Turner's FilmStruck subscription VOD service FilmStruck will go live Oct. 19, the company said in a news release Thursday. FilmStruck will focus on art house, indie, foreign and cult films, including the streaming Criterion Collection library. Cost will be $6.99 a month or $10.99 for FilmStruck and the Criterion content.

Over-the-top video offerings face a particularly steep demand curve, with demand dropping sharply as prices increase, which creates a problem considering the estimated programming costs faced by Hulu as it looks to launch a virtual multichannel video programming distribution service next year, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett wrote investors Thursday. Meanwhile, the most likely subscribers for more-expensive OTT services aren't the target audience of cord-cutters and cord-nevers but households looking to trim their monthly pay-TV spending, the result being cannibalization, Moffett said. "On an absolute basis, 10 million subscribers could be perceived as a very successful launch ... but that success could be cold comfort if it's achieved only by accelerating traditional Pay TV subscriber losses by 7.3M." Cord cutting is more prevalent -- and accelerating fastest -- among younger viewers, but older viewers are more likely to pay for an OTT service, he said, saying a "sweet spot" of $40-$45 monthly might be optimal but pricing at that level might not be feasible.

A federal court again shot down litigation against Comcast by Entertainment Studios Networks (ESN) and the National Association of African American Owned Media (NAAAOM) alleging racially motivated carriage discrimination. In three-page order (in Pacer) Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter of Los Angeles said the court made clear in its previous dismissal of the first amended complaint (see 1606100017) plaintiffs' benchmarks showing demand for ESN channels were ambiguous and didn't rule out Comcast's argument that it had a legitimate business reason to refuse to contract with ESN. But the second amended complaint "merely provided the Court with different opaque benchmarks" and doesn't include any new facts that point to racial discrimination as the cause of Comcast's decision not to carry ESN content, Hatter said. He noted the court said in the dismissal of the first amended complaint if the second amended complaint has pleading deficiencies, it would be dismissed with prejudice, and said the deficiencies "have not been cured." "We properly pleaded a claim for racial discrimination in contracting under section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act, based on Supreme Court and 9th Circuit law," plaintiffs' counsel Skip Miller of Miller Barondess emailed us Thursday. "We are going to appeal and get this decision overturned, and the case will be reinstated. Then, we will go forward with discovery and trial." Plaintiffs are pursuing similar litigation against Charter and related complaints against the FCC (see 1601280063). In a filing (in Pacer) Monday in opposition to a Charter motion to dismiss, plaintiffs called the Charter motion "strong on invective but ... weak on the facts and the law." It said race-neutral reasons don't explain Charter's not contracting with ESN, and pointed to supposedly racially biased comments by Charter executives (see 1608120028) as not being stray, but constituting proof of discriminatory intent. In its motion (in Pacer) to dismiss in September, Charter said the first amended complaint is just the latest in ESN/NAAAOM's "cynical objective ... to force the distributors to carry the channels," but it fails to state a claim.

NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures and some production companies expect to have settlements worked out by month's end with parking lot attendants suing for being denied minimum wage and overtime pay. In a memo endorsement (in Pacer) filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, counsel for the plaintiffs and for NBCUniversal et al. said they reached a settlement in principle in July for a pair of lawsuits and have been working since then to finalize it. They also said a proposed settlement agreement should be submitted for preliminary approval by Oct. 28. Also named as defendants in the NBCUniversal suits were Bluegrass Films, Fuzzy Door Productions, Davis Entertainment, Woodridge Productions and Entertainment Partners. CBS and other production companies being similarly sued said in July they were discussing potential resolution (see 1607280059).

Cable operators filing FCC Form 1210 can raise the non-external portion of their rates by a factor of 1.0121 percent for Q2 to account for inflation, and those filing Form 1240 can use an inflation factor of 1.023, a Media Bureau public notice said Monday.

BMG wants $10.48 million in attorney's fees and $2.92 million in expenses from Cox Communications, calling its copyright infringement legal fight with the cable company "exactly the sort of case where a Court should award fees and expenses." In a motion (in Pacer) Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, BMG called Cox "a willful infringer that spent years crafting a sham (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) 'safe harbor' defense ... [and] paired it with a host of baseless legal arguments and constant efforts to prevent discovery." In a separate motion (in Pacer) Friday, Cox asked for $71,835 in attorney's fees from plaintiff Round Hill Music, plus $35,000 for work on the motion and reply itself. BMG's motion accused Cox of forcing "near constant discovery litigation" and pointed to its failure to identify millions of infringement notices it received but deleted in response to a BMG interrogatory. BMG said Cox witnesses evaded questions and were unforthcoming. BMG said Cox attempted to focus discovery on Rightscorp conduct rather than its own, seeking every document BMG had related to Rightscorp and voluminous discovery on Rightscorp itself. BMG also said Cox compressed line spacing in violation of local rules "to squeeze every possible argument" into a motion for summary judgment and then "claimed it was confused about the meaning of 'double-spaced' though every single document Cox filed through the first eight months of litigation maintained proper line spacing." Absent "a fee award, the costs of litigation will consume much of the value of the jury's verdict," BMG said. Cox said Round Hill didn't own the copyrights underlying the multitudes of copyright infringement notices that came from Rightscorp, but "Round Hill came into this Court and sued Cox anyway ... then prevaricated throughout discovery." While "few things in this lawsuit have been simple or clear cut, Cox's entitlement to reasonable fees for the defense against Round Hill is manifest," it said. Cox is appealing the $25 million verdict awarded BMG (see 1608190030). Cox and Round Hill didn't comment Monday.

The makers of a Star Trek fan film produced more than 31,000 pages of documents for Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios, but those programmers suing them have only "trickled in documents ... after the agreed upon exchange date had passed, and produced far less than what Defendants have provided," said Axanar Productions and principle Alec Peters in a joint stipulation (in Pacer) on defendants' motion to compel discovery. Paramount/CBS sued in 2015, alleging copyright violations of the Star Trek universe in the Prelude to Axanar film that was distributed free online. In their motion filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Axanar/Peters said they want documents and testimony about financial information on the alleged damages, plus information needed to investigate the Paramount/CBS allegations of willful infringement and chain of title information related to allegations of ownership. The plaintiffs in their preliminary statement in the joint motion called the Axanar/Peters claims "argumentative, self-serving and deliberately misleading." Paramount/CBS said Axanar/Peters are trying to compel production of documents "that do not exist," and in many cases, the plaintiffs agreed to provide the requested information.

Viacom board members Thomas May, Eversource Energy chairman, and Nicole Seligman, former president of Sony Entertainment, will head a special committee to evaluate the request by shareholder National Amusements that Viacom explore a transaction with CBS (see 1609290077), Viacom said in a news release Friday. The committee hired Debevoise & Plimpton as independent legal adviser, the company said.

Scripps' streaming video humor brand Cracked launched a video channel of daily videos and ongoing series on Roku, including Roku-exclusive content, the company said in a news release Thursday. Scripps said Cracked already is available on Pluto TV and Xumo.

National Amusements, the majority shareholder of CBS and of Viacom, is urging a combination of the two, Viacom said in a news release Thursday. Viacom said it expects its board to form a special committee of independent directors to consider the request. In the letter to Viacom, National Amusements said such a deal "might offer substantial synergies that would allow the combined company to respond even more aggressively and effectively to the challenges of the changing entertainment and media landscape." In a note to investors Thursday, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker said, "CBS (and particularly CEO Les Moonves) is in the driver's seat here."