CableLabs' membership now includes Chongqing Cable Networks of China, said a DOJ Antitrust Division notice in Thursday's Federal Register. CableLabs notified the FTC and the U.S. attorney general, as required by the National Cooperative Research and Production Act, it said.

A CBS/Viacom combination isn't a fait accompli because the two "do not go together naturally," said Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker in a note to investors Thursday as it upgraded its rating of Viacom to "market perform." Ryvicker said a CBS/Viacom doesn't appear imminent and could end up not happening since CBS CEO Les Moonves and National Amusements, the majority shareholder of both companies, "have some corporate governance issues to get through" that would give him free rein to make executive decisions. Exacerbating the issue are the different strategies of CBS and Viacom: "You can't just slap [Viacom] and CBS content together -- that would be like eating pickles and ice cream while not being pregnant." But Viacom is trading at close to its potential floor price of roughly $33 per share, and that should provide some stability to the stock for now, Ryvicker said. Any CBS/Viacom likely wouldn't face big regulatory hurdles, experts have said (see 1610050039).

Discovery Communications is buying a $100 million minority stake in just-formed media holding company Group Nine Media, made up of Thrillist Media Group, NowThis Media, Discovery's digital network Seeker and production studio SourceFed Studios, Discovery said in a news release Thursday. Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer will become Group Nine CEO. Discovery said it's trying to broaden its millennial-targeting digital offerings. It said it has an option to later buy a controlling stake in Group Nine. Discovery said the investment will be used for expansion of Group Nine's sales team and branded content video.

Arris International will help develop Charter Communications' WorldBox 2.0 video platform to be deployed on traditional TV sets in the cable ISP's footprint, the companies said in a news release Wednesday. They said WorldBox is a hybrid IP/quadrature amplitude modulation video platform aimed at allowing both traditional and cloud-based user interfaces and new video features.

Comments are due Oct. 26, and replies Nov. 2, on EchoStar's petition for a waiver that would let it import and sell AirTV, an Internet-enabled set-top box that doesn't include an analog tuner, the FCC Media Bureau said in a public notice Wednesday in docket 16-329. The PN said FCC rules require that through Aug. 31, 2017, TV broadcast receivers must be capable of receiving all channels allocated by the FCC to the TV broadcast service. In its petition filed last week in docket 12-1, EchoStar said AirTV was made for use with applications running on mobile devices and will offer access to digital HDTV content broadcast over the air and is aimed at the "cord cutter" market. It also said since the FCC is sunsetting in 2017 its requirement that all over-the-air digital tuners include over-the-air analog tuners, there's no reason to think allowing AirTV less than year before that sunset 'would frustrate the limited remaining lifespan of the rule or otherwise harm consumers."

The average monthly cost of basic cable went up 2.3 percent, to $23.79, during the 12-month span ending Jan. 1, 2015, and the bill for expanded basic service went up 2.7 percent, to $69.03, the FCC Media Bureau said in its latest annual Report on Cable Industry Prices, posted Wednesday in docket 92-266. The bureau said expanded basic rates were higher due at least in part to cable operators providing more channels; the average price per channel for expanded basic service meanwhile went down 1.8 percent, to 46 cents per channel. Between 2005 and 2015, the price per channel dropped 1.4 percent on an average annual compounded basis, the bureau said. When comparing communities with a finding of effective cable competition vs. those without, the cost of expanded basic service was seen going up on average 2 percent to $70.31 in the former and 3.3 percent to $67.85 in the latter, the bureau said. And during that year span, it said, prices per channel dropped 0.6 percent in communities without effective competition to 49.7 cents per channel, while they dropped 3.3 percent in effective competition communities to 41.2 cents per channel -- the result of cable operators in effective competition communities carrying more channels on expanded basic lineups than operators without effective competition. Basic and expanded basic costs and rates of increase also varied by the type of competition the cable operators faced, according to the survey. The cost for basic ranged from $20.06 a month when the effective competition was from a rival cable operator in a cable overbuild area, to $25.57 when cable operators either have competition from wireless operators offering pay-TV service or themselves serve fewer than 30 percent of households in a service area, according to the survey. The average cost for expanded basic, meanwhile, ranged from $69.46 when the effective competition was from the incumbent operator in a cable overbuild area, to $74.05 when the competition was from a rival in that overbuild area. The bureau said the data came from a random survey of 800 cable operators.

Amblin Partners will get access to Alibaba's online streaming platform Youku Tudou, its over-the-top provider Tmall and its e-commerce marketplaces, as part of a deal the two announced in a news release Sunday. It said Amblin and Alibaba agreed to co-produce and finance films for global and Chinese audiences and to work jointly on marketing, distribution and merchandising of Amblin Partners films in China. Alibaba also is acquiring a minority stake in Amblin, with an Alibaba representative joining the Amblin board, they said.

While cable has big opportunities in wireless, investors are "so single-mindedly focused" on Charter Communications' 2019 and 2020 cash flows that anything that could disrupt its free cash flow per share -- such as capital spending on wireless -- "could trigger disappointment" among those same investors, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett wrote investors Tuesday as the firm downgraded its rating of Charter to "neutral." He said cable -- now enjoying a contraction of regulatory pressures with the FCC reversing itself on business data services and set-top boxes -- likely will face a relatively quiet regulatory front after the election until at least early 2017. Charter didn't comment.

More than just an ancillary revenue stream, over-the-top video is maturing into a major revenue opportunity and key brand-building tool, said a survey of TV stations, pay-TV operators, programmers, TV service providers, new media and other firms released Friday. Akamai underwrote the survey, which said 45.6 percent have launched an OTT service, 10.3 percent plan to launch in the next quarter and 35.4 percent plan to launch in the next year. Sixty percent have begun or plan to begin a subscription-based service, it said, though subscriptions aren't as popular as advertising as a revenue-generation model. While 59 percent of the average OTT library is HD video, that's expected to grow to 71 percent within a year. End-user features like search recommendations are on the rise, it said. On-demand delivery is the main mechanism for delivering video from 79 percent of the surveyed OTT providers, with 65 percent offering live linear content such as sports and events, according to the survey; 44 percent plan to support downloading for offline viewing.

Despite the magnitude of Hurricane Matthew, the storm shouldn't materially affect the financial positions of Comcast or Disney, Moody's said in notes to investors Thursday. It said Comcast has millions of subscribers in Florida and along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts, but only a portion of the Florida subscribers are directly exposed to the storm. It said that because Comcast's theme park holdings in Orlando generate less than 5 percent of revenue, and the storm is coming during the off-season, the loss of a few days of operation isn't expected to be significant to overall revenue and cash flow. Parks and resorts generate 31 percent of Disney's annual revenue, but Orlando's Disney World is only a portion of that, Moody's said.