A 60-day clock has started for comment on the DOJ's proposed final judgment on Charter Communications' buys of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks with conditions on its treatment of online video distributors, it said in a notice published Tuesday in the Federal Register. That 60-day period isn't expected to delay the close of the deals, which Charter last week said would happen on Wednesday. The DOJ proposed barring New Charter from any contractual alternative distribution method limits on online video distributors (see 1604250039).
NBCUniversal's approach for Olympics coverage this summer will be "a glimpse" of how it will approach TV in the future, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said at NCTA's INTX 2016 show in Boston Monday. The 1996 Atlanta Olympics -- the last "live" Olympics where U.S. programming wasn't hampered by time-zone differences -- saw a total of 172 hours of programming on one network, Robert said. For Rio de Janeiro, NBCU will use 11 of its networks for 6,200 hours of programming, including live streaming of every event, he said. Through its cloud-based X1 platform, the company plans a variety of interactive features whereby viewers can search for content or information by sport, athlete or nation, Roberts said. He said roughly 35 percent of its customers use its X1 platform, with that expected to grow to 50 percent by the Olympics. Asked whether making content available in so many ways cannibalizes prime-time ratings, Roberts said, "Our experience has been if you put more in the top of the funnel what comes out in prime time will be greater than if you just had a single feed." Two-way capabilities have always been the competitive advantage cable has over satellite, and technology has caught up to the point where cable companies can now use it in such applications as voice commands and interspersing streaming video, he said. Roberts also said Comcast is heading to a model where all customer transactions, including signing up for service, can be done digitally. He also said Comcast is interested in making its X1 platform -- already licensed to Cox Communications (see 1507230038) -- available globally. Roberts said Comcast has no plans to get into an over-the-top model and compete outside its cable footprint. From its service trucks to its call centers, he said, "we have a clear value-add in market."
Advertisements across traditional TV and digital platforms are coexisting and feed into each other, though measurement improvements are needed in some areas, panelists from several industries said at INTX here in Boston Monday. One area where digital ads are further ahead than TV commercials is automation, said many of the speakers from the cable distributor and programmer and tech sectors. Measurement in some areas needs improving to what speakers called the census level. Eventually, TV will catch up to digital in terms of being automated, panelists said. Eliminating the “human touch” from the start was “easier on digital,” Charter Communications President-Media Sales David Kline said. “On television, it is a little bit more complex.” Such “automation will come, it's a bit more difficult to do on TV,” he said. Putting the right ad in the right place at the right time and giving viewers a chance to interact with the commercial content is “starting to happen," Kline said. “That's really when buyers start looking at television” as akin to digital, he said. “It's well within our grasp to do all this stuff. It's not going to replace it. Digital and TV can coexist.” AMC Networks President-National Advertising Sales Arlene Manos said that “the right ad at the right place at the right time” is the goal. While “the media gets all the responsibility for whether that [message] is getting across,” she said that “the ad itself does matter.” One hurdle to census-level measurement of ads is privacy, said IBM's Braxton Jarratt, general manager of the company's cloud video unit. There may be a “pretty large audience where you are not going to be able to do census-level measurement,” he said. One advantage of cable is that companies like Cablevision can match viewing to those who authenticate their credentials to watch online, versus elsewhere on the Web where cookies are used as proxies, said the company's Ben Tatta, president-media sales. With much video moving to an IP connection, “the ability to link all of that connected session data to a single household” will “be extremely important to content,” Tatta said. “That, to me, is the dream."
NCTA, eager to use the 5.9 GHz band for Wi-Fi, met with Daudeline Meme, aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, to discuss a pending public notice to refresh the record in the proceeding. “We encouraged the Commission to seek comment on both sense-and-avoid and re-channelization sharing approaches, the appropriate sharing approaches for both crash-avoidance and other Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) applications, and whether policies and assumptions the Commission made regarding DSRC in 1999 remain valid seventeen years later,” NCTA said. The filing was posted in FCC docket 13-49. Chairman Tom Wheeler is expected to push forward on rules allowing shared use of the band before the end of his chairmanship (see 1604280043).
"No good deed goes unpunished," the good deed in this case being serving as local counsel and filing an objection to a proposed settlement in a class-action lawsuit against Comcast, DirecTV, Major League Baseball and some regional sports networks (see 1604120066), said David Stein of Samuel & Stein in opposition (in Pacer) Wednesday to a motion by plaintiffs seeking sanctions against him. Class counsel, upset with the initial objection, "decided to make an example" by seeking sanctions against Stein and his firm for a routine class-action objection similar to those filed by other objectors in the case, Stein said in the objection in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Stein said the objection, for Texas attorney Christopher Bandas, was done as a courtesy, and the firm subsequently moved to remove itself because it didn't have sufficient time to get up to speed for the April 25 fairness hearing at which the court approved the settlement. "Their argument boils down to 'Christopher Bandas is a professional objector; professional objectors are terrible; David Stein is associated with Christopher Bandas; therefore, David Stein is also terrible,'" Stein said, saying the objection itself "was not objectively unreasonable." The plaintiffs, in their motion (in Pacer) in April seeking sanctions, argued the Stein-filed objection -- by complaining about the failure to obtain damages for class members -- ignores that the class was certified for injunctive relief only; ignores that reducing attorneys' fees wouldn't benefit class members because the fee is separate from class relief; and "is being presented for improper purposes, including to harass, cause unnecessary delay, and needlessly to increase the cost of litigation." The settlement ended litigation brought in 2012 by various baseball fans against MLB, the multichannel video programming distributors and individual MLB teams, with the plaintiffs claiming MLB's deal with the MVPDs for distribution of games online and on TV was an "illegal cartel," stifling competition (see 1601210032).
Charter Communications will pay a $640,000 settlement and set up a three-year compliance plan that widens the variety of third-party cable modems it accepts on its network, the FCC Media Bureau said in an order and consent decree Tuesday. The order follows a bureau investigation of Charter that it said sprung from Zoom Telephonics' petition to deny FCC approval of Charter's buying of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, with the cable modem maker alleging Charter infringed on the rights of subscribers to use non-harmful third-party cable modems (see 1510130054). The bureau said its investigation found that from 2012 to 2014, Charter told subscribers that they no longer could attach customer-owned modems and then provided a list of authorized third-party modems that required testing for issues not relating to network harm or theft of service. Under the order, Charter also is revising its cable modem testing regime so compliance testing will take no more than three weeks. Also, it is required under the order to appoint a senior corporate manager as compliance officer for implementing the compliance plan. Under the order, Charter can reject only certain cable modems, such as those that don't support DOCSIS 3.0 or higher. In a statement Wednesday, Charter said it is "pleased to be able to continue to give our customers the choice to use a modem provided by Charter for free or purchase an approved third party modem." "Zoom is pleased with much of the Commission’s action, including its requirement for much faster certification testing for cable modems and appropriate limits on tests," Zoom counsel Andrew Schwartzman said in an email to us Wednesday. "This is a major victory, and we hope other cable service providers will act consistent with the clear wishes of the FCC." Around the time the Charter settlement was released, the FCC also issued the text of the commissioners' order approving Charter/TWC/BHN (see 1605100050).
Arguments that an FCC proposal on set-top boxes would disrupt copyright protection for content are “a misdirection,” Public Knowledge representatives said in a meeting with aides to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 97-80. The practices multichannel video programming distributors are concerned about already are illegal, PK said. “It is hard to see how giving consumers greater access to lawful content would increase their appetite for unlawful content.” Content companies CBS, Disney, Scripps, 21st Century Fox and Viacom visited the FCC last week to argue the set-top proposal does threaten their copyrighted content, said an ex parte filing.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' April decision in Yershov v. Gannett Satellite Information Network shouldn't play any role in the 3rd Circuit's handling of an appeal of an unsuccessful Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) complaint brought against Viacom and Google, the companies said in 3rd Circuit filings (see here and here, in Pacer) Friday. The Yershov decision focused on VPPA definitions of "consumer" and "personally identifiable information," neither of which has bearing on the VPPA claims against Google, that company said. It said Yershov included "unwarranted broadening of the statutory text" when it said GPS coordinates could constitute personally identifiable information under the VPPA. Viacom similarly contrasted the case with Yershov, saying the disclosures at play in the VPPA complaint against it and Google consist of IP addresses and cookie identifiers, not GPS data, and the plaintiffs haven't offered a strong argument how that could lead to identification. "The disclosures in this case do not state a VPPA claim even under Yershov," Viacom said. The original lawsuit brought on behalf of a putative class of minors whose data was tracked when they went to various Nickelodeon websites was dismissed in 2015 by a U.S. District judge in Newark, New Jersey (see 1501220056), and the plaintiffs said in a 3rd Circuit filing (in Pacer) Thursday that the Viacom/Google disclosures included "even more detailed information than what was alleged in Yershov." The 1st Circuit with Yershov "became the first federal appellate court to determine whether unique computing device identifiers constitute [personally identifiable information] under the VPPA," the plaintiffs said, saying the 3rd Circuit should "adopt the well-reasoned logic of Yershov" and reverse the Newark court's decision. The 1st Circuit in Yershov reversed a U.S. District Court decision that Gannett did disclose information about a USA Today Mobile App user to a third party, but that user Alexander Yershov wasn't a consumer under VPPA.
Correction: The FCC Media Bureau rejected an appeal by the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel of Comcast cable equipment rates set by the Board of Public Utilities (see 1605040061).
Last year's order approving Altice's takeover of Suddenlink Communications (see 1512180035) was modified to include compliance with the letter of agreement (LOA) between Altice, Cablevision, Suddenlink and the Justice Department. In an order in Thursday's Daily Digest, the International, Media, Wireless and Wireline bureaus said the national security conditions in the December order would be incorporated into the LOA that was part of the approval process for Altice's buying Cablevision.