CEA President Gary Shapiro late Thursday weighed in on Dish Network’s legal battle with broadcasters over Dish’s AutoHop commercial-skipping feature, which spilled onto the CES show floor when CNET abruptly pulled Dish’s new Hopper with Sling DVR (CD Jan 6 p5) from consideration for its Best of CES awards. CNET is an affiliate of CBS, which like ABC, Fox and NBC have sued Dish in federal court seeking injunctions that would bar the AutoHop feature (CD Dec 5 p19). “We are extremely disappointed that CBS has interfered with CNET’s Best of CES awards,” Shapiro said in a statement. “CES has enjoyed a long and productive partnership with CNET and the Best of CES awards. Due to a pending lawsuit, CNET parent CBS is practicing effective censorship over CNET’s editorial staff. Through this action, they are denying CNET readers full access to information about an exciting innovation introduced here this week. CBS has long stood as a champion of the First Amendment. In this same spirit, we call upon CBS to reconsider its decision.” CBS Interactive, which runs CNET, pulled the Hopper with Sling “due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp.,” CNET spokeswoman Rosabel Tao said. “We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product.” CNET’s action “came out of the blue,” Dish spokesman Dave Arland told us. Dish executives were notified of the decision “just a few minutes” before the Best of CES awards ceremony was to start at 11 a.m. Thursday, just as they were leaving to attend the event, Arland said. In a statement, Dish CEO Joe Clayton blasted the “heavy-handed tactics” of CBS in denying CNET its “editorial independence.” Hopper with Sling “is all about consumer choice and control over the TV experience,” Clayton said. That CBS “would censor that message is insulting to consumers,” he said.
The FCC will consider an order revising and streamlining its rules to modernize the Experimental Radio Service at its Jan. 31 meeting, said the tentative agenda for the gathering, released Thursday. It said the order is to create a “more flexible environment to accelerate innovation and promote the introduction of new products, including medical devices, to the marketplace.” The commission will also hear a presentation on the agency’s work to expand broadband access and spectrum availability for healthcare uses. The meeting will begin at 10:30 a.m.
Shares of Starz were set to be distributed to Liberty Media shareholders Thursday, completing a long-planned spin off. Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei told investors at a Citigroup conference this week that he did not know whether the spun-off company would attract a buyer. He said recent licensing deals between studios and other premium networks such as HBO and Netflix wouldn’t preclude a movie studio from wanting to own its own premium channel. “You could make the case that Disney is far better off going and getting a huge number from Netflix and then figuring out that at least 16 channels of [pay-TV] real estate … is something they can do something very interesting with,” Maffei said. ISI Group analyst Vijay Jayant estimated Starz would have about $1.62 billion in sales in 2013, about 80 percent of which come in the form of pay-TV affiliate fees. Its biggest expense is programming costs, which were about $650 in 2011 and are due to step up as the network increases the amount of original programming it makes, he wrote investors.
The showing of 2012 election programming on public, educational and governmental (PEG) channels underscores the need for community media centers, said an Alliance for Community Media study. The study is the result of a survey conducted in the fall, ACM said in a press release (http://xrl.us/bn99h4). The study assessed the amount of 2012 election programming produced or carried by community media centers and the type of election programming transmitted, ACM said. Lack of staff and resources was the most common reason for not producing or airing such programming, it said. About 85 percent of the centers produced and/or telecast election programming last year, it said. About 95 percent of centers carried local election programming, 74 percent provided state election programming and “33 percent carried national election programming.” Respondents of the survey included PEG and noncommercial cable channels around the country, ACM said.
More than 650 million households worldwide will have broadband by the end of 2013, and 430 million will have a data network, research firm Parks Associates said Wednesday in a white paper. Parks also said broadband service providers will have deployed 120 million residential gateways and routers worldwide by 2017; just 75 million were deployed by the end of 2012. That growth will result in rising revenue for providers, with revenue in the U.S. from IP-connected home service bundles forecast to reach $780 million this year, growing to $1 billion in 2014, Parks said. Consumers are already beginning to “demand a clear value proposition on core functions before they start adding additional features,” said Parks President Stuart Sikes in a news release. “For example, connected cars represent a key area of growth and a hot topic at CES. Approximately one-third of U.S. car owners have in-vehicle connectivity, but our research shows the most popular apps relate to navigation and vehicle performance. To remain competitive, service providers and CE manufacturers must ensure their core offerings remain relevant to the connected consumer” (http://xrl.us/bn99ep).
Fisher Communications said it hired financial and legal advisers to help it consider strategic alternatives, including a possible sale of its assets. It also delayed its annual shareholder meeting until after June 9, but said it has set no timetable for the strategic review process. Shares of the broadcaster closed up 17 percent at $33.21 on Thursday. Moelis & Co. will give the company financial advice. Perkins Coie and White & Case will provide legal advice. Fisher owns 13 TV, seven low-power TV and three radio stations in the Northwest.
NCTA attorneys met with aides to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai to argue that a TV station that negotiates retransmission consent agreements on behalf of another in the same market should be deemed to have an attributable interest in that station, an ex parte notice said (http://xrl.us/bn99ct). “Such joint negotiations unfairly restrain competition and give broadcasters undue leverage to extract excessive ... fees.” The lawyers pointed to a Justice Department filing in a Texas federal court that regarded such arrangements as a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) attacked the State Public Service Commission and offered his own telecom recommendations in his State of the State speech Wednesday. Much of his speech and the extensive text (http://xrl.us/bn99bj) that accompanied it dealt with how his state handled Superstorm Sandy. Improvements are needed in the “procedures and practices” surrounding telecom infrastructure, his State of the State document said, slamming the “the PSC’s lack of rigorous oversight of utility providers in the state.” He gathered what was called the Moreland Commission to analyze the issue in November, and it heard testimony from telecom providers and others, and released its initial findings earlier this week (http://xrl.us/bn99cv). The PSC requires “new oversight and enforcement mechanisms,” the commission concluded, and recommended it be “statutorily authorized to levy administrative penalties against each utility for violations of PSC orders and regulations or upon a finding that such utility has failed to provide safe and adequate service under a ‘reasonable business’ standard.” “We will review the Commission’s report and work to address its concerns regarding oversight in order to protect customers,” a PSC spokesman told us. Cuomo also criticized distracted driving practices in which drivers read and sent text messages at the wheel and praised a state law against it: “The law has been an overwhelming success, increasing four-fold the number of tickets given for texting-while-driving violations in the one year since the new measures took effect; bringing the number from more than 4,500 to nearly 21,000 violations per year.” However, texting should be a communications tool during emergencies like Sandy, he said: “We will develop a program that will allow mass text messages to be sent to all wireless phones in a chosen area -- whether a single cell tower or a set of towns that have been struck by a severe weather event.” New York will also “explore establishing a one-stop disaster recovery communications hub that is integrated with social networking, mobile messaging and chat tools -- using all available means to reach New Yorkers,” Cuomo said. Cell networks need to be “strengthened,” he added.
Neustar earned high marks for its performance in 2012 as the U.S. local number portability administrator, getting a “near-perfect” score in a Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC) survey. Neustar operates NPAC, the U.S. telephone number registry, as part of its role as the nation’s LNPA. The Management Network Group did the survey independent of NPAC, Neustar said. Neustar said Wednesday it scored an average of 3.84 out of a possible 4.0 across all categories in the survey, including a 3.9 in overall customer focus. Service providers rated Neustar on a scale of 1 to 4: A 4 meant the provider was “extremely satisfied” and a 1 meant the provider was “completely dissatisfied.” Neustar said it has received “exceptional customer satisfaction ratings for the past 10 years,” including a 3.8 average score in 2011 (http://xrl.us/bn99cg). Neustar has been the U.S. LNPA since 1997, and its current contract expires in 2015. The FCC is considering a petition by Telcordia Technologies to institute competitive bidding for the LNPA role (CD Sept 17 p9).
WaveDivision Holdings said it completed its $50 million purchase of Black Rock Cable, a Bellingham, Wash., cable operator. The acquisition will help bolster Wave’s commercial business, said Wave CEO Steve Weed.