Universal Electronics (UEI) said it signed a warrants agreement with Comcast as an extension of a partnership to develop advanced technology products. That follows a development and supply collaboration renewed this year, in which UEI supplies the voice remote as part of Comcast’s X1 Entertainment Operating System, said UEI. Comcast can acquire shares of UEI stock tied to the potential fulfillment of undisclosed, pre-defined purchase milestones. The agreement positions UEI to provide “innovative products” across Xfinity Home, said UEI CEO Paul Arling.

Diverse programming is both a reason to back Charter/TWC/BHN and a cause for concern about the deals, the National Diversity Coalition (NDC) and Herring Networks told FCC commissioners and representatives, according to a pair of ex parte filings (see here and here) Tuesday in docket 15-149. NDC, in meetings with Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly, and with Gigi Sohn, aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler, said Time Warner Cable's "relatively poor record ... on diverse programming," along with Charter Communications' "far stronger commitment to diversity of programming" were a central reason for NDC's support of Charter's planned buys of Bright House Networks and TWC. The group also said it believes Charter would likely "go well beyond" its pledges for New Charter board and employment diversity (see 1601150017), and its planned low-income broadband offering would be notable progress in narrowing the digital divide. Conversely, Herring CEO Robert Herring and President Charles Herring met with Commissioner Mignon Clyburn about its proposals that Charter/TWC/BHN be conditioned on New Charter's carrying independent, unaffiliated news services and on carrying any independent programmer that can show it previously had an affiliation agreement with Charter with an over-the-top prohibitive exhibition clause. Such an alternative distribution method-centric clause would correct "past harms and minimize the concerns of discriminatory, anticompetitive, and retaliatory behavior," Herring said. It has pushed for a Charter/TWC/BHN condition requiring it to carry any independent network that already has a national footprint and carriage on some rival multichannel video programming distributors (see 1602220061). In a statement Wednesday, Charter said, “As evidenced by the overwhelming support of independent programmers like The Blaze, Entrevision, TV One, Baby First, RFD-TV, One World Sports, Fuse Media, Ovation, Inspire, AXS TV, Condista, Bounce TV, Crown Media, and Reelz, Charter is and will remain committed to offering our customers the best possible array of programming.”

The FCC should allow cable companies to send required notice or written information through email to subscribers for whom the operator has a confirmed email address, the American Cable Association and NCTA said in a petition for declaratory ruling posted online Tuesday. The associations want to use electronic communication to meet FCC requirements that they provide written information about prices, fees, services offered, instructions on how to use the cable system, and other things. Most cable operators still disseminate this information via mailed hard copies, the cable groups said. “As a consequence, the cable industry uses hundreds of millions of pages of paper annually to disseminate information that few subscribers read and virtually none are likely to retain.” Instead, the FCC should allow cable operators to use email, “the provision of appropriately-noticed links to websites, or by other electronic measures reasonably calculated to reach individual customers,” the associations said.

Failed Univision/AT&T carriage talks resulted in a Univision blackout on AT&T's U-verse, with each side blaming the other. In a statement Friday, Univision claimed racial "redlining" of its audience and said AT&T's "discriminatory behavior is preventing Hispanic America from receiving content and information ... which is especially vital in this election year. In our case, it's simple: we must receive fair compensation, on par with English language broadcasters." AT&T in a statement said Univision "has blocked our U-verse customers from receiving most of their channels. This is about nothing more than Univision demanding we pay an outrageous price increase. We are fighting for all of our customers to keep what Univision charges at a reasonable amount." AT&T also said Spanish-language channels "are important to us and our customers. That’s why we carry 78 Spanish-language channels.”

Anti- and pro-Charter/TWC/BHN parties have been busy lobbying the FCC, according to filings Friday and Thursday in docket 15-149. The filings by Time Warner and Charter Communications (see here and here) detail meetings Wednesday with FCC staff, including Owen Kendler, who's heading the FCC working team overseeing the deals' review. Time Warner's filing said its team -- including General Counsel Paul Cappuccio and HBO General Counsel Eve Konstan -- presented various Charter public statements and nonpublic interactions with Charter that illustrated how its buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable will lead to attempts to hurt the development of over-the-top competition. They also said the FCC should take time to look into such concerns and ensure New Charter can't or won't hurt OTT competition. Charter's team, including Chief Technology Officer Jay Rolls and Executive Vice President-Government Affairs Catherine Bohigian, met with FCC staff including Kendler on public interest benefits of the deals and Charter's commitments such as settlement-free interconnection, broadband service without usage-based billing or data caps, and a low-income broadband offering. The FCC's unofficial 180-day shot clock for reviewing the transactions stood Friday at 160.

The ease of being a cord cutter makes FCC plans for the set-top box market “a real head-scratcher,” said High Tech Forum editor and American Enterprise Institute Visiting Fellow Richard Bennett in an posting Thursday. On-demand viewing is on the rise, and it's easier to be a cord cutter than ever, Bennett said. FCC set-top plans won’t “find traction” with viewers for at least four to five years, he said. By then, according to current trends, “TV viewing will be at least 80 percent on-demand,” Bennett said. “Given these trends, it’s not immediately obvious that the FCC should be trying to preserve devices like the set-top box whose sole purpose in life is to enable the viewing of linear TV.” Others have been pointing to recent market developments as a reason not to pursue what the agency eyes as a means to make it easier for consumers to get encrypted video content from devices they don't lease from operators (see 1603020035).

Communications Workers of America requests for access to highly confidential information submitted in the FCC review of Altice's purchase of Cablevision should be denied, the cable companies said in an objection posted Thursday in docket 15-257. CWA last week filed confidentiality acknowledgments for Telecommunications Policy Director Debbie Goldman and consultant Randy Barber. In their joint objection, Altice/Cablevision said neither qualifies as an outside counsel -- by not being a lawyer -- or outside consultant since neither is employed by a noncommercial participant as CWA "quite clearly is a commercial participant in this proceeding [because it] participates in union organizing and collective bargaining activities directly adverse to Cablevision and has been regularly and is currently involved in labor disputes with Cablevision." CWA also represents thousands of workers at Cablevision's chief rival, Verizon, they said. Meanwhile, because a New York Public Service Commission administrative law judge also denied CWA access to sensitive information submitted by Altice/Cablevision, the two said the FCC should take those ALJ decisions into account. CWA didn't comment but Goldman said the union plans to file a response. CWA has been a critic of the proposed deal (see 1601270048).

That FCC-proposed set-top box rules are "wholly unnecessary" is shown by AT&T's plans (see 1603010046 and 1603020031) to offer the video services from its recently acquired DirecTV via streaming over mobile devices, smart TVs and PCs in Q4, a telco spokesman told us Wednesday. The features confirm the rules would be "backward looking and would impose significant costs with no corresponding benefits," he said. "Our new services will demonstrate that we and the market generally are moving beyond set-top boxes, and providing consumers more choices than ever to watch what they want, when they want and on the device of their choosing anywhere they happen to be. Rather than imposing a government technology mandate that will never keep pace with the vibrantly competitive video marketplace, the Commission should allow competition to work." Last month, commissioners voted along party lines (see 1602180065) to seek comment on changing set-top rules to make it easier for consumers to see the encrypted video conveyed by the devices without leasing one from their pay-TV provider. Agency spokespeople didn't comment Wednesday.

Federal regulatory approval of Charter/TWC/BHN coming before the California Public Utilities Commission decision expected by May 12 (see 1602120055) is "a possibility," Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge said Tuesday at a Morgan Stanley conference. The FCC's unofficial 180-day shot clock for review of the Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks deals was at 158 days Wednesday, with the agency "working ... to be consistent with their shot clock," Rutledge said. While upward of 95 percent of Charter video customers take an expanded video package, affordability "is a real issue," Rutledge said, saying video expenses are driven by programmers and programming bundles. He said optimally Charter would sell smaller, tailored programming packages but "I don't have the right to buy programming that way." Pricing is seeing "some moderation," Rutledge said, saying New Charter's bigger scale should help with video pricing. He said Charter's cloud-based Spectrum Guide user interface was rolled out in Missouri and Nevada, and is being introduced in other parts of the company's current footprint. He also said the company sees it as a means to increasing its customer base: "There's a tremendous amount of entertainment in that [video] package; it's hard to represent because of the user interfaces." Asked about future mergers and acquisitions opportunities for Charter, Rutledge said, "At the moment, M&A isn't really attractive to me. Just out of sheer exhaustion. But there's opportunity out there and we'll take advantage as those things come to us." In a separate presentation at the Morgan Stanley conference, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said that the day after it called off its attempt to buy TWC, Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit "said we're going to make customer service our best product." Referring to Smit's being a former Navy SEAL, Roberts said, "I thought to myself he's had some worse missions than a merger that failed. It is early innings but were seeing the beginning of a turnaround and results" with video customer growth in 2015 -- the first such growth in years. Roberts said he sees Comcast moving toward providing a variety of broadband-related services, such as remote diagnostics of connected devices in homes: "We are looking at smart Internet as an opportunity not any other company has -- even if all those aren't our devices." A Comcast goal this year is to move to a system where all customer transactions can be done on mobile devices, Roberts said.

Comments are due by March 30 in docket 16-41 on the FCC's notice of inquiry on carriage hurdles for independent and diverse programmers, including public, educational or governmental programmers, with reply comments due April 19, the agency said in a public notice Tuesday. The FCC commissioners approved the NOI at their Feb. 18 meeting (see 1602180044).