Liberty Interactive and GCI shareholders are likely to approve Liberty's takeover of the cable ISP at shareholder meetings Feb. 2, FBN Securities analyst Robert Routh emailed investors Thursday. The FCC (see 1711090005) and Regulatory Commission of Alaska (see here) already have approved.

"Overhyped" at the coming CES are artificial intelligence everywhere, connected cars and virtual currencies, but immersive story telling, social virtual reality and machine learning for security excite CableLabs CEO Phil McKinney, he said. "We've been talking about AI for quite some time" with "lots of claims ... but it's just not there" yet, he said in a video on 2018 tech innovation predictions. "We've had the promise of connected cars for decades, and we're still waiting for them." Cryptocurrencies, which he has talked about since 2010, has seen little progress other than the "overhyped" value, McKinney said Wednesday. Of areas where he sees the network as "the common thread," he said movies and games can make it feel "like you're part of the story" and "not sitting back as a voyeur." And "we've been talking about VR now for a number of years," but social uses take it to the "next level," McKinney said. Monitoring networks and learning from attack patterns can avoid breaches and take "security to an entirely new level," he said.

Having closed Thursday on its $1.4 billion MetroCast acquisition, Atlantic Broadband is considering additional mergers and acquisitions. "We have an appetitive for more" once the MetroCast integration is complete, President Dave Isenberg told us Thursday. He said Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is a co-investor in the MetroCast deal, with the idea of future acquisitions. "They see this as a platform for growth," Isenberg said, saying opportunities range from cable operators to regional fiber networks perhaps contiguous to Atlantic Broadband service areas. The MetroCast deal was announced in July (see 1707100040). Atlantic owner Cogeco Communications said it now operates in 11 states. It said MetroCast will keep its existing brand and will offer a variety of enhanced services under the Atlantic Broadband brand starting in the spring. Isenberg said Atlantic will use the same strategy with the rest of MetroCast that it employed with its 2015 takeover of MetroCast operations in Connecticut (see 1508210008): a variety of new products and services aimed both at residential customers, like gigabit Internet speeds and Atlantic's TiVo-based video platform, and at enterprise customers, such as hosted private branch exchange services. He said Atlantic continues to see broadband growth, and doesn't anticipate incoming 5G services providing significant competition to its wireline services in the near future since the company largely focuses on suburban and rural territories. It "will be an incredibly long time" before a wireless solution replicates terrestrial service, he said. Programmers increasingly are open to skinnier cable bundles, though there's not consensus among programmers, Isenberg said. "We're not at an inflection point, but the trend is clear," he said. He said video remains profitable and an Atlantic priority, and the Connecticut territory went from losing video customers at faster than industry averages to adding customers profitably.

TV increasingly is "a grand, global game played out over broadband and delivered via apps," and Disney's planned buy of Fox means serious competition for Netflix, which until now has been easily surpassing competitors, The Diffusion Group's Joel Espelien blogged Tuesday. He said Disney's focus on controlling interest in Hulu -- while eschewing Fox's broadcast and cable network assets -- show that broadcast and cable nets are no longer "the crown jewels of the global TV ecosystem." Espelien said Netflix and Amazon Prime showed subscription VOD can do well overseas, and Hulu plausibly could garner 100 million-plus global subscribers through leveraging Disney content. He said New Disney's movie studio arm could "absolutely dominate" the blockbusters market that drives global premium video viewing, positioning it to overwhelm Netflix and its original content strategy.

Cable operators filing FCC Form 1240 can raise the non-external portion of their rates by a factor of 2.09 percent for Q3 to account for inflation, a Media Bureau public notice said in Wednesday's Daily Digest.

Any copyright-infringing use of TickBox streaming media players is being done by third parties not affiliated with the company and over which TickBox TV has no control, the company said in a docket 17-cv-7496 response (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Los Angeles, to an opposition to a motion for preliminary injunction. Georgia-based TickBox TV said its actions and those of its users can't be construed as a copyright violation, so the plaintiffs seeking a preliminary injunction -- Universal Columbia Disney, Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., Amazon and Netflix -- can't show injunctive relief is necessary to prevent irreparable harm. TickBox TV also said even if injunctive relief is warranted, the content companies' proposed injunction -- enjoining all persons in any way associated with TickBox TV from “infringing in any manner" -- is "unreasonably broad and ambiguous." The content company plaintiffs, in their complaint (in Pacer) in October, argued that TickBox unambiguously gives users directions for setting up and adding third-party software intended for "unquestionably infringing purposes, most notably to obtain instantaneous, unrestricted, and unauthorized access to infringing streams" of their content. The companies' counsel didn't comment Friday.

The operators of the interconnected PubFilm websites -- subject of a lawsuit brought in March by a variety of programmers (see 1703140033) -- defaulted by not appearing or responding to the complaint, U.S. District Clerk for the Southern District of New York Ruby Krajick certified in a docket 17-cv-875 filing (in Pacer) Friday. The plaintiffs alleged the PubFilm sites were pirated movie and TV streaming sites, and last week requested an entry of default, saying the defendants were served by email in February.

Charter Communications can't claim First Amendment protection for not doing business with Entertainment Studios Networks (ESN) in the programmer's Civil Rights Act complaint against the MVPD, Public Knowledge said in a docket 17-55723 amicus brief filed Sunday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It also said the First Amendment for the most part doesn't provide protection against laws of general applicability, and cable communications -- by being commercial -- are subject to a lesser degree of protection. PK said Charter's First Amendment argument is part of a trend by corporate litigants to use that claim for deregulatory purposes "rather than for protecting genuine free expression." Charter didn't comment Tuesday. It's appealing a U.S. District Court 2016 rejection of Charter's bid to have an ESN/National Association of African American Owned Media (NAAAOM) discrimination lawsuit tossed out (see 1710260006). Separately before the 9th Circuit is an ESN/NAAAOM appeal of a lower court's 2016 dismissal of similar racial discrimination claims against Comcast (see 1704170017).

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of the District of Columbia advised the DOJ, AT&T and Time Warner to "keep the chatter in the press to an absolute minimum" regarding Justice's lawsuit seeking to block AT&T's buy of TW. Saying he wouldn't impose a gag order, Leon said during a status hearing the case "will be tried in the court." At Thursday's hearing, Leon approved the proposed case management and scheduling orders (here and here, in Pacer) after making some tweaks and questioning counsel for both sides about timelines and the likelihood of needing to depose hostile witnesses or to hold Daubert hearings for admitting scientific expert testimony.

Wave's carriage and streaming complaint against NBCUniversal and three Comcast regional sports networks (see 1712190041) is mystifying, NBCU said Tuesday. It said Wave's sale to RCN (see 1705220058) is expected to close within a month, and NBCU is offering an extension until then, while separately offering marketplace terms to RCN for continued carriage. It said it "has engaged with them fairly, on the same terms as other distributors. [Wave's] purported claim is without merit.”