The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, the Formula One governing body, has signed off on Liberty Media's purchase of the auto racing class, Liberty said in a media release Wednesday. It said the acquisition -- which Liberty announced in September (see 1609080031) -- is expected to close this month.

Cable One will buy fellow cable operator NewWave Communications for $735 million in cash, it said in a news release Wednesday. NewWave's network passes roughly 428,000 homes in in seven states, Cable One said, and the two will have more than 1.2 million total primary service units. Cable One said it expects to close on the deal in Q2. In a note to investors, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said NewWave's strategy "isn't entirely dissimilar to Cable One's own, suggesting that there may not be too much heavy lifting required to align the two" and pointed to NewWave's video penetration of 24 percent. With NewWave's broadband penetration not much better at about 26 percent, he said, a lot of the value of the deal presumably comes from raising penetration and probably prices. Macquarie analyst Amy Yong wrote investors that Cable One/NewWave likely will be followed by numerous cable deals this year, since Altice and Charter Communications desire to grow, while potential takeover targets could be Mediacom and Cox Communications. Such consolidation, along with industry innovation, likely will mean the three largest cable system operators will end up with more than 90 percent of the video market share over the next decade, Yong said.

Comcast opened free access to 6,800 Xfinity Wi-Fi hot spots in Washington to the 1 million people expected to attend Friday’s presidential inauguration, the company said in a Tuesday news release. Even those who aren't customers will be able to connect for no charge until Jan. 26, it said. Wireless carriers announced temporary and permanent capacity upgrades to meet high network demand expected over the weekend, including for the inauguration and demonstrations (see 1701060023).

The FCC Enforcement Bureau commended Comcast for its work on PlayStation device authentication. In a letter posted Tuesday to Senior Vice President-Regulatory and State Legislative Affairs Kathryn Zachem, bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc said Comcast had wrapped up the steps needed to authenticate its subscribers for access to HBO Go and WatchESPN TV Everywhere services on PlayStations. The bureau said that work came after multiple talks with Comcast and negotiations "with the relevant third parties." It urged Comcast "to continue to take steps towards" its goals of consumer choice and workplace innovation. Comcast didn't comment.

Pointing to "speedy remediation" as the only meaningful fix available to programmers like it that suffered programming discrimination under Communications Act Section 616, Game Show Network is continuing to push the FCC for immediate implementation of the carriage fixes in the rules governing 616 cases. In filings posted Tuesday in docket 12-122 (see here, here and here), GSN pushed for the FCC to order immediate compliance with the November administrative law judge advisory ruling saying Cablevision should move the network back from a premium tier to its expanded basic tier (see 1611230046 and 1612080038). Cablevision, now part of Altice USA, and the FCC didn’t comment. In its opposition to the GSN motion (see 1701050019), Cablevision is focusing on inapplicable rules and “unfounded” arguments, the plaintiff said. It rejected the Cablevision argument that GSN caused delays in the complaint and thus shouldn’t be able to seek the ALJ-mandated remedies. FCC rules Section 76.10 and 76.1302 say an ALJ decision in Section 616 carriage disputes and orders following a program carriage hearing are effective on release, GSN said. Stays are employed only in very limited circumstances, and the one sought by Cablevision “is completely inappropriate here,” GSN wrote. It said Cablevision hasn’t met any of the four elements required for a stay. Cablevision's contention that its due process rights would be violated if the decision is implemented before the FCC hears the MVDPs' First Amendment and statute of limitations arguments “borders on the frivolous” since the agency has rejected both of them more than once, GSN said. The channel dismissed Cablevision’s First Amendment defense argument, saying courts and the FCC repeatedly have said carriage remedies are “content neutral.” The indie said Cablevision arguments that its takeover by Altice was relevant should have brought that up in fall 2015 when the deal was announced and the ALJ could have generated a record.

Charter Communications' agreement with Fox News Network was expressly clear that it would be the surviving contract if and when Charter bought a system operator like Time Warner Cable, FNN said in a filing Thursday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan in opposition to Charter's motion to dismiss part of an FNN lawsuit (see 1609120005). The only caveat was contractual terms about anything to the contrary in prior agreements, such as FNN's contract with TWC, but no such language was in that FNN-TWC deal, the cable programmer said. FNN said Charter arguments to dismiss its declaratory judgment, good faith and fair dealing breach of contract, unjust enrichment, indemnity, estoppel and fraud claims are particularly indefensible in the pre-discovery phase of the proceedings. It said dismissing the claims wouldn't have any practical effect on discovery since Charter didn't move to dismiss FNN's breach of contract cause of action so discovery would remain the same. The cable operator didn't comment Friday.

A federal judge signed off on proposed settlement terms on class-action claims of Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) violations by cable installation company FTS USA and parent UniTek Global. In an order (in Pacer) Thursday, U.S. District Judge Robert Payne of Richmond dismissed the case in accordance with the settlement agreement and awarded attorney's fees and costs of $461,701 to be paid from the settlement fund, less than the $500,000 the plaintiff's counsel had sought. The sides agreed last fall to a settlement for FTS and UniTek to pay up to $1.3 million to settle allegations of improper use of consumer reports in employee hiring (see 1609150019).

The FCC has been clear in saying a Section 616 programming discrimination complaint that's filed within a year of a programmer letting a multichannel programming distributor know it intends to file that complaint and within a year of that discrimination is timely, Game Show Network said in a filing posted Thursday in docket 12-122. The filing was in opposition to Cablevision's push for a review of the 2012 Media Bureau hearing designation order on GSN's carriage complaint (see 1612230049). GSN also said the bureau 2008 hearing designation order on the NFL Network's complaint against Comcast, and the full FCC in its 2012 Tennis Channel order, found those complaints timely under similar circumstances, and Cablevision now gives no reason for the FCC to reverse longstanding precedent. The programmer said Cablevision's pointing to a pending rulemaking about clarifying the time limits in Communications Act Section 616 cases only confirms that GSN's complaint was timely, since the proposal would have the language that better hews to the way the rule has been repeatedly interpreted. Cablevision didn't comment.

The FCC Office of General Counsel OK'd Game Show Network's request (see 1701090033) for extra time to file its opposition to a Cablevision ask for a stay of GSN's petition that would force the cable operator to comply with the FCC administrative law judge's initial decision in a carriage discrimination complaint. In an order Tuesday on docket 12-122, OGC said the FCC doesn't regularly give out time extensions, but the three extra days -- with the deadline now being Friday -- will let the parties respond better to related pleadings.

The transition to an on-demand video marketplace is probably seven or so years in and has seven or so to go, meaning there's substantial life left in the traditional video bundle, Credit Suisse analyst Omar Sheikh wrote investors Tuesday. He predicted Wall Street's bearish stance that traditional media companies are structurally challenged will face several headwinds this year, including growth of virtual multichannel video programming distributors slowing the pace of video bundle subscriber declines and disrupting the competition challenge for subscription VOD, the continual robustness of the TV advertising market and the scrapping of net neutrality rules. Virtual MVPDs are "critical to the long term health of the traditional video ecosystem" by serving as a competitive response to SVOD services like Netflix, he said. The forthcoming Hulu live-streaming service likely will outperform virtual MVPDs like Sling and DirecTV Now through its library content and cloud DVR, he said. He said the pending AT&T purchase of Time Warner and 21st Century Fox's pending acquisition of Sky will, if approved, lead peers to focus increasingly on the potential upsides of scale and of vertical integration. Disney and CBS, which don't have that scale and/or vertical integration, could be motivated to look into transactions, he said.