Charter Communications is renewing its push to have the FCC clarify its "advance notice" rules governing programming and channel position changes, with a docket 17-317 filing posted Friday on a meeting with Media Bureau staff. Charter urged the bureau to consider the issue in the media modernization proceeding or as a Further NPRM in the docket. Northwest Broadcasting and several communities alleged Charter was violating the 30-day advance notice rule with a blackout earlier this year in those markets (see 1802120044 and 1804050049).

Comments will be due July 30, replies Aug. 13, on the cable leased access Further NPRM the FCC adopted at its June meeting (see 1806070021), says a notice for Friday's Federal Register.

Judge Richard Leon's opinion earlier this month allowing AT&T's buy of Time Warner (see 1806120060) doesn't break new legal ground, but its significance is as a reminder of the importance of evidence-based antitrust and as "a triumph of the role of economic analysis in antitrust law," Joshua Wright, executive director of the Global Antitrust Institute at George Mason University, and antitrust lawyer Jan Rybnicek, of Freshfields Bruckhaus, blogged Wednesday for the Federalist Society. That it was a vertical transaction and that DOJ was litigating without presumption of illegality of any merger that creates undue market concentration point to how powerful a tool that structural presumption is for government, they said. That presumption "may be doing real harm" if merger challenges go through even without evidence that the transaction is likely to hurt consumers, they said. The relatively little weight Leon gave DOJ documentary evidence shows that while ordinary course documents will still have a place in deal investigations, care needs to be put on relying on “ 'hot' documents" that conflict with testimonial evidence and economic analysis, wrote former FTC Commissioner Wright and his ex-aide.

Discovery’s TV Everywhere Go apps are available on select Samsung smart TVs, said the companies Wednesday. GO versions of Discovery, Animal Planet, TLC, SCI and Investigation Discovery are available now, and new HGTV and Food Network apps, plus additional networks, will launch on the platform soon, they said. The apps are also available on Roku, Apple TV, iOS, Android, Amazon Fire, Chromecast and Xbox One.

When considering the Alliance for Community Media 2016 petition seeking waiver of certain FCC registration and certification requirements for public, educational and government access video producers, the FCC should make clear such a waiver doesn't make PEG channels generally exempt from closed caption provision rules, disability interests said in a docket 05-231 filing Wednesday. They said the FCC should also make clear that any PEG programmer exemption wouldn't preclude eliminating exemptions that could apply to PEG channels if the agency narrows or eliminates categorical exemptions. They said the agency should make clear that PEG channels carrying at least some nonexempt programming must certify which programs are exempt. And they said the FCC should reaffirm it will hold video programmers ultimately responsible for violating relevant captioning rules. The disability interests included Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, National Association of the Deaf and the Hearing Loss Association of America. ACM asked for waiving registration and certification for PEG video producers distributing video programs over PEG or other exempt channels. It said such certification and registration is "needless" for the legions of average citizen program owners using PEG access channels if they're distributing on channels exempt from captioning rules, as many such channels are.

The rate at which cable companies replaced lost pay-TV subscribers with broadband subscribers slowed in Q1, Moody's said Monday. It said that growth was driven by Comcast and Charter Communications, which had broadband growth of -0.3 percent and -0.5 percent, respectively, and have nearly 80 percent of the sector's subscriber count.

Comments are due July 10, replies July 20 on American Cable Association's petition to the Media Bureau asking for a waiver of the FCC's Dec. 20 talking guide requirements deadline for some limited classes of MVPDs (see 1806180050), said a public notice Monday in docket 12-108.

For now, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should keep in abeyance NCTA's appeal of the FCC's 2008 cable leased access order pending the agency completing a rulemaking that contemplates vacating the order, the agency said in a docket 08-3369 status report (in Pacer) filed Monday. It said if the FCC decides to vacate the NCTA-challenged order, the case will become moot. Commissioners in June adopted a Further NPRM proposing to vacate the order (see 1806070021).

Many midsized and smaller cable systems can meet the FCC Dec. 20 talking guide requirements deadline, but some won't due to the lack of commercially available compliant options available, said the American Cable Association in a docket 12-108 petition for waiver Monday. ACA asked for full or partial waiver for limited classes of MVPDs. It said under its proposal, if a system at some point no longer meets the criteria for a waiver, or a solution comes to market that allows accessibility of all the covered functions, that waiver would cease to apply and the cable system wouldn't be eligible for another. It said such waivers would allow small and mid-sized services that use QAM modulation and offer two-way services to avoid "significant costs" to comply.

NCTA urged the FCC to act in two proceedings "to prevent state and local governments from imposing duplicative regulations and fees and other regulatory obstacles that have the effect of hindering the deployment of new facilities and services by cable operators," said a filing Friday on meeting Matthew Berry, chief of staff, and Nick Degani, senior counsel to Chairman Ajit Pai. The group said the filing on the June 12 meeting was inadvertently submitted a day late. Docket 17-84 is on wireline infrastructure deployment and docket 05-311 on implementation of Communications Act Section 621(a)(1), and the filing was in both. NCTA and cable operators recently asked the FCC to affirm a mixed-use rule in light of a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2017 rejecting the agency's counting in-kind charges toward franchise fees (see 1804240020 and 1707120039).