The number of senior citizens with smartphones is climbing, but that hasn't translated into less TV watching and more online video viewing by those seniors, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Sunday. Pointing to Pew data, nScreenMedia said between 2011 and 2016, smartphone penetration among people 65 and older went from 11 percent to 42 percent, and 32 percent of seniors were using a tablet last year. But Nielsen data shows that although video usage has doubled in the past year among 50-plus smartphone video viewers, seniors still watch only 50-some minutes a week on the devices, suggesting seniors "are snacking on short form content ... not watching long-form video." TV watching among the demographic shows no sign of abating, Dixon said, with seniors using a connected TV watching 370 minutes of TV a week up 16 percent year over year.

WideOpenWest's move from a video focus to being broadband-centric should drive financial results, analysts wrote investors Monday as they initiated coverage after WOW's initial public offering last month. Credit Suisse's Omar Sheikh said its high-speed data business will be powered in part by WOW's fiber network, its edge-out investments to expand its footprint and its ability to lure business customers from telco incumbents. He said WOW's chief risk is Comcast and Charter Communications price competition. Macquarie's Amy Yong said lesser regulatory restrictions faced by overbuilders like WOW give it the ability to jump on growth opportunities in and adjacent to its footprint. Yong said margins should improve as video penetration declines and high-speed data rises. She said WOW's competitive edges include "local-level flexibility" that lets it compete against telecom and cable pricing, with WOW typically pricing about 10 percent below multi-service operator competitors. Raymond James' Frank Louthan said the company "has a significant opportunity to pursue additional customer acquisitions through relatively low risk, edge-out opportunities."

Liberty's proposed buy of General Communications Inc. is an opportunity to review GCI's commitments under the Alaska plan and consider how they might be revised, Alaska state Rep. David Guttenberg (D) said in a letter posted Monday in FCC docket 17-114. He said Alaska's plan for broadband-oriented USF support to fixed and mobile providers approved in 2016 (see 1608310067) doesn't do enough to expand access "to reliable, reasonably priced broadband services," and multiple remote communities still have no access to mobile cellular service. GCI didn't comment.

AT&T is giving away Roku Premieres to new DirecTV Now subscribers, it said in a news release Thursday. The Premieres are for subscribers who prepay for two months, it said. AT&T Entertainment Group Chief Marketing Officer Brad Bentley said the Roku deal is aimed at facilitating cord cutting "by eliminating up-front cost and providing [consumers with] a cost effective solution to stream the content they crave from their living room couches."

"A huge chasm" sits between the allegations Entertainment Studios Networks and the National Association of African American Owned Media (ESN/NAAAOM) brought in their original complaint and the description of that case in their appellate brief (see 1704170017), Comcast said in an answering brief (in Pacer) filed Wednesday in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Calling the appellate brief "an outlandish conspiracy theory," Comcast said ESN/NAAAOM never tried to explain why the MVPD would carry networks largely owned by African-Americans while discriminating against solely African-American-owned networks like ESN, with that "contrived racial category only reinforc[ing] the implausibility of [ESN/NAAAOM] contentions." Comcast said the appeal, having largely abandoned the allegations of the original complaint, now focuses on "a single stray" remark that wasn't part of the operative complaint. And it said the First Amendment gives it editorial discretion to decide which networks to offer. Counsel for ESN/NAAAOM didn't comment Thursday. Charter Communications also has an appeal before the 9th Circuit of a lower court's 2016 rejection of its bid to have a similar ESN lawsuit against it thrown out (see 1610260069).

Funai renewed its multiyear product and intellectual property license with TiVo for entertainment products sold in Japan, North America and Europe, said the companies in a Wednesday announcement. Funai, which is about to re-enter the Japanese market with 4K TVs, licensed TiVo’s G-Guide and G-Guide xD electronic programming guides and will incorporate TiVo’s G-Guide HTML in future 4K TV models, it said.

YouTube increasingly is placing big importance on TV as a viewing platform, and could start challenging traditional free-to-air broadcasters there, blogged nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon. More than half of YouTube viewing is done via mobile devices, but an increasing amount is being watched on TVs, he said Monday, and YouTube parent Google says two-thirds of YouTube viewers watch at least some of the videos on TV.

An FCC declaratory ruling should make it expressly clear that alongside annual notices, written information provided at the time of service installation and on request also can be delivered electronically, NCTA Deputy General Counsel Diane Burstein told Media Bureau staffers, said a docket 16-126 ex parte filing posted Monday. NCTA said its joint petition with the American Cable Association on allowing electronic dissemination of customer notices (see 1603080052) sought a ruling that each of these types of notices could be satisfied via email. The declaratory ruling to be voted on at commissioners' June 22 meeting (see 1706010049) covers only annual notices.

The FTC signed off on Liberty Interactive's buy of General Communication Inc., said an early termination notice released Wednesday. The $1.12 billion deal was expected to face few regulatory challenges (see 1704040048).

Fox's Fox Now streaming service is available on iOS, with Roku and Android devices to follow later this month, it said in a news release Wednesday. It said the service bundles Fox, FX and National Geographic content into one app. It said the Fox Now app will expand into other platforms, including Apple TV, Xbox gaming consoles, Kindle Fire and Fire TV, later this year.