Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., is seeking reelection as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, his spokesman said in a press release Thursday. Thune has been chairman of the conference since January and previously was chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. “Our country is at a crossroads and communicating our positive Republican vision to grow the economy, create jobs, and restore our nation’s fiscal health couldn’t be more important,” Thune said. The influential conference is tasked with electing party leaders, and approving committee assignments, among other duties.
Gray TV said it took in more political ad revenue than it expected in early November and October, so it increased its projections for Q4 revenue. For the quarter it expects political ad sales of $42.5 million to $43 million, it said. It expects other ad sales to fall 3 percent from a year earlier, it said. It expects total revenue will be between $124 million and $125 million, it said.
AT&T’s “Project Velocity IP” network upgrade plan is likely to create some headline risk for the cable and satellite industry, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker said Thursday in an email note to investors. AT&T announced Wednesday it plans to spend $14 billion to expand its wireline and wireless broadband networks (CD Nov 8 p11). “We would characterize T’s initiatives as mostly headline risk for several reasons,” Ryvicker said in the note. “i) cable HSD products would still be faster than the “new” U-Verse (and significantly faster than U-Verse IPDSLAM and 4G LTE), ii) the network build would take A LOT of time, iii) AT&T will likely have to pass on costs to consumers through higher rates (which could turn out to be a positive for the space as a whole), and iv) the IPDSLAM is only an augmentation of the current data network -- there is no additional video product.” On the cable side, Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable will see the most incremental competition as a result of AT&T’s plan, Ryvicker said. Comcast will see slightly less competition, while Cablevision will experience “virtually no impact,” she said. On the satellite side, the deal will be a net positive for DTV because of its partnership with AT&T, while Dish “may see incremental competition via DishNet,” Ryvicker said.
LIN TV sales increased 36 percent to $133.1 million on higher political ad sales, retransmission-consent revenue and core local ad sales, it said. Net income increased 530 percent to $19.6 million on higher sales and lower interest expenses.
AMC Networks Q3 sales increased 17 percent from a year earlier to $332 million, the company said. Net income fell 7.5 percent to $37 million on lower operating income. The company’s now-resolved litigation with Dish Network affected results, AMC CEO Josh Sapan said. “That issue is behind us and we are fully focused on continuing our strategy of investing in quality original programming."
A judge in the U.S. District Court, Los Angeles, on Wednesday denied a preliminary injunction request from Fox Entertainment urging the court to bar Dish Network’s ad-skipping features, PrimeTime Anytime and AutoHop. A copy of the ruling isn’t available to the public “because the court is first giving the parties an opportunity to redact confidential trade information,” Dish said in a press release (http://xrl.us/bnyot4). Fox sought the preliminary injunction in August (CD Aug 28 p5). Dish said Judge Dolly Gee found it likely that Dish customers using PrimeTime Anytime “cannot be liable for copyright infringement,” and that the AutoHop and PrimeTime Anytime features do not constitute “unauthorized distribution under federal copyright laws.” The ruling underscores the Supreme Court’s 1984 Betamax decision, “with the court confirming a consumer’s right to enjoy television as they want, when they want, including the reasonable right to skip commercials, if they so choose,” Dish said. Fox is “gratified the court found the copies Dish makes for its AutoHop service constitute copyright infringement and breach the parties’ contract,” Fox said in a statement. Fox said it intends to appeal the court’s decision that Fox’s damages weren’t suitable for a preliminary injunction, as well as the court’s separate findings concerning PrimeTime Anytime.
A federal appeals court should not overturn an FCC decision ordering Comcast to carry the Tennis Channel more broadly than it had, said the federal government, Tennis Channel and Bloomberg in briefs filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The commission’s order is subject to intermediate scrutiny, rather than strict scrutiny, under the First Amendment, the government argued in its brief. “The agency’s purpose -- to ensure that Comcast does not leverage its position in a way that unreasonably restrains Tennis Channel’s ability to compete -- is unrelated to the content of expression,” it said. And under such scrutiny, the order stands up, it said. “The remedy is narrowly tailored so as to avoid burdening more speech than necessary,” the brief said. Furthermore the order fell well within FCC authority under Section 616 of the Communications Act, the government said. The record showed that Comcast discriminated against Tennis Channel, the network, which is partly owned by DirecTV and Dish, and the court must uphold the FCC’s finding of facts unless they are unsupported by substantial evidence, Tennis Channel said in its brief. “There will be few cases in which an independent network can present stronger evidence of discrimination,” Tennis Channel said. Bloomberg filed an amicus brief arguing in favor of the FCC’s decision. “Comcast’s argument is a frontal attack on the entire program carriage regime … presented as an ‘as applied’ challenge to the order in this case,” Bloomberg said.
Iowa’s consumer advocate requested a formal complaint proceeding against Windstream Iowa Communications before the Iowa Utilities Board. Its Thursday request (http://bit.ly/YSU5w4) refers to an ongoing proceeding in which “Windstream did not deny the allegation” that it had left a mile of phone cable unburied for years despite consumer requests, the advocate said. “On numerous occasions, the cable was cut by farm implements, road graders, ATVs, etc., resulting in loss of service.” The cable was buried in September but the advocate isn’t satisfied, according to the filing. It wants the board to determine if a violation has occurred and “place the company on notice of the violation” if so, with potential to assess penalties if it happens again, the filing said.
Five southern Florida TV stations face political ad discrimination complaints at the FCC from an unaffiliated candidate. That’s after Randall Terry had sought unsuccessfully before Tuesday’s presidential election to air spots on Washington-area outlets depicting aborted fetuses and saying President Barack Obama helped kill Christians and Jews. The Media Bureau required Gannett’s WUSA to air the ads, which the company asked the bureau to overturn (CD Nov 8 p22). Terry’s lawyer filed complaints Monday against NBCUniversal’s WSCV(Telemundo) Ft. Lauderdale and WTVJ Miami(NBC), CBS-owned Miami stations WFOR(CBS) and WBFS(MyNetworkTV) and Raycom Media’s WFLX(Fox) West Palm Beach. The complaints alleged the stations wouldn’t run spots for Terry, and that some of the broadcasters responded that the refusal was because the candidate was on the ballot in Florida’s 20th District to be a U.S. representative, while in other states he was on the presidential ballot. If that same logic were applied to other candidates, those outlets would have had to deny ad buys from the Republican presidential campaign of Mitt Romney because his running mate for vice president, Rep. Paul Ryan, was also running for re-election in Wisconsin’s 1st District, the complaints said. Some of the Sunshine State broadcasters had cited Florida Statute 99.012(2), which bars someone from running for multiple offices simultaneously. The statute was meant to prevent someone from running for multiple positions on Florida’s ballot, Terry for Congress lawyer Patrick Purtill of the Gammon & Grange law firm wrote. “It is not Florida’s prerogative to limit access to its ballot based on a candidate’s ballot access in a foreign state.” Representatives of the stations’ owners had no comment. “Apparently buoyed by that success” at the bureau with the WUSA order, Terry filed the new complaints, broadcast lawyer Scott Flick wrote on the blog of the Pillsbury Winthrop law firm (http://xrl.us/bnyokm). “What makes these filings odd is that” the complaints weren’t filed with the commission until Election Day, and even if they had been filed Monday, “that would still be too late for the FCC to take any meaningful action before the election,” he wrote Thursday. “That means Terry has already begun the process of positioning himself for the next election, and is perhaps looking to establish friendly FCC precedent now that can be used against stations then.” The campaign’s pointing to Romney/Ryan ads “is not a particularly strong argument,” since the “'no censorship’ provision of the Communications Act means that Romney is free to present anyone else he wants in his ads without interference,” Flick wrote. “Since the FCC is not generally in the business of interpreting state election laws, the central question in these complaints is whether the FCC will defer to a licensee’s reasonable judgment as to who is a legally qualified candidate in the licensee’s own state."
Samsung’s Galaxy S3 passed the iPhone 4S as the world’s best-selling smartphone model in Q3, Strategy Analytics said Thursday in a research report. Samsung sold 18 million units of the Galaxy S3 during the quarter, or 11 percent of all smartphones sold, Strategy Analytics said. “A large touchscreen design, extensive distribution across dozens of countries, and generous operator subsidies have been among the main causes of the Galaxy S3’s success,” said Neil Shah, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, in a news release. “By contrast, Apple sold 16.2 million units of the iPhone 4S. It is likely sales of the iPhone4S were not higher because consumers were holding back until the iPhone 5’s release, so it is likely the Galaxy S3’s position at the top of the market is likely to be short-lived,” said Strategy Analytics Executive Director Neil Mawston in the release. “The Apple iPhone 5 has gotten off to a solid start already with an estimated 6.0 million units shipped globally during Q3 2012,” he said. “We expect the new iPhone 5 to out-ship Samsung’s Galaxy S3 in the coming fourth quarter of 2012 and Apple should soon reclaim the title of the world’s most popular smartphone model” (http://xrl.us/bnyob3).