Oral argument in Tennis Channel's legal complaint against the FCC will be April 18, said an order filed Thursday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Tennis Channel's 2015 petition involves its claim that Comcast discriminated against it -- a claim denied by the FCC (see 1512140031).

NAB, NATOA and Minnesota's Northern Dakota County Cable Communications Commission petitioned the FCC Media Bureau to reconsider the expiration of some local franchising authority certifications related to the agency's 2015 effective competition order. The three petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in August, asking it to review the June order establishing that the cable market is effectively competitive in every franchise area and put the onus of rebutting that presumption on franchising authorities (see 1508280033). The petition filed Tuesday in docket 15-53 -- pointing to the Media Bureau's December order, which listed franchising authorities that had sought new certification -- asked for reconsideration "so that the Bureau may vacate its [effective competition] findings and certificate expirations" if the D.C. Circuit sets aside the effective competition order.

The FCC should minimize “any unnecessary burdens” on cable systems from online public file requirements, NCTA said in an ex parte filing posted in docket 14-127 Thursday. The agency should “balance the interest in ensuring access to the Commission-hosted database with the need for a reasonable transition period to the online system,” NCTA said. Its lawyers spoke separately with aides to Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Ajit Pai. An order on circulation that's on the preliminary agenda for the next commissioner meeting Jan. 28 would extend to cable and other licensees a requirement that TV-station licensees put their public files online (see 1601080047).

CableLabs' funding of various projects is increasingly focused on the long term, with "investment in innovation projects focused on three to eight years as being of equal importance to our traditional R&D projects focused on one to three years," CEO Phil McKinney said in a blog post Friday. Those long-range innovation projects will be the source for future R&D work, he said: "While most organizations spend a small portion of their budget on longer range innovation, we’ve made the deliberate decision to be aggressive in this transformation to ensure that CableLabs can rapidly build and sustain a significant innovation pipeline for the industry." McKinney said that since his start there in 2012, CableLabs also has focused on speeding up its R&D work, with an example being certification the first DOCSIS 3.1 modems announced earlier this week (see 1601130013). "We delivered DOCSIS 3.1 in record time, especially considering the new technologies that were added," he said.

Rogers Communications, in what it called a “global first,” beamed the first-ever live NBA game in 4K to customers with a NextBox 4K set-top when it aired the Toronto Raptors vs. Orlando Magic game Thursday from the O2 Arena in London. Rogers cable customers who tuned their NextBox 4K set-top to Channel 999 at 3 p.m. EST would be able to get the game “at four times the pixels of HD for stunning picture quality, higher resolution and improved motion video,” Rogers said in a Wednesday announcement. The production was in cooperation with BT Sport, which launched Europe's first live sports 4K channel, BT Sport Ultra HD, last year and also was to beam the game in 4K to customers in the U.K., Rogers said. Rogers claims to have made the largest commitment to live sports broadcasting in 4K in North America, with plans to do more than 100 live sporting events in 4K, including every 2016 Toronto Blue Jays home game, plus “marquee” NHL games, it said. In 2016, Rogers customers also will have access to stream 100 hours of 4K movies, series and TV shows through Netflix and other services, it said.

Set-top box shipments globally likely hit 253.1 million units for 2015, up slightly less than 2 percent from 2014, as the worldwide multichannel market hit 959 million subscribers, SNL Kagan said in a news release Thursday. The growth was due to increased demand in China and India, it said. Cable set-top unit shipments globally likely were close to 75 million for the year, about the same as 2014, and demand was likely flat as many cable TV markets approach saturation, SNL Kagan said. The IP set-top market also was probably flat as growing demand in Asia and Europe was offset by declines in North America, it said. Satellite set-top shipments are expected to be 47 percent of global set-top unit shipments, the largest segment of the market, it said. DVR-enabled set-top shipments declined for the year due to cost concerns and growing use of cloud-based DVR services, SNL Kagan said.

Cox Communications, DirecTV, Mediacom, Suddenlink, WOW and numerous National Cable Television Cooperative members were to have unbundled Fox Business Network Thursday to make the Republican presidential debates available to more of their subscribers, FBN said in a release Wednesday. The pair of debates was to have been televised at 6 and 9 p.m. live from the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in North Charleston, South Carolina.

Time Warner and HBO are raising red flags about how Charter Communications' buys of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable could hurt the over-the-top market. An ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 15-149 about a meeting earlier this week that TW and HBO executives had with FCC staff -- at the invite of the agency -- said the programmers asked the FCC to keep in mind unspecified statements made by Charter representatives. Those comments seemed to indicate New Charter "would be inclined to take action directed at programmers" in response to development of OTT services. Dish Network, a leading opponent of the Charter deals, also has argued Charter is motivated to use its market power to slow OTT competition in order to benefit its own business (see 1512230017). Those at the meeting included Time Warner General Counsel Paul Cappuccio; HBO General Counsel Eve Konstan; FCC General Counsel Jonathan Sallet; Owen Kendler, who's heading the FCC working team overseeing the deals' review; and Media and Wireline bureau staffers. In a statement, Charter said: "There is no more friendly broadband provider to OVDs than Charter. Charter’s slowest speed is 60 Mbps, we have no data caps, no usage based billing, no contracts and no modem fees.

Five cable modems were DOCSIS 3.1 certified in the first wave of certifications for the standard, CableLabs said in a news release Wednesday. The modems are from Askey, Castlenet, Netgear, Technicolor and Ubee Interactive, CableLabs said. CEO Phil McKinney said the certification "represents the most rapid development and implementation cycle for a broadband technology development program ever delivered by CableLabs. Development of the initial DOCSIS 3.1 specifications to product certification has occurred in half the time of previous DOCSIS specifications.”

The FCC should permanently exempt cable systems with less than 1,000 subscribers from online public file requirements, said the American Cable Association in meetings last week with staff from the offices of Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Ajit Pai, said an ex parte posted in docket 14-127 Tuesday. The FCC also shouldn’t adopt any new disclosure requirements and grant a safe harbor for cable systems that use third parties to upload public file documents to a database, ACA said. An order on circulation would apply the TV station public-file rules to cable operators and others (see 1601080047).