The U.S. cable industry employs 2.9 million, with those worker earnings totaling $152 billion annually, NCTA said in its annual cable industry economic impact report released Monday. Cable's overall economic impact is $421 billion yearly, it said. It also said 93 percent of U.S. households have access to broadband via a cable ISP, and spending on programming by basic cable networks went from $1.4 billion in 1990 to $38.2 billion last year. NCTA also said cable operators paid $3.5 billion to local municipalities in 2016 in the form of franchise fees, and state and local governments took in an additional $4.2 billion in the form of subscriber taxes and fees.

Pay-TV operators who provide a hybrid of traditional and over-the-top services likely will be most successful, said Irdeto Senior Vice President-Global Sales Bengt Jonsson in a blog post Monday. Likening pay-TV to the retail industry where traditional retailers are struggling with e-commerce competition, Irdeto said success could lie in trying to satisfy both young viewers -- who are largely online in their viewing -- and the growing population of aging consumers "who may prefer TV’s traditional lean back experience, where searching for something to watch is not in their comfort zone."

Cord-cutters and cord-nevers eschew traditional MVPD service but differ in programming and over-the-top preferences, GfK said in a news release Monday. It said its triannual Cord Evolution survey found four of the 10 top streaming shows among cord-nevers -- who have never subscribed to a MVPD service -- aren't widely watched by cord-cutters -- who used to but no longer subscribe. It also said cord-cutters' 10 favorite shows all are Netflix programming, while three of the 10 favorite programs of cord-nevers are found on Amazon or Hulu. It said Netflix is cord-cutters' most-popular streaming service, but YouTube tops Netflix among cord-nevers. It said 60 percent of cord-nevers are "very satisfied" with their TV access, compared with 50 percent of cord-cutters, but 22 percent of cord-nevers plan to subscribe to a traditional TV service in the next six months. GfK said the data comes from a survey of 10,000 U.S. respondents.

A "serious defect" in Netgear cable modems is resulting in high spikes in network latency, alleges a class-action lawsuit filed April 14 against Netgear in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. The suit claims consumers who bought Netgear’s CM700 modem, designed for the fastest speed internet service plans, “suffer from severe network latency spikes.” The complaint says hundreds of users have complained in online forums and Netgear acknowledged the issue but failed to fix the problems. The suit blames the latency on Netgear's decision to swap out a Broadcom chipset for the Puma 6 chipset from Intel, a problem Intel acknowledged causes cable modems to suffer from significant jitter and latency on their network connections, the suit claims. The plaintiff’s law firm, Schubert Jonckheer, is investigating whether other cable modems containing the Puma 6 chipset -- including modems from Linksys, Cisco, Hitron, and Arris -- suffer from the same severe network latency defect, it said. "Netgear and other cable modem manufacturers shipping modems with the defect should recall the affected models and issue refunds,” said partner Noah Schubert. In response, Netgear emailed us: “It is Netgear’s policy to not provide any public comment on pending litigation, but for the sake of our customers, we would like them to know that we have full confidence in the CM700 cable modem." A class-action suit filed in the same court March 31 against Arris for its SB6190 modem sought the right for plaintiffs to cancel and recover the purchase price of the modem, also based on Intel’s Puma chipset. The complaint cited an article from The Register entitled “Why Your Gigabit Broadband Lags Like Hell – Blame Intel’s Chipset.”

Sky Angel's appeal of a lower court's 2016 decision denying its claims of improper termination of affiliation agreements (see 1701250002) "takes the Court through a maze of detours and dead-end turns" before wrongly insisting on a de novo review instead of the proper clear error review, said Discovery Communications and its Animal Planet in a response brief (in Pacer) filed Wednesday in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Discovery/Animal Planet said U.S. District Judge Deborah Chasanow of Greenbelt, Maryland, decided Discovery exercised its rights to terminate the Sky Angel contract in good faith and that Sky Angel's appeal "never engages with the highly deferential clear error standard, nor could Sky Angel come close to meeting it." It said Sky Angel, by trying to appeal the lower court's summary judgment decision, is trying to evade the trial record since the law clearly won't allow summary judgment review once there has been a bench trial. Discovery/Animal Planet also said Sky Angel claims are foreclosed by its breach of contractual obligation to tell Discovery if another programmer ceased providing programming -- an obligation Sky Angel breached when it didn't give notice C-SPAN pulled its programming for similar reasons as Discovery. Counsel for Sky Angel didn't comment Thursday. Along with litigation against Discovery, Sky Angel also has an open program access complaint against the programmer (see 1207160065).

Four distinct virtual MVPD business models are emerging, and the growing industry could put significant pressure on pay-TV providers' monthly subscription fees, Strategy Analytics (SA) said in a report Tuesday. The four models are defenders, typically traditional pay-TV providers offering over-the-top services that closely resemble traditional service but at low price; flankers, traditional pay-TV providers opting for skinny bundles; agitators, made up of programmers and studios that also favor fatter bundles; and disrupters, generally digital pure-plays with no ties to the legacy pay-TV business, SA said. As of January, 3.5 million to 4 million households are virtual MVPD subscribers, but that slow adoption could change with increasing numbers of offerings, SA said. Large-scale adoption of online pay-TV services "will overwhelm existing Internet infrastructure" without improvements being made, SA said. It said addressing technical challenges such as ensuring quality and consistency in the service needs to be the top priority of virtual MVPDs.

Toy company MGA Entertainment agreed to buy advertising on the CMT and VH1 networks but never paid the $206,230 owed after the ads aired, Viacom said in a motion (in PACER) for summary judgment filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Viacom previously sued MGA over other allegations of an unfulfilled ad agreement (see 1608120051) and sued again in December (see 1612300008) over the Little Tikes toy ads on CMT and VH1. Counsel for MGA didn't comment Tuesday.

Rather than letting Fox News Network drop six of seven claims against Charter Communications, as FNN asked (see 1704140012), the court should dismiss with prejudice the claims and give Charter 20 days to answer the rest of the complaint or let Charter file a motion for costs, Charter said in a letter Monday in New York Supreme Court. Charter's letter said FNN's proposed stipulated dismissal of the six claims -- all involving a fight over which FNN legacy contract, with Charter or Time Warner Cable, survived 2016's Charter/TWC deal -- would bar Charter from pursuing counterclaims in favor of FNN seeking judgment on its remaining claim. Charter said it would suffer prejudice if its counterclaim -- that FNN breached the Charter/FNN contract by now offering lower per-subscriber fees as required by most-favored nation terms -- was delayed by the determination of liability FNN is seeking. Charter also said there's no support in New York law for its being barred from asserting and pursuing counterclaims. FNN didn't comment Tuesday. Charter is facing similar litigation from Univision and Showtime over contract terms post-Charter/TWC.

Young TV viewers don't watch much live TV anymore and hardly use DVRs at all, said nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon in a blog post Sunday. Pointing to Nielsen data, nScreenMedia said live TV viewing "seems to be holding up well against mobile and broadband video competition," but that picture changes when looking at younger viewers, with those age 12 to 24 watching a third less TV in Q4 2016 than they did in Q4 2013. It also said some of the decline in live TV watching is due to increased time-shifted viewing, but DVR use is growing only for those 35 and older, and time-shifted content viewing is declining for age groups younger than that. "Is it any wonder that youth oriented live television is struggling," nScreenMedia said.

The FCC Media Bureau approved Meredith's purchase of WPCH-TV Atlanta from Turner Broadcasting, said an agency notice Friday. The WPCH sale had been expected by some as a path to clear AT&T's buy of Turner parent Time Warner without any license transfers (see 1610240046), thus avoiding any FCC review of the deal (see 1701060057). The bureau said the actual consummation of the WPCH transaction is to be done within 90 days.