Cablevision Executive Vice President-Strategy and Development Thomas Dolan is receiving $21 million to settle litigation on compensation claims from 2005-2008, when he was on an unpaid leave of absence. In an SEC filing Friday, Cablevision said the agreement signed earlier this month has Dolan's father, Charles, the company's chairman, and Thomas's brother, James, the CEO, paying Cablevision $6 million aggregate personally "in partial reimbursement of the Company's settlement payment ... if [its] pending merger with Altice N.V. is not consummated." According to the SEC filing, an independent committee of the company's board approved the settlement. Thomas Dolan, a board member, sued Cablevision in 2011, and the company was appealing an April summary judgment ruing by a New York Supreme Court judge in Thomas Dolan's favor.

Cox Communications pushed back at BMG Rights Management's motions for a permanent injunction and for a judgment as a matter of law for vicarious infringement, in a pair of filings Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. BMG simultaneously filed an opposition to Cox's motion for a new trial. The court is scheduled to hear oral argument Feb. 26 on BMG and Cox motions on the copyright infringement complaints first brought by BMG in 2014 (see 1601270012). The BMG-sought injunction "is hopelessly vague to the acts that it would restrain or require [and] strongly suggests that it expects Cox to spy on its customers' activities and terminate their Internet accounts," Cox said. Such an injunction also wouldn't stop piracy of BMG works via BitTorrent sites and would punish "consumers by terminating their Internet accounts based on mere accusations, with no due process," Cox said. Even if the court granted such an injunction, Cox said it plans to seek a stay of the judgment, including any injunction. On BMG's motion seeking to overturn the jury ruling that Cox wasn't liable for vicarious infringement, Cox said BMG isn't complaining about the court's jury instructions and said BMG is arguing essentially that the court should reverse that ruling "because the jury did not accept BMG's arguments about supervision." Cox said trial evidence showed it had no direct financial interest in any BMG infringement. In its own motion, BMG said Cox's new trial motion "seeks to re-litigate a smorgasbord of legal and evidentiary issues that the Court has previously decided against it -- often multiple times." The jury's findings of contributory infringement, direct infringement and willful actions by Cox came from "overwhelming evidence" while the jury received proper instruction, BMG said. It said Cox -- contrary to the cable ISP's arguments -- produced ample testimony and documents about its graduated response system and handling of copyright infringement on its network.

Cinemax added a stand-alone over-the-top offering via Sling TV for $10 a month, Sling TV said in a news release Thursday. Previously, Cinemax and its Max Go app offering were available only to cable subscribers, Sling TV said.

Small, rural multichannel video programing distributors face plenty of retransmission negotiation problems with broadcasters but don't file formal complaints with the FCC largely due to the costs of doing so and the question of how long it might take to get a resolution, said WTA, Interstate Communications and Northeast Nebraska Telephone (NNT) in an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 15-216. Often the legal costs "and economic damage from failure to reach agreement" outweigh the benefits of filing a complaint, they said, noting the FCC's review of the totality of circumstances test to good-faith negotiating. WTA and others said small, rural MVPDs "are in a vastly inferior bargaining position" with network affiliates and talks are usually of the "take it or leave it" ilk, meaning their aggregate per-subscriber retrans consent fees paid to local stations have gone up exponentially in the past 10 years. They also pushed for more transparency so the FCC could decide whether large MVPDs pay notably less in retrans consent and other programming fees than small MVPDs. WTA said some MVPDs have created a "broadcast fees" line item on consumers' bills that still complies with contractual nondisclosure obligations but gives subscribers some idea of the drivers of cable and IPTV rate hikes. Small MVPDs also have seen broadcasters seek contractual language regarding new linear cable networks that could be bought or created in the future, yet balk at retrans consent terms that reflect the costs rural pay-TV providers face when they have to engage third parties in receiving broadcast signals at their head-ends, they said. The rise of retrans consent fees and other programming costs could be slowed through such steps as a la carte pricing and allowing MVPDs to negotiate for retrans with stations outside their designated market areas, WTA and others said. The filing recapped a meeting WTA, Interstate and NNT representatives had with FCC staff, including Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake. In a statement Friday, NAB said broadcast retrans consent fees "remain just a small fraction of a typical cable bill. The fact is that high cable rates can be pegged to exorbitant set top box fees, high DVR fees, and rising fees for cable networks that are rarely watched.”

Lobbying over a coming FCC NPRM to untie set-top boxes (see 1602100036) from mostly being provided only by multichannel video programming distributors continued, filings Wednesday and Thursday in docket 15-64 and other statements showed. Allowing consumers to access content from multiple sources on one device would "limit the power of traditional content gatekeepers,” the Writer’s Guild of America, West said about coming FCC set-top box proposals in meetings this week with Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel and aides to Chairman Tom Wheeler, an ex parte filing posted Thursday said. “Seven companies (CBS, Disney, Discovery, Fox, NBCU, Time Warner and Viacom) control almost all television programming and a handful of MVPDs control how that content is distributed to consumers.” The proposals would increase consumer costs, and threaten security and copyright, NCTA said in meetings with aides to Commissioner Ajit Pai. TiVo has been providing consumers with “a competitive set-top box option for over a decade without any of the parade of horribles” listed by NCTA, TiVo said in meetings with Rosenworcel, Pai, Clyburn and aides to Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, according to an ex parte filing. Also Thursday, the Future of TV Coalition, which unveiled itself the day the FCC said the NPRM was coming, said broadcasters are opposing what the rulemaking would seek. "Big news in the AllVid debate" as NAB "went on record with deep concerns about the FCC’s AllVid proposal," the MVPD- and programmer-backed group said, citing NAB CEO Gordon Smith's comments to be shown this weekend on C-SPAN (see 1602100066). "This development is critical because the organization that is so deeply rooted in the local broadcast TV ecosystem is pulling the curtain back on the real motives and hidden costs of the AllVid rule." AllVid was something the previous FCC chairman pursued to try to let consumers access encrypted MVPD programming from sources other than pay-TV-provided set-tops, which the current FCC has said is off the table.

More than 10 terabytes of data were uploaded and downloaded inside Levi’s Stadium during the Super Bowl, said Comcast, which provided the dual 10 Gbps connections for the stadium’s Wi-Fi network. The record data consumption was equivalent to streaming 6,000-plus hours of HD video or nearly 1.2 million 2 megabyte images, the cable ISP said Tuesday. More than half of the volume was generated by the Super Bowl 50 Stadium app, which allowed users to order food, check scores and watch Super Bowl commercials and replays, it said.

The pay-TV industry isn't popular, with large numbers of people thinking the service is too expensive and its providers are "greedy," according to Harris Poll results commissioned by broadcast TV ally TVFreedom released Tuesday. Ninety-four percent of pay-TV subscribers think providers should be required to make fees easy to understand, 90 percent believe one shouldn't need to get a double- or triple-play package to get the lowest TV service pricing, 74 percent believe DVR/set-top box rental fees are too high, and 51 percent feel they have affordable, competitive choice in pay-TV providers, Harris said. Among pay-TV subscribers, it said, 21 percent said equipment rental fees are their biggest complaint, other than price, about their service, followed by poor service or connection quality. Harris also said that among all those surveyed, 86 percent believe pay-TV services are too expensive, and 77 percent believe pay-TV providers put more weight on profit than service quality. Harris said, 52 percent describe pay-TV providers as "greedy," with 22 agreeing with the adjective "unpleasant" and 18 percent with "heartless." Positive adjectives like "convenient" (26 percent) and "innovative" (13 percent) were less often selected. The poll was done online in December of 2,047 U.S. adults ages 18 and up, of whom 1,536 subscribed to a pay-TV service, Harris said. NCTA didn't comment.

Charter Communications' broadband-related commitments should be extended to 10 years in any regulatory approval of its buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, Public Knowledge said in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in FCC docket 15-149. It recapped a meeting between PK and FCC staff including Owen Kendler, who's heading the commission working team overseeing the deals' review. At the meeting, PK argued Charter's proposed broadband-related conditions aren't enough to protect the public interest, largely because their three-year span is too short. "If the purpose of such conditions is, among other things, to protect consumers by ensuring that online video has an opportunity to grow without being thwarted by cable incumbents, then any such conditions must be of a sufficient duration to allow new competition to develop," PK said. The group said it did applaud Charter's aversion to data caps, "were the commitment to be sufficiently extended." It also said it highlighted a number of public interest dangers it saw in Charter/TWC/BHN. Also armed with a litany of dangers, Stop Mega Cable Coalition members met with FCC staff to urge the agency "solve or prevent the harms" that would come with the $89.1 billion deals, said a separate ex parte filing Tuesday in the docket. Involved in the meetings were coalition representatives from Common Cause, Consumers Union, Demand Progress, Dish Network, Future of Music Coalition, Open Technology Institute, NTCA, Public Knowledge, USTelecom and Zoom Telephonics. They met with FCC staffers including front-line representatives of Chairman Tom Wheeler, and separately with members of the transaction team including Kendler and Media Bureau Director Bill Lake. The meetings were Friday, the day USTelecom announced it was leaving the coalition over a disagreement about the goal of stopping Charter/TWC/BHN, with USTelecom interested in it being approved with conditions (see 1602050056). According to the ex parte, coalition members said dangers of Charter/TWC/BHN include the potential of New Charter and Comcast acting as gatekeepers to the over-the-top market due to their high-speed broadband market share, the outsized leverage New Charter would have over small and independent programmers, and the increased power New Charter would have to block out competing modem manufacturers. In a statement, Charter said its "pro-broadband and online video friendly approach, which has won the support of industry leaders like Netflix, includes no data caps, no usage based billing, a commitment to an open internet and a generous interconnection policy." Charter also said it "continue[s] to engage with the FCC on their thorough review of the pending transactions.”

The number of TV viewing hours disrupted by retransmission consent-borne blackouts was down again in 2015, and a minuscule fraction of TV viewing hours are blacked out annually, NAB said in a filing Monday in docket 15-216. NAB's filing was to reinforce broadcasters' recent repeated assertions that the market is operating effectively and that arguments by multichannel video programming distributors and allies are overblown, as the FCC considers changes to the totality of circumstances test for good-faith retransmission consent negotiations. "While the 'crisis' alleged by the pay TV industry has no basis in reality, the appearance of a crisis ... directly serves its interest in government intervention in the retransmission consent marketplace," NAB said. Only by closing its totality of circumstances NPRM will the FCC "remove the incentives for pay TV providers to create service disruptions and thus promote the interests of viewers," NAB said. Its filing also included an analysis by BIA Kelsey Chief Economist Mark Fratrik of carriage interruptions from 2011 through 2015. During those five years, carriage blackouts affected roughly 0.015 percent of total annual hours seen in the U.S., roughly the same as in a similar look at 2006-2011, Fratrik said. "The average household is still more likely to be unable to view a local television station from electricity outages than from carriage interruptions caused by unsuccessful retransmission consent negotiations," he said. The total number of affected viewing hours in 2015 was 53 million, down from 68.5 million in 2014, which was itself down from 191 million in 2013, Fratrik said. That 53 million was about twice the 26.3 million affected viewing hours in 2011, according to Fratrik's analysis. In a separate filing Monday in the docket, NAB criticized the American TV Alliance for its use of a retransmission consent dispute between Nexstar Broadcasting and Cox Communications as reinforcing its call for totality of circumstances test reform (see [Ref:1602040041]). The two reached a new multiyear agreement Thursday, but ATVA's proposal on prohibiting blackout of marquee events -- such as Sunday's Super Bowl -- encourages broadcasters to withhold their consent to retransmission earlier but to provide that single event to be carried by the pay-TV provider, NAB said. "ATVA's own proposal therefore creates perverse incentives for broadcaster to avoid granting extensions during impasses that could expire too close to any event that might be considered 'marquee,'" it said. ATVA didn't comment.

Multichannel video programming distributor apps allow consumers to view MVPD content on multiple devices without endangering licensing and copyright agreements, said NCTA in meetings with aides to FCC Commissioners Mignon Clyburn, Mike O’Rielly and Ajit Pai last week. The “government intervention” into navigation devices “could increase consumer costs, threaten security, ignore content licensing agreements, and undermine consumer protections,” said the association in a filing posted Monday to docket 15-64. NCTA and other pay-TV programmers and distributors have opposed a coming NPRM to make it easier for non-MVPD set-top boxes to get content that's now mainly received in homes via an MVPD-provided set-top.