Phone companies continue to shed broadband customers, while cable companies continue to add them, Leichtman Research Group said in a news release Thursday. During Q3, the U.S.'s 14 largest cable and telco providers added 625,000 net additional subscribers, roughly the same as added in Q3 2015, LRG said. Cable companies added roughly 775,000 subscribers in Q3, about the same as the year-earlier quarter, it said. Telcos meanwhile lost about 150,000 subscribers, similar to the 145,000 lost in Q3 2015, LRG said, adding that they have had net broadband losses in five of the six most recent quarters. For the first three quarters of 2016, cable added about 2.44 million broadband subscribers, compared with 475,000 lost by telcos, the research firm said.
All top Charter Communications executives with the authority to propose or sign off on imposing of data caps or usage-based pricing are aware that the FCC's approval of Charter buying Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks includes the condition it not impose such pricing mechanisms on its fixed mass-market broadband service, the operator said in its first semi-annual data caps and usage-based pricing report as required as part of the FCC conditions. In that report, filed Wednesday in docket 16-197, Charter also said no proposals have been made to any of its executives or directors that the company use data caps or usage-based pricing in broadband offerings.
Pay-TV subscriber losses were up in Q3, when the 11 largest pay-TV players, covering about 95 percent of the market, lost roughly 255,000 net video subscribers, Leichtman Research Group said in a news release Wednesday. That compares with a loss of 210,000 subscribers in Q3 2015. LRG said the top six cable companies lost roughly 90,000 subscribers in the most recent quarter, down from losing 170,000 in Q3 a year earlier. Direct broadcast satellite added 207,000 subscribers in the quarter when Dish Network's Sling TV gains are included, compared with a gain of 3,000 in Q3 2015, Leichtman said. It said DirecTV's 323,000 net adds in Q3 were the most in any third quarter since 2011. Telco providers lost roughly 375,000 subs in the quarter, compared with a loss of 45,000 in Q3 2015. The researcher said that over the past year, AT&T has shed about 1.3 million U-verse subscribers while adding 1.2 million DirecTV subscribers. Over the past year, those top pay-TV providers have lost roughly 755,000 subs, compared with a loss of 445,000 over the previous 12 months.
Ericsson signed an exclusive deal with 20th Century Fox Television Distribution for its sub-Saharan Africa subscription VOD service, Nuvu, giving it access to Fox-produced titles and an array of global film franchises, it said in a news release Wednesday.
When building their own a la carte video package, consumers most want ABC, CBS, NBC, Discovery Chanel, History and Fox, TiVo's Digitalsmiths reported Wednesday. For each of those channels, consumers are willing to pay roughly $1.50 a month, with the average price for their top-10 channels being $15.30 a month, it said. That raises the question of whether consumers face sticker shock when asked to pay, for example, the $5.99 per month charged by CBS for its All Access app, Digitalsmiths said. It said it looked at the skinny bundle offerings available now, and found none carries all the 20 most-desired channels. "Add up the cost of a skinny bundle, subscription video on demand service and a streaming device like Google Chromecast and the total is essentially back to the cost of a traditional pay-TV package," it said. "Will consumers catch on that skinny bundles aren't really skinny?" The TiVo unit said pay-TV providers could remain competitive by offering a la carte or skinny bundle packages that include channels unavailable in competitive offerings. The data came from a survey of 3,140 U.S. and Canadian participants.
Viacom will spend $345 million in cash to buy Televisión Federal, one of Argentina's most popular networks and content producers, it said in a news release Tuesday. Viacom will receive the Telefe network, eight channels in the nation's interior, the Telefe Internacional pay-TV channel, 12 production studios, a library of more than 33,000 hours of content and the Mil Telefe and Telefe Noticias apps, as well as a stake in the UPlay multichannel network that Telefe co-founded.
Google improved its Fiber TV app to allow for watching current streaming episodes of TV programming and recording programming to a DVR, it said in a blog post Tuesday. Google said the app update also now brings personalized recommendations for live TV viewing and for recorded content on the DVR. The app will be updated for Google TV subscribers "in the coming weeks," the company said.
Free Press is "disappointed" that the FCC's set-top box plan wasn't approved at commissioners' September meeting, Policy Director Matt Wood said in a call with an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel Nov. 9, according to an ex parte filing. Free Press would like details of what the current draft proposal contains and how it addresses concerns about the plan's previous iteration. The FCC-proposed set-top plan would threaten the livelihood of members of the Directors Guild of America, DGA representatives told an aide to Rosenworcel in another meeting Thursday, according to an ex parte filing in docket 16-42. The DGA also sent Rosenworcel a letter praising her for expressing concern about the effects of the set-top plan on content creators. The FCC plan doesn't protect DGA members' creative works, the guild said.
Charter Communications Monday unveiled its low-income broadband service, Spectrum Internet Assist. The company in a news release said the service offers 30/4 Mbps speeds for $14.99 a month. Spectrum Internet Assist is available throughout Charter's legacy footprint now and will be rolled out market by market in legacy Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks territory by mid-2017. The service is available for families with students in the National School Lunch Program or people 65 and older who receive Supplemental Security Income program benefits. Low-income broadband provision was a condition of the FCC approving Charter's buys of TWC and BHN (see 1605060059).
Fox News Network and TVEyes are at loggerheads over the significance of their fight of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision last month in TCA Television v. McCollum. In a letter (in Pacer) Thursday to the 2nd Circuit, TVEyes said that TCA -- contrary to Fox's assertions -- didn't say that a fair use claim diminishes if it doesn't involve commentary or criticism, but rather that various uses, including criticism, comment, news reporting and research, are appropriate for finding fair use. Fox's letter (in Pacer) argued that TCA held that to be transformative a new work has to use copyrighted work for a purpose or with a difference from that for which it was created. Fox is appealing a U.S. District Court decision that TVEyes' archiving function is fair use, but emailing, downloading and date/time searches aren't, and TVEyes is appealing a subsequent injunction (see 1603180007). The 2nd Circuit decision (in Pacer) on TCA ruled that the verbatim use of a portion of the comedy routine "Who's on First?" in Broadway's Hand to God wasn't fair use but affirmed a lower court's dismissal of a copyright infringement complaint brought by heirs of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.