Cox Communications, DirecTV, Mediacom, Suddenlink, WOW and numerous National Cable Television Cooperative members were to have unbundled Fox Business Network Thursday to make the Republican presidential debates available to more of their subscribers, FBN said in a release Wednesday. The pair of debates was to have been televised at 6 and 9 p.m. live from the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, South Carolina.
Rogers Communications, in what it called a “global first,” beamed the first-ever live NBA game in 4K to customers with a NextBox 4K set-top when it aired the Toronto Raptors vs. Orlando Magic game Thursday from the O2 Arena in London. Rogers cable customers who tuned their NextBox 4K set-top to Channel 999 at 3 p.m. EST would be able to get the game “at four times the pixels of HD for stunning picture quality, higher resolution and improved motion video,” Rogers said in a Wednesday announcement. The production was in cooperation with BT Sport, which launched Europe's first live sports 4K channel, BT Sport Ultra HD, last year and also was to beam the game in 4K to customers in the U.K., Rogers said. Rogers claims to have made the largest commitment to live sports broadcasting in 4K in North America, with plans to do more than 100 live sporting events in 4K, including every 2016 Toronto Blue Jays home game, plus “marquee” NHL games, it said. In 2016, Rogers customers also will have access to stream 100 hours of 4K movies, series and TV shows through Netflix and other services, it said.
Set-top box shipments globally likely hit 253.1 million units for 2015, up slightly less than 2 percent from 2014, as the worldwide multichannel market hit 959 million subscribers, SNL Kagan said in a news release Thursday. The growth was due to increased demand in China and India, it said. Cable set-top unit shipments globally likely were close to 75 million for the year, about the same as 2014, and demand was likely flat as many cable TV markets approach saturation, SNL Kagan said. The IP set-top market also was probably flat as growing demand in Asia and Europe was offset by declines in North America, it said. Satellite set-top shipments are expected to be 47 percent of global set-top unit shipments, the largest segment of the market, it said. DVR-enabled set-top shipments declined for the year due to cost concerns and growing use of cloud-based DVR services, SNL Kagan said.
Five cable modems were DOCSIS 3.1 certified in the first wave of certifications for the standard, CableLabs said in a news release Wednesday. The modems are from Askey, Castlenet, Netgear, Technicolor and Ubee Interactive, CableLabs said. CEO Phil McKinney said the certification "represents the most rapid development and implementation cycle for a broadband technology development program ever delivered by CableLabs. Development of the initial DOCSIS 3.1 specifications to product certification has occurred in half the time of previous DOCSIS specifications.”
The FCC should permanently exempt cable systems with less than 1,000 subscribers from online public file requirements, said the American Cable Association in meetings last week with staff from the offices of Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Ajit Pai, said an ex parte posted in docket 14-127 Tuesday. The FCC also shouldn’t adopt any new disclosure requirements and grant a safe harbor for cable systems that use third parties to upload public file documents to a database, ACA said. An order on circulation would apply the TV station public-file rules to cable operators and others (see 1601080047).
The Q3 inflation adjustment factor for cable operators using FCC Form 1240 is 1.3 percent, similar to the 1.42 percent of Q3 2014, the Media Bureau said in a public notice Wednesday. Cable operators can use the factor to adjust the nonexternal cost portion of their rates for inflation, the bureau said. The adjustments are based on changes in the Department of Commerce’s Gross National Product Price Index, the PN said.
A private equity firm is buying more of cable company Wide Open West (WOW), the two said in a joint application posted Tuesday seeking FCC approval of transfer of control. WOW has more than 782,000 subscribers in 11 states, they said. The private equity firm, Crestview, bought a minority stake in WOW parent company Racecar Holdings in 2015, and was granted a right to buy up to 50 percent interest, the two said. On FCC approval, they said, Avista Capital Partners -- which today owns a majority of Racecar -- will have four seats on the board, while Crestview will have another four and the Racecar CEO will be the ninth. Financial terms of the transaction weren't made public in the filing.
The Supreme Court opted not to hear an appeal of a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that Cox Communications had waived its right to compel arbitration in a class-action antitrust suit on allegations the company tied its premium cable service to rental of a Cox set-top box. The three-judge panel in its June ruling agreed with a U.S. District Court decision that Cox's move to compel arbitration -- shortly before the trial was set to begin and after discovery and class certification -- was "overly late." The Supreme Court without comment Monday denied Cox's petition. Cox ultimately won in the set-top box litigation, with U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthron of Oklahoma City in November overruling a $6.31 million jury verdict against it, saying the class-action complainants failed to prove that tying a Cox Premium Cable subscription to renting of a Cox set-top box meant sizable losses of sales by third-party set-top box distributors (see 1511130005).
The FCC Media Bureau is asking Level 3 for more information about its interconnection agreement with Bright House Networks as the agency reviews Charter Communications' proposed acquisitions of BHN and Time Warner Cable. In an information and data request to Level 3 released Friday, the bureau said it wanted a copy of Level 3's most recent interconnection agreement with BHN, including paid peering, settlement free and transit agreements. It's the second information request to Level 3 from the bureau, after a request in October (see 1509220057) that covered such issues as Level 3's plans to provide service to online video distributors and whether Level 3's interconnection agreements differed between ISPs that have an Internet backbone and those that don't.
Time Warner Cable is challenging a Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable (MDTC) request to certify that the town of Adams doesn't have effective competition so TWC is subject to rate regulation there. The state agency's argument that direct broadcast satellite penetration is less than 15 percent in the town -- which is just east of the New York state line -- is flawed in that it didn't include all the relevant ZIP codes for the town, TWC said in an FCC filing posted Friday. When those ZIP codes -- and the DBS subscribers in them -- are added to the mix, satellite penetration hits the 15 percent statutory threshold and confirms the town has effective competition, TWC said. MDTC didn't comment Monday. It's seeking certification that more than 100 communities across the state lack effective cable competition (see 1601080019).