Roku General Manager Chas Smith said streaming hours on the Roku platform increased 60 percent year on year. Roku is constantly upgrading the platform, said Smith, and will add two channels in the next few weeks: a Comcast Xfinity app and DirecTV Now. He spoke Wednesday at CES in Las Vegas.

Live streams of CBS and sister channels CBS Sports and POP will become part of Hulu's lineup for a multichannel live-streaming service it plans to launch in the coming months, the company said in a news release Wednesday. Hulu said much of the networks' programming will also be available on demand through its deal with CBS. Hulu said other broadcast options on its live TV service will be ABC and Fox. CBS is likely in talks with other streaming services like Sling and DirecTV Now about similar deals, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker wrote investors Wednesday, saying the Hulu deal probably won't cannibalize CBS' All Access streaming service since it retains in-season stacking rights and offers originals such as Star Trek.

Cable One's financial growth "is about to hit a wall" as its strategy of focusing on price increases could run afoul of its relatively price sensitive customer base, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett wrote investors Wednesday as the firm downgraded the cable ISP to "sell." "Those price increases do not appear sustainable, and in the near term they are not repeatable," Moffett said. He said the company's de-emphasizing its video offerings, including its dropping of Viacom content (see 1501140012), has hurt its attractiveness as a takeover target because Cable One has "foregone a tremendous amount of potential synergy for an acquirer." Cable One didn't comment.

Cable video subscriber numbers should continue growing this year, but competition also will grow with the launches of additional streaming services, UBS analyst John Hodulik wrote investors. AT&T's DirecTV Now virtual multichannel video programming distributor service (see 1612010025) by itself won't affect cable trends, but similar streaming services from Amazon, Hulu and Google's YouTube could, he said. An inflection point in cable video subscriber trends likely won't come until 2018 since connectivity and quality issues that come with initial product releases likely means a slow start for virtual MVPDs, he said. Hodulik said Comcast likely will launch a wireless service in the second half of the year in the $40 per month price range, though mobile virtual network operator agreement economics make it unlikely the service will be unlimited or zero-rated. For wireless carriers, he said, the result will be higher industry churn and increased promotional activity as smaller carriers try to keep their momentum. Hodulik Tuesday laid out implications of several possible deals, including Sprint/T-Mobile, Dish Network/T-Mobile, Charter Communications/T-Mobile and Verizon/Charter. He said it's not clear who would be the buyer in a Sprint and T-Mobile deal, and it would benefit AT&T and Verizon through reduced competition while complicating cable entry into wireless. He said Dish/T-Mobile would solve T-Mobile's spectrum needs and monetize Dish's spectrum, while Charter/T-Mobile could lead to further cable-wireless transactions. He said Verizon/Charter would likely face significant regulatory conditions.

Viacom, which previously sued toy company MGA Entertainment over an unfulfilled advertising agreement (see 1608120051), is suing it again over new allegations. In a breach of contract complaint (in Pacer) filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Viacom said that MGA -- “apparently undeterred” by the previous judgment against it -- is refusing to pay the cable programmer $200,000 owed for Little Tikes toy ads aired on VH1 and Country Music TV (CMT) during the second half of 2015. Viacom said MGA's Haworth Marketing + Media, which ordered the VH1 and CMT ads, has at the same time been paying for ads it ordered on Nickelodeon. MGA didn't comment Friday.

The Klingon language is in the public domain and can't be protected under copyright law and thus can't be used as evidence of copyright violation by makers of a so-called Star Trek fan film, the Language Creation Society (LCS) said Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles in an application (in Pacer) for leave to file an amicus brief. LCS -- a nonprofit that promotes constructed languages such as Esperanto and Klingon -- said its brief isn't in support of any party but narrowly supports the defendants' opposition to Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios' motion for summary judgment (see 1611250021) for the limited issue of a Paramount/CBS claim of Klingon language copyright. LCS also said its previous motion to file an amicus brief in the suit was dismissed without prejudice, but it's renewing its request since the issue "is ripe for summary judgment." No court has ever ruled on the issue of copyrighting a language, and the Klingon issue in the "fan film" suit hasn't received sufficient briefing, LCS said. In a separate pretrial conference order (in Pacer) filed Thursday by Paramount/CBS and defendant Axanar Productions, they said the trial is expected to start Jan. 31 and last 10 days.

Thirteen Cox Media Group (CMG) local stations might go dark on AT&T's DirecTV and U-Verse as of 11:59 p.m. Saturday due to lack of progress in retransmission consent negotiations, Cox said in a news release Thursday. Cox said the stations would be WSB-TV Atlanta; WFXT Boston; WSOC-TV Charlotte; WAXN-TV Kannapolis, North Carolina; WHIO-TV Dayton; WFOX-TV Jacksonville; WHBQ-TV Memphis; WFTV-TV and WRDQ, both of Orlando; WPXI Pittsburgh; KIRO-TV Seattle; KOKI-TV and KMYT-TV, both of Tulsa. “We are disappointed that CMG and AT&T appear to be reaching an impasse that could lead to a disruption in service for AT&T U-Verse and DIRECTV subscribers," Cox Vice President-Television Jane Williams said. "We have negotiated many of these agreements with cable and satellite operators throughout the United States and have rarely had disputes of this kind. In just the past few weeks, we have reached agreement with some of the largest video distributors in the country. We certainly hope for the same result in our negotiations with AT&T/DIRECTV.” AT&T in a statement said it "want[s] to get our DIRECTV and U-verse customers’ usual local broadcast stations back into their lineups and share[s] their frustration. Cox Broadcasting is preventing its local signals from reaching our customers’ homes in ten cities unless Cox receives a significant increase in fees just to allow those same families to watch shows available for free over-the-air and that the broadcast networks typically make available for free online and through new digital apps. Cox has suspended its stations from other TV providers’ customers before, so we appreciate our DIRECTV and U-verse customers’ patience as we work to resolve this matter quickly and reasonably.”

The FCC Media Bureau's 2012 hearing designation order sending a Game Show Network (GSN) carriage complaint to an administrative law judge (see 1205100047) erred when it said the complaint fell within the statute of limitations, Cablevision said in an application Friday for review of the order. The GSN complaint about Cablevision retiering the channel came nearly a decade after the two signed a carriage agreement that gave Cablevision the right to retier GSN, the multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) said. Deciding the complaint was timely since it came within a year of Cablevision's alleged discrimination runs contrary to FCC rules and policy and to judicial authority, Cablevision said. It said the one-year clock for filing carriage complaints is triggered by an MVPD and network signing a contract that a party alleges violates rules, an MVPD offering to carry a network under terms that a party alleges violates rules, or a party notifying an MVPD it intends to file an FCC complaint. Cablevision also said U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards' concurring opinion in the 2013 Cablevision decision on Tennis Channel retiering rejected the reasoning the Media Bureau followed in its GSN decision. But GSN told us "the standard cable industry interpretation of the rule has never been adopted by the FCC, and while [Edwards] criticized the FCC interpretation, he was not able to obtain a second vote for his view." GSN also said Cablevision's application for review "raises the question always raised in one of these [Communications Act Section] 616 cases -- the meaning of the statute of limitations applicable to them. That is the only issue raised in the application for review, and it can only be raised that way because the Media Bureau decided it (against Cablevision) when it designated the case for hearing and instructed the ALJ not to deal with it."

The cable industry heads into 2017 with the wind strongly at its back due to incoming Republican control of the FCC and Washington, including in the form of potential broadband pricing power, bigger merger opportunities, anticipated tax reforms and inasmuch as rising interest rates don't hurt less-leveraged companies like Comcast and Verizon, said Macquarie analyst Amy Yong in a note to investors Friday. With FCC Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly expressing interest in overturning net neutrality, "cable's broadband monetization opportunity is wide open," Yong said. Charter is bound by its Time Warner Cable/Bright House Networks acquisition consent decree for years more, but Comcast's NBCUniversal consent decree expires in early 2018, she said, saying it tried usage-based pricing in some markets but it also raised its data caps to 1 TB. She also said AT&T's proposed Time Warner buy and the CenturyLink/Level 3 deal are more likely to be approved under "more palatable conditions," and horizontal mergers are more likely, raising the odds of a T-Mobile/Sprint deal. She said there's increased possibility for a cable/wireless merger, with Charter/Verizon a possibility.

The number of original scripted series on basic cable rose 63 percent between 2011 and 2016, hitting 181 this year, and on premium cable the number grew 9 percent, to 36, said an analysis released Wednesday by FX Networks Research. On broadcast, the number of original scripted series grew 25 percent, to 145, FX said. Among online services, the number grew from six in 2011 to 455 this year, it said.