The FCC has come under fire for rulemaking policies and practices by everyone from lawmakers to its minority-party commissioners, though its openness and transparency -- especially in comparison with some other regulatory agencies -- could be worse, said several commission watchers and regulatory agency experts. Considering the amount of rulemaking the FCC engages in, "it works pretty well," Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood told us.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has concerns about sharing NOAA's 1675-1680 MHz downlink spectrum with terrestrial commercial use. In reply comments posted Friday in FCC RM-11681, Ligado included a NOAA presentation given to Senate staff that was "deliberately and explicitly arguing against any sharing," the company said. In a statement to us Friday, NOAA said it's seen interference with test transmissions on bandwidth it uses for its satellites, and that losing 1675-1680 MHz would disrupt the download of satellite data and "interfere with our ability to receive and transmit data from approximately 27,000 terrestrial and remote systems, such as seismic stations, stream gauges, tsunami buoys and weather stations."
The slide in pay-TV subscriptions continues to accelerate, but some of the largest multichannel video programming distributors' video subscriber losses slowed in the most recent quarter. That was in marked contrast to Q2 2015 when cord-cutting concerns sparked wide industry and Wall Street hand-wringing (see 1508070033). Meanwhile the cable industry is gaining pay-TV market share, said Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker in a note Wednesday. Those gains -- cable's first since the 1990s -- are "a profound change in the marketplace," while market share-losing direct broadcast satellite runs the risk of becoming "anachronistic," MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett told us. But analysts estimated MVPDs are losing hundreds of thousands of TV subscribers quarterly, and one said declines may accelerate.
Suddenlink's decision to drop Viacom content last year (see 1504090051) remains "a very good decision," though not automatically one that Altice USA will make for its Optimum -- formerly Cablevision -- footprint, Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei said during Altice's Q2 earnings call Tuesday. The Viacom move's "impact on customers was relatively minimal" because that content was replaced by alterative channels, and given the big and rapidly growing cost of content, Altice USA will look at viable alternatives, Goei said. He said "it really is on a case-by-case basis." Multiple times during the Tuesday call, Goei and Michel Combes, CEO of parent company Altice, said Altice USA's focus is on integration of Suddenlink and Optimum, network investment and reducing churn. Goei said the company is seeing increased customer adoption of its higher-margin top-tier broadband offerings with the elimination of data caps on them. Tuesday's earnings report was the company's first since it closed on Cablevision in June (see 1606210026). Goei said Optimum had about 120 people resign from the management and executive ranks, including all the Dolan family members, saving the company $50 million to $100 million annually. For the quarter, Suddenlink revenue was up 5.2 percent to $640 million from the year-ago quarter and the typical seasonal decline in broadband and video customers was less. Optimum pro forma revenue was $1.62 billion, up slightly more than 1 percent, Altice said in a news release.
The rebranding of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks into Charter Communications will begin this fall, as the company over the next year reconciles various packages and pricing, and over the next two-plus years standardizes its business processes, said Charter CEO Tom Rutledge Tuesday. He spoke in the company's Q2 earnings call -- its first since Charter closed in May on its approximately $90 billion takeovers of TWC and BHN (see 1605120040). Charter's cloud-based user interface Spectrum Guide will be available in most of legacy Charter's footprint by year's end, and will begin to be available in major TWC markets by mid-2017 and throughout the BHN and TWC footprints by sometime in 2018 as those markets also go all digital in the same time frame, Rutledge said. Today, roughly 60 percent of TWC's footprint is digital, while BHN is at 50 percent, he said.
Globalstar expects to launch a pair of satcom products by early 2017 aimed at broad consumer markets. "You can imagine something appearing at Wal-Mart ... in that type of retailer," CEO Jay Monroe said Friday during the company's Q2 earnings call, referring to its upcoming Spot device. "It's a very, very broad product opportunity for us." But the company's Sat-Fi 2, which will connect Wi-Fi enabled devices to its satellite broadband network, faces challenge from multiple competitors, satellite consultant Tim Farrar told us.
Despite fears the Supreme Court could make sweeping changes in its 2015 session to class-action litigation law, the session that ended in June was "the term that wasn't" since the rulings ultimately didn't have significant impact on developing such law one way or the other, Ellen Meriwether, an antitrust partner at Cafferty Clobes, told us. One of those cases, Spokeo vs. Robins, has been cited repeatedly in telco and media class-action litigation in recent months (see 1607060016, 1606090024 and 1601290008), particularly by defendant companies claiming plaintiffs have no standing.
Hulu's live-streaming service set to debut next year will be among a number of "virtual MVPDs" that will launch over the coming 12 months, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said Wednesday. Several Time Warner Turner channels will be part of that live-streaming service, including TNT, TBS, CNN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, truTV, Boomerang and Turner Classic Movies, Time Warner said in a news release Wednesday, noting it bought 10 percent of Hulu. Financial terms weren't released, and other owners remain Comcast, Disney and 21st Century Fox. In a conference call announcing Time Warner's Q2 results, Bewkes said growth in live-streaming multichannel video programming distributors "will be great both for consumers and our … brands.” The company is making a variety of subscription VOD investments, including rolling out HBO Now to the Nordic region and Latin America and planning other rollouts later this year and an upcoming art house SVOD offering from Turner, Bewkes said. The Hulu investment "fits our strategy like a glove" by further increasing Time Warner exposure to the growing over-the-top market, he said. Bewkes said the Hulu deal did not include content license obligations and when it comes to licensing content to other SVODs or traditional MVPDs, "We'll do that on a stand-alone, arm's length basis." For the quarter, Time Warner sales fell 5 percent from the year-ago period to $7 billion, driven mostly by declines in lower videogame, home entertainment and TV licensing revenue due to particularly high sales in the comparable quarter a year ago, the company said in a news release. Time Warner had net income of $952 million, down from $971 million. Its stock closed Wednesday at $77.83, up 2.7 percent.
Iridium received an FCC green light for its Next constellation, with the International Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology Monday approving the company's 2013 application to modify its nongeostationary mobile satellite service license to allow the new constellation. In the order issued Monday, the FCC said the new constellation will operate in the same orbital parameters and transmit on the same frequency bands, and will be equipped to track ships and aircraft through an automatic dependent surveillance broadcast receiver and a receiver for maritime automatic identification system messages. Inmarsat, SES and ViaSat voiced concern about Iridium sharing the 29.25-29.3 GHz band with co-primary geostationary fixed satellite service operations, but the FCC said sharing demonstrations weren't necessary since Next will operate with the same feeder-link stations authorized for its current satellites. The Committee on Radio Astronomy Frequencies and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory objected to the protection levels and coordination plan Iridium submitted for its use of 1617.775-1626.5 MHz, but Iridium came up "with good proposal and a good way forward," one FCC official told us Tuesday. The company now plans to shift traffic from satellites in view of radio astronomy service sites to adjacent satellites -- which should protect radio astronomy observations from interference, the FCC said in its order. Iridium said last month the first Next launch will be Sept. 19, with the entire constellation to be in orbit by the end of 2017 (see 1607280006).
The FCC might have opted not to change the rules for retransmission consent negotiations, but it could be signaling more willingness to intercede when those talks are going awry, some cable industry officials and allies tell us, pointing to Sinclair’s $9.49 million settlement (see 1607290067) last week over an array of good-faith negotiating and licensing rule violations. But other multichannel video programming distributor allies -- plus broadcasters -- see that idea as wishful thinking. The agency has broad statutory authority to investigate and impose penalties, but the question of whether the Sinclair consent decree is a turn in FCC enforcement policy remains to be seen, one lawyer who represents cable interests told us.