion to dismiss Lions Gate's trademark dilution litigation, reversing his March dismissal order. In the new order (in Pacer) entered Tuesday, Pregerson said his previous order partially granting the Ameritrade/Havas motion to dismiss did rely -- as Lions Gate argued in its motion for reconsideration (see 1607120017) -- on an outdated statement of law, and the 1006 Trademark Dilution Revision Act now says it isn't necessary to show a junior mark is identical or nearly so to a senior mark. While the Ameritrade/Havas advertising in question used a slogan that was similar to but not identical to the Dirty Dancing line "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," to which Lions Gate holds the trademark rights, that threshold of being identical is no longer applicable as long as they're similar, Pregerson said. Ameritrade didn't comment Wednesday.

The European Commission gave conditional clearance to the Vodafone/Liberty Global merger of their Dutch operations into a 50/50 joint venture, the two said in a news release Wednesday. They said the deal was approved after Vodafone committed to divesting its consumer fixed business before the merger. They also said the divestment might include mobile virtual network operator access subject to an agreement on terms. Vodafone and Liberty Global announced the deal in February and said they hoped to have it complete by year's end (see 1602160018)

Hulu's live-streaming service set to debut next year will be among a number of "virtual MVPDs" that will launch over the coming 12 months, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said Wednesday. Several Time Warner Turner channels will be part of that live-streaming service, including TNT, TBS, CNN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, truTV, Boomerang and Turner Classic Movies, Time Warner said in a news release Wednesday, noting it bought 10 percent of Hulu. Financial terms weren't released, and other owners remain Comcast, Disney and 21st Century Fox. In a conference call announcing Time Warner's Q2 results, Bewkes said growth in live-streaming multichannel video programming distributors "will be great both for consumers and our … brands.” The company is making a variety of subscription VOD investments, including rolling out HBO Now to the Nordic region and Latin America and planning other rollouts later this year and an upcoming art house SVOD offering from Turner, Bewkes said. The Hulu investment "fits our strategy like a glove" by further increasing Time Warner exposure to the growing over-the-top market, he said. Bewkes said the Hulu deal did not include content license obligations and when it comes to licensing content to other SVODs or traditional MVPDs, "We'll do that on a stand-alone, arm's length basis." For the quarter, Time Warner sales fell 5 percent from the year-ago period to $7 billion, driven mostly by declines in lower videogame, home entertainment and TV licensing revenue due to particularly high sales in the comparable quarter a year ago, the company said in a news release. Time Warner had net income of $952 million, down from $971 million. Its stock closed Wednesday at $77.83, up 2.7 percent.

Liberty Global signed a deal with All3Media for creation of original content for its European, Latin American and Caribbean customers, Liberty said in a news release Tuesday. Liberty said the deal is for four original drama series over the next two years, with the series to be made available on demand to subscribers. All3Media production companies will produce the series, Liberty said. Liberty and Discovery are joint partners in All3Media, and Liberty and Discovery also renewed their distribution agreement, Liberty said in a separate news release Tuesday. That renewal will keep Discovery networks on Liberty's cable lineups in 12 European nations, and includes digital rights for accessing that programing on various devices and out of the home, Liberty said. Liberty said the deal also includes full Olympic Games coverage through Discovery's Eurosport network.

Despite a loss of 11,000 video customers in Q2, Mediacom ended the quarter with 13,000 additional customers on broadband and phone customer growth, it said Tuesday, announcing Q2 results. Mediacom said it ended the quarter with 842,000 video customers, 1.23 million high-speed data customers and 454,000 phone customers. Revenue rose 4.4 percent to $450.8 million, with big growth in high-speed data and in business services offsetting declines in video, phone and advertising revenue, it said. After expenses, free cash flow rose 7 percent to $55.6 million.

Nokia finished its takeover of Gainspeed, a California startup with a virtual converged cable access platform (CCAP) line, in a bid to broaden its cable access product portfolio and give it a broader footprint there, it said in a news release Monday. Gainspeed will be part of its Fixed Networks business group, Nokia said. Financial terms of the deal announced in June weren't made public. Nokia previously said virtual CCAP is intended to help cable operators increase the capacity of their existing hybrid fiber coaxial infrastructure while cutting headend space and power requirements.

Comcast's creation of a mobile division, plus its activation of the Verizon mobile virtual network operator and participation in the broadcast incentive auction (see 1510270041) indicate it's potentially getting into the mobile business, said Credit Suisse analyst Omar Sheikh in a note to investors Monday. A mobile product offering would help strengthen ties to existing customers and allow potential growth with new ones, Sheikh said. Saying Comcast's X1 platform investment is "paying off," he raised the target price on Comcast from $69 to $75. Sheikh said the 90,000 video subscribers added in the past 12 months are driven largely by X1 and its increasing customer engagement and cutting churn. With only 40 percent of Comcast's video customer base penetrated, Sheikh said, "we see the significant investment in the rollout driving further improvement in cable video operating and financial metrics over the long term."