The United Church of Christ yanked an almost 10-year-old request that the FCC change its calculation for leasing a full channel from a cable operator after the Office of Management and Budget back then disapproved information collection requirements associated with that year's leased access order. "Due to the passage of time, UCC has agreed to withdraw its request," said an order of dismissal Thursday signed by Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey. "We are dismissing the request without prejudice." It was a minor matter that was part of a larger issue that since has been resolved, emailed Georgetown Institute for Public Representation lawyer Andrew Schwartzman. His now-defunct Media Access Project made the request on Aug. 26, 2008, for UCC.
Comcast should end ads stating or suggesting DirecTV customers will be subject to big, undisclosed, unavoidable price increases when signing up for the DirecTV Choice programming package, the National Advertising Division said Tuesday. NAD said DirecTV owner AT&T challenged the broadcast and online ads, and the Comcast assertions are unsupported. NAD said Comcast indicated it will comply with the recommendation.
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn concurred with the FCC upholding Comcast getting basic-cable rate deregulation over a Minnesota franchise authority's objections, in perhaps one of her last votes at the agency, given she's leaving before May 10 (see 1804170056). Commissioners Wednesday denied North Metro Telecommunications Commission's application for review of the Media Bureau granting the cable operator relief in six communities like Centerville, Ham Lake and Spring Lake Park. The local authority contended the company didn't sufficiently prove more than 15 percent of franchise-area households buy TV service from rivals. "We affirm the conclusion in the Order that Comcast is subject to effective competition because it has satisfied both elements of the competing provider test for effective competition in the Communities," including that threshold, said the new ruling. Clyburn didn't provide a statement about her concurrence, an aide confirmed. In the 2015 3-2 order making effective competition a rebuttable presumption for all cable, Clyburn dissented on everything other than rule changes for small operators. “I cannot support relief to larger providers particularly when doing so could harm consumers and unnecessarily increases the burdens on our local franchising authorities,” Clyburn said then. North Metro didn't comment now.
Comcast and Netflix expanded their partnership so the operator can include the streaming video service's subscriptions in Xfinity packages, they said Friday. Comcast integrated Netflix into its X1 platform in 2016 (see 1607050061). They said Comcast plans to launch some initial offers this month that include a Netflix subscription, with related billing handled by the cable provider. Netflix, which reports Q1 results Monday, is projecting a 6.35 million global subscriber increase from the preceding quarter (1.45 million in the U.S., 4.9 million internationally), compared with a 5 million a year earlier.
Charter Communications is suing El Centro, California, for allegedly meddling in the cable company's carriage dispute with Northwest Broadcasting. In a docket 18-679 complaint (in Pacer) filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Diego, Charter said El Centro's "unwarranted" FCC complaint about the blackout of Northwest stations (see 1803210031), coupled with the citations under municipal code, are aimed at forcing it to concede in its talks with Northwest. Those actions have "harden[ed] Northwest's negotiating position and [made] a deal on reasonable terms even more difficult," Charter said. It asks for a declaration that the city code provisions on which the citations are based are pre-empted by the state's Digital Infrastructure & Video Competition Act and that the city is violating the DIVCA by trying to force the cable company to carry Northwest programming. The MVPD seeks injunction banning El Centro from further "preempted and unlawful conduct." El Centro City Attorney Elizabeth Martyn in an emailed statement Friday said the complaint is "ill-founded, lacks significant legal merit and is retaliatory to the City's efforts to obtain the cable services it (as a subscriber) and, more importantly, its residents pay for." Last week, it said it's soliciting comments from residents about the blackout to be forwarded to the FCC on April 16. According to the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (Pacer) database, Charter hasn't so far filed any similar suits against other communities that have complained to the FCC about the cable company violating the 30-day notice rule in the Northwest blackout (see 1804050049). Charter didn't comment.
Voice technology came a long way since Bell Labs developed the first speech recognition technology in 1952, said Alex Capecelatro, CEO of Josh.ai, a voice-based home automation company, at the Home Technology Specialists of America Tuesday in Orlando. Challenges remain. Set-top boxes don’t send out status, so if someone asks to watch ESPN, the box won’t give a success message “because [manufacturers'] argument is they just have the TV do the thing you ask for,” he said. Without such a message, a TV won’t turn on automatically, and “the system’s not going to be intelligent,” he said: Josh.ai is working to integrate with a cable company. Security vulnerabilities when information is processed in the cloud could lead to hacking. “There’s no such thing as a non-hackable home or a non-hackable solution,” Capecelatro said: “Unfortunately, that’s a reality we need to address” as an industry.
Crescent City, California, joined communities lodging complaints against Charter Communications stemming from the ongoing Northwest Broadcasting blackout. An FCC docket 12-1 petition for declaratory ruling posted Thursday included Crescent City alongside Yuma, Arizona; Jackson, Wyoming; and El Centro, California. The latter three filed a similar petition last month alleging the MVPD violated the 30-day advance notice rule with its Feb. 2 blackout of Northwest-owned local stations (see 1803210031). The cable company didn't comment.
An 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel affirmed a lower court's tossing out an MVPD lawsuit against Iowa City, Iowa, and what the cable operator saw as a competitor, ImOn Communications. In the docket 16-3696 decision Wednesday, the St. Louis-based court said Mediacom was conflating "proposes" and "intends" and that ImOn had never gone as far as proposing to provide cable service to Iowa City. Mediacom -- which has a franchise agreement with Iowa City -- sued the city and ImOn over whether the potential cable provider could build a cable system without having a cable franchise. The court also rejected Mediacom arguments Iowa City gave ImOn a de facto cable franchise that didn't comply with state and federal franchise requirements when it let ImOn build a fiber optic network and to provide voice and internet services. Ruling for the defendant appellees were Judges William Benton, Raymond Gruender and John Tunheim, with Benton writing the decision. Mediacom outside counsel didn't comment Thursday.
Cable operators filing FCC Form 1240 can raise the non-external portion of their rates by 2.33 percent for Q4 to account for inflation, an FCC Media Bureau public notice said Tuesday.
Twenty-First Century Fox proposals to the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for a comprehensive "ringfencing" of Sky News and a sale of Sky News to Disney should end any of CMA's plurality concerns and guarantee Sky News' long-term future and editorial independence, Sky said Tuesday. It said a Disney/Sky News would happen only after Fox's completed buy of Sky, regardless of whether Disney's proposed buy of Fox takes place. Under the Fox proposals Tuesday (see here and here) to CMA, Disney would guarantee that at least for 10 years, Sky News would operate in a wholly owned subsidiary, Newco, with Newco's board being entirely independent officers. Fox is pledging that proposed Sky News editorial guidelines would say the head of Sky News would retain complete operational and editorial control. With the revised remedies, Fox likely still expects regulatory approval by the end of June, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker wrote investors. The CMA in January issued a preliminary finding that a Fox buy of Sky may not be in the public interest for media plurality (see 1801230010).