On circulation at the FCC might be a declaratory ruling allowing cable companies to email required notice or written information to subscribers for whom the operator has a confirmed email address, a cable official told us Tuesday. NCTA and the American Cable Association petitioned the agency for such a declaratory ruling 14 months ago (see 1603080052). A Media Bureau item on that petition went on circulation last week, the FCC says. The agency didn't comment.

Kristine Faulkner, senior vice president/general manager-Cox Homelife, will deliver a keynote on smart home services at Parks Associates’ Connections conference in San Francisco May 24 at 2:15 p.m. PDT, said Parks in a Friday news release. Some 26 percent of U.S. broadband households own at least one smart home device, but increasingly the devices are bought as stand-alone devices, “with the expectation that they will all work together,” said Parks, which pegs annual U.S. smart home revenue at more than $1.3 billion by 2020.

Showtime -- one of three programmers with affiliation agreement lawsuits against Charter Communications -- is dropping its complaint against the MVPD, according to a stipulation for discontinuance posted Thursday in New York Supreme Court. Charter in the same filing said it was dropping its counterclaim seeking a series of declaratory judgments. Univision and Fox News Network are pursuing similar affiliation complaints against Charter over which contract -- with Charter or Time Warner Cable -- survived 2016's Charter/TWC deal.

Cord-cutting is accelerating, with more than half of cord-cutters canceling legacy pay-TV service in 2015 and 2016 -- a third of them in 2016 alone, The Diffusion Group (TDG) said in a news release Thursday: That acceleration is due to higher pay-TV pricing and the rise of on-demand services, it said, saying the trend is compounded by a growing number of virtual MVPDs that somewhat mirror legacy MVPDs but are also somewhat customized. TDG said most legacy operators -- Comcast a key exception -- "are rushing into the skinny-bundle trap" by offering cheaper offerings that are in turn accelerating the decline of the traditional bundle. It said legacy operators need either to "resign themselves to being a 'dumb-pipe' provider" or to invest in IP with the aim of becoming "the go-to source for all things video" -- a direction Comcast is turning.

Charter asked to file a motion to dismiss the New York attorney general’s complaint alleging it deliberately misled customers about internet speeds. The company asked to file the motion in a letter Wednesday to the New York Supreme Court, and sought a premotion phone conference in a separate letter. The motion will argue federal law pre-empts the AG’s claims, and the complaint failed to state a valid claim. The AG allegations "impermissibly interfere" with FCC regulations under the Communications Act on how broadband providers describe network performance, Charter said. The 2015 net neutrality order said broadband providers must disclose actual speeds in terms of average performance over a reasonable period and during times of peak usage, it said. The FCC oversees a speed-measurement program that gives companies a "safe harbor" for complying with consumer disclosure requirements, Charter said. “The Attorney General ignores this federal regime. ... Instead of assessing performance based on federally approved standards, the Attorney General’s allegations of deception rely entirely on alternative, unofficial measures of broadband speed that diverge from the FCC’s methodology.” The AG lacks authority to regulate broadband internet access because it's interstate, Charter said. The case briefly moved to a U.S. District Court at the ISP's request but last month, a federal judge returned the case to the state court.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau said 56 percent of U.S. adults own a smart TV. Fifty-four percent of time spent watching TV is dedicated to viewing something other than traditional linear content, IAB reported Wednesday, based on a survey of 802 U.S. online adults March 17-24. The largest share of nonlinear viewing time is spent streaming digital video, 20 percent, DVR-recorded content at 15 percent, VOD at 6 percent and downloaded video, 5 percent. ABI Research reported linear 24/7 streaming video services including DirecTV Now and YouTube TV are boosting uptake of streaming media devices, projected to reach 56 million global shipments in 2022. By then, all streaming video players will be 4K, up from 35 percent of North America shipments forecast for this year, said analyst Sam Rosen. “Video streaming services are increasingly becoming a replacement alternative" for traditional pay-TV services as operators partner with third-party over-the-top players or offer stand-alone streaming services, such as Dish Networks’ Sling TV, said analyst Khin Sandi Lynn.

Disney still plans to launch an ESPN-branded subscription streaming service for live sports with BAMTech by year-end, but it’s “premature” to discuss what the service will look like, CEO Bob Iger said on an earnings call on which he took many questions about recent layoffs of on-air talent at ESPN. The cuts were “not all that significant when you consider that ESPN has 8,000 employees,” he said. The company eliminated 100 positions. Disney will continue “to be aggressive at buying live sports rights, which have not gotten cheaper, we understand, but they have gotten more valuable,” Iger said. “New entrants into the marketplace like Amazon and the talk of others like Facebook only prove the point that we just made, that live sports is important to new digital platforms, and live sports is important to anyone who is trying to reach consumers in the media business.” Disney paid $1 billion for 33 percent of BAMTech (see 1608100024). While “it's possible” that the ESPN-branded service will feature an “omnibus sports, multiple sports package” offering, “it's more likely that consumers will have an opportunity to buy the sports they want when they want it as well,” the CEO said. The ESPN layoffs point to automation as the way of the future for sports TV content, said The Diffusion Group Senior Adviser Joel Espelien in a blog post Tuesday. Pointing to the automation of FM radio DJ work, TDG said sports leagues are ahead of ESPN in providing highlight clips and short-form video in near-real time. It said BAMTech provides nearly real-time highlights from clips lifted from the traditional TV feed, while NFL.com does similarly during regular season games: "Automation is here to stay in the sports TV business, and more humans will see their jobs replaced by code."

The skinny bundle in the U.S. "is a fiction" for now, though an $8-$12 monthly package will be offered at some point, akin to what's available in other markets internationally, Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav said in an analyst call Tuesday. So-called skinny bundle offerings in the U.S., with prices closer to $40 monthly, are "overstuffed turkeys." He said subscription VOD offerings like Netflix and Amazon Prime are effective, but "we as an industry need to complement that with a quality offering ... that's a true skinny bundle in the spirit of what's working around the world, and I think that'll happen." Discovery said Q1 revenue was $1.6 billion, up 3 percent due to gains in global distribution sales and progress in expanding digital and direct-to-consumer businesses. Zaslav said since the start of the year, the company has expanded its Amazon SVOD channels partnership and Eurosport Player streaming service and entered into a number of new digital partnerships, including creation of a streaming over-the-top service in Europe.

Comcast unveiled the xFi experience Monday, a platform controllable by mobile app, website, TV or the X1 voice remote, that’s designed to simplify home Wi-Fi networks as they become more advanced and handle more devices. With Comcast’s investment in Plume, the platform will get a boost later this year from Plume’s Adaptive WiFi technology that uses pods around the home to maximize Wi-Fi in a “self-optimizing” mesh network that’s said to adapt to a household in real time to ensure fast speeds, the company said. Chris Satchell, chief product officer-Comcast Cable, in a blog post compared the xFi to the rollout of the X1 platform. Later this year, release of “zero-configuration” xFi Wi-Fi Pods from Plume will allow Xfinity customers to create “seamless Wi-Fi for any size or shape home” by plugging pods into power outlets around the home, said Satchell. The ISP said in 2017, 86 percent of in-home broadband use will travel over Wi-Fi, and by 2020, Americans will have an average of 50 Wi-Fi connected devices in their homes.

The over-the-top industry has been its own enemy in facilitating TV Everywhere, but reaching every device "is about to get simpler" with Google's Widevine, Adobe's Primetime and now Microsoft adding cyber block chaining (CBC) support, said Irdeto Perspective Product Manager Rodrigo Fernandes in a blog post Friday. Irdeto said the problem started with digital rights management fragmentation, with the various forms of DRM supporting different media containers. Current MPEG dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP and common media application formats are largely agnostic, but encryption of them for pay services is complicated by the multiple encryption technologies available, it said. The increasingly universal cyber block chaining support means one encrypted stream will cover all devices, ending duplicated content delivery network costs, it said.