Starz channels that were blacked out on the Cablevision system started returning Tuesday and their resumption should be completed by month's end, said a spokeswoman for Cablevision parent Altice USA. The companies said Tuesday they signed a multiyear affiliation agreement that would see the full suite of Starz programming on Altice's cable systems, and Altice allowed to sell the Starz app on its Altice One service and given broader TV Everywhere digital rights. The Altice spokeswoman said channels brought in to replace Starz since the blackout began Jan. 31 (see 1801020039) would remain in the lineup. In a note to investors, Macquarie analyst Amy Yong said the agreement highlights Starz’s "growing consumer relevance, original programming successes and digital presence," and Starz's upcoming negotiations with Charter Communications could be relatively easy due at least in part to its video focus.

With a federal appellate court last year shooting down a petition seeking a review of the FCC 2015 order finding the cable industry is effectively competitive, a petition for reconsideration before the agency was dismissed, the Media Bureau said in a docket 15-53 order Monday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in July denied the NAB, NATOA and the Northern Dakota County Cable Communications Commission petition for reconsideration (see 1707070013). That makes the FCC petition moot, the bureau said.

The average monthly subscriber price for basic cable-TV service rose 4.4 percent, to $25.40, in 2015, said the FCC Media Bureau's latest annual cable price report (see 1802090002) in Friday's Daily Digest. The bureau said the average price for expanded basic service gained 3.4 percent to $71.37. It said over the five years ending Jan. 1, 2016, expanded basic service grew on average 4.4 percent annually. In communities with a finding of effective competition, the average price of expanded basic service grew by 3.3 percent to $73.08, in 2015. In noncompetitive communities, the average price of expanded basic increased 3.5 percent to $69.80. Cable's expanded basic service was typically slightly more expensive than DirecTV's Choice package Dish Network's AT120+ package.

Viacom has been limiting its content licensing to third-party subscription VOD services in anticipation of the direct-to-consumer streaming service it plans to launch later this year, CEO Bob Bakish said on an earnings call Thursday. Chief Financial Officer Wade Davis said it will be “fundamentally different” from what it offers MVPDs, with at least one such provider looking to incorporate it into its offerings. Bakish said Viacom continues to have conversations about deals with streaming MVPD services, with it currently on DirecTV Now, Sling and Philo. Bakish said the company is in content licensing talks with mobile carriers. "This is the point that upends the whole argument of the decline of pay TV,” given the ubiquity of mobile subscribers and carriers looking for content differentiation, Bakish said. The programmer reported revenue in the quarter ended Dec. 31 was $3.07 billion, down 8 percent, due largely to lower TV affiliate revenue and motion picture performance. Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar emailed investors that results reinforce that Viacom needs "an inorganic path out of its problems" and that possibly combining with CBS (see 1802010056) would buy it time but won't solve core performance issues. Eventually, he said, CBS/Viacom would need to look at other partnerships to get scale needed to survive. Viacom stock closed Thursday up 7.2 percent to $32.71.

With KLEI-TV Kailua Kona, Hawaii, now carried on a multicast subchannel of KKAI Kailua, which delivers a good quality signal to Oceanic Time Warner Cable's Honolulu headend, the cable operator needs to carry KLEI under must-carry rules, the licensee said in an FCC docket 12-1 complaint posted Thursday. Mauna Kea Broadcasting said it's entitled to carriage by Nov. 27, 60 days after its notice to the company now called Spectrum of its signal quality upgrade, but the operator failed to initiate carriage. It said Oceanic typically would have 30 days to respond, but it's asking for immediate intervention. Oceanic parent Charter Communications didn't comment.

DOJ's claim of possible anticompetitive harms from AT&T's planned buy of Time Warner is theoretically plausible but "suffers from many shortcomings," Free State Foundation's Theodore Bolema wrote Thursday. He said the changing market of cord cutting and subscription VOD makes it less likely anticompetitive strategies that were the focus of Justice's 2011 challenge of Comcast/NBCUniversal are as applicable today. Justice has the challenge of showing the economic efficiency benefits from the deal that would be passed on to consumers are less than the cost of anticompetitive effects, he said. He said the agency will have to show why this vertical merger case is different from past antitrust enforcement where behavioral conditions were sufficient. DOJ didn't comment. FSF has said structural conditions on AT&T/TW go against precedent (see 1711170059).

Viacom bought VidCon, "host of the world’s largest multi-day conference for the global online community," as part of its push into digital platforms, the acquirer blogged Wednesday, and it will remain a stand-alone entity and keep senior leaders. It said the VidCon deal fits into CEO Bob Bakish's strategy of increasing the number and reach of live Viacom events.

Disney's increasing its estimate for Hulu losses this year to $250 million could indicate expectations of the virtual MVPD service gaining a million incremental subscribers, which would help Disney subscriber trends but potentially hurt legacy MVPDs, Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar wrote investors Wednesday. Disney has begun the process of seeking regulatory OK for its Fox purchase in numerous jurisdictions worldwide, Disney CEO Bob Iger said on the company's quarterly earnings call Tuesday. Iger said the deal gives it "significant production capabilities and ... the talent to produce on our behalf." He said those production capabilities would be used in Disney's movie and TV businesses and in creating content for its direct-to-consumer offerings. He said an ESPN direct-to-consumer service will launch this spring in conjunction with a "reconceived and redesigned" ESPN app that will allow livestreaming of all ESPN networks and the ESPN+ subscription service. He said the ESPN+ streaming service will be $4.99 monthly, with the Disney direct to consumer service targeted for late 2019. He said the media company is seeing a trend of cord-nevers "coming into ... the multichannel world," attracted by the lower prices and skinnier bundles of digital platforms.

Any FCC order making Altice USA reinstate Starz would be confusing to consumers and hurt the MVPD and the programmers it added as replacements, Altice said in a docket 18-9 opposition posted Tuesday. Calling Starz's petition for declaratory ruling and enforcement order an attempt at using the regulatory process to get carriage, Altice said the petition uses "a fundamentally flawed argument" that the operator should have given customers notice on Dec. 1 it planned to drop the programmer when Altice didn't intend to do so and continued to work on a deal through Dec. 31, when the existing carriage agreement expired. It's common in the industry for deals to be struck on the eve of expiration, and "no rational cable operator" would conclude on Dec. 1 that Altice's Starz agreement wouldn't be renewed, it said. It said Starz never offered a 30-day extension that would have let Altice give prior notice. The MVPD said the programmer lacks standing to invoke customer service rules and the petition ignores that Altice notified subscribers as soon as possible about service changes after it lost the right to carry the programs. Starz -- which didn't comment Tuesday -- argued the FCC should order Altice to reinstate it on the same terms as before the Jan. 1 blackout, pending final determination of its complaint (see 1801190042).

The FCC Media Bureau turned down a request to stop Suddenlink from identifying the Charleston, West Virginia, Municipal Business and Occupation Tax as a line item on subscriber bills. In a letter Tuesday to City Treasurer Vic Grigoraci, who brought the request as a private citizen, the bureau said since Charleston isn't involved in rate regulation, Charleston arguments about the treatment of taxes as external costs for purpose of rate regulation aren't germane. It said the complaint didn't identify any FCC rule or statutory provision preventing Suddenlink from identifying the tax as a line item. Grigoraci said the decision, while disappointing, wasn't a surprise since he was told during the 2017 oral hearing that the cable industry has wide latitude on its billing format and informational content.