Altice and Cablevision relied on unsubstantiated assertions and unwarranted assumptions, while ignoring the findings of opponents, in their joint rebuttal (see 1512230046) to opponents and critics of Altice's proposed takeover of Cablevision, MFRConsulting said in a filing Wednesday in FCC docket 15-257. The $17.7 billion deal faces opposition or calls for conditions by parties including MFR, the Communications Workers of America and Zoom Telephonics. In its filing in response to Altice/Cablevision joint reply comments, MFR repeated its previous arguments (see 1512090034) that Cablevision post-acquisition could face "substantial risks" from the debt load that Altice would assign it and from Altice's "well documented verifiable pattern of anti-competitive and other ultimately customer-hostile business practices." In a statement, Altice said it anticipates "a fair and open regulatory process with the relevant authorities in connection with our proposed Cablevision transaction, and as in all of our other territories we expect to deliver significant benefits to consumers and their communities."

General Communication is dropping AMC Networks and Univision and adding One World Sports, Discovery Family and Outside Television in 2016, the Alaska cable operator said Monday. General Communication said AMC and Univision will no longer be carried "because of substantial price increases," with AMC seeking close to a 200 percent increase in carriage fees for its channels. In a statement Tuesday, AMC said, "We have extraordinarily high regard for the NCTC [the National Cable Television Cooperative] and for its members. We have long supported smaller cable operators, and the particular challenges and considerations that they face in the service of their markets. We will continue to endeavor to do everything we can to make them successful.” General Communication said AMC's The Walking Dead series still will be available via the Vudu app on the cable operator's TiVo service, and it's offering its TiVo customers a $50 Visa gift card to "encourage existing customers to explore ... new content available through apps such as Vudu and Netflix." The American Cable Association and the National Cable Television Cooperative earlier this month charged AMC with being a bad actor in programming negotiations with small and mid-sized cable operators (see 1512160035).In a statement, Univision Communications (UCI) said it "is committed to reaching a fair agreement with all of our distributors. Despite us making every effort over the last several months to reach a deal with General Communication, we were surprised and disappointed to learn of their plans to no longer offer the Univision Network to their customers in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau, Alaska. UCI's mission is to entertain, empower and inform our community, which is why we continue to invest in the technology and content to better serve our loyal audiences. Univision's news, entertainment and sports programming are a lifeline for our viewers and we will continue to work diligently to reach a mutually beneficial agreement."

Zoom Telephonics again said Altice's plans to buy Cablevision should be designated for hearing, denied or predicated on conditions. While Altice-owned Suddenlink complies with Section 629 of the Communications Act, which deals with navigation devices, Altice's "unwillingness to affirm that it will not convert Suddenlink's modem policies to those now employed by Cablevision" highlights the question of whether the Cablevision deal would be in the public interest, Zoom said in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-257. The Zoom filing was a reply to Altice/Cablevision replies (see 1512230046) to comments on the proposed $17.7 billion deal. In its filing Tuesday, the cable modem maker said Altice and Cablevision in their joint reply didn't refute any of Zoom's allegations in its Dec. 7 petition. Altice in its response also never addressed the question of whether the FCC has authority to unbundle its modem leases from Internet service, and made no argument "that there are any public interest benefits to allow it to continue or expand Cablevision's policies against separately offering cable modems," Zoom said.

The 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision overturning a jury verdict against Cox Communications for its set-top box policies has gone to the Supreme Court for a decision whether to hear the appeal. The Supreme Court said it distributed briefs Tuesday in the Cox case for the Jan. 8 conference. U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthron of Oklahoma City in November overruled a $6.31 million jury verdict against Cox and said the class-action complainants failed to offer evidence to show that tying a Cox Premium Cable subscription to renting of a Cox set-top box meant sizable losses of sales by third-party set-top box distributors (see 1511130005).

The deadline for responses to comments in the FCC's NPRM on possible changes to the "totality of circumstances" test for good-faith retransmission consent negotiations was delayed two weeks to Jan. 14. In an order posted Tuesday, the FCC's Media Bureau said such extensions aren't routine, but one is warranted in docket 15-216 "given the importance of the issues in this proceeding, and in light of the intervening holidays." Numerous broadcaster groups had sought an extension to March 2, citing "overlapping deadlines" with the broadcast incentive auction (see 1510230039). Comments were due in the proceeding Dec. 1, with some multichannel video programming distributors proposing changes beyond the list of practices the agency said it's considering as potential violations of good-faith negotiating, while broadcasters said the retrans market doesn't require fixing (see 1512020029).

Charter Communication's attitude toward the Sling TV over-the-top service of Dish Network shows the cable company cares more about protecting its video subscriber numbers than providing a better broadband offering, Dish said in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-149. "Charter's laser-like focus on Sling TV shows that it views Sling TV as a serious competitive threat rather than a benign interest," Dish said. In a highly redacted filing, Dish said Charter internal filings on Dish's procurement of Disney and Scripps Networks OTT rights point to the cable company's attempt to undermine Sling TV "by many means, including anticompetitive methods," and that Charter buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable "will dramatically increase its ability to do so." In a statement Wednesday, Charter said, "There is no more friendly broadband provider to OVDs, including Sling, than Charter. Charter’s slowest speed is 60 Mbps, we have no data caps, no usage based billing, no contracts and no modem fees.”

Calling objections to an alternative to the pay-TV "gatekeeper model" for consumers to be able to choose independent user interfaces joining linear and over-the-top TV "non-issues," TiVo told aides to all FCC members there's no reason to delay issuing an NPRM on the agency's Downloadable Security Technical Advisory Committee (DSTAC) report. "Any remaining concerns can be addressed as part of a rulemaking proceeding, and are not reasons for the Commission to delay" the NPRM, TiVo General Counsel Matt Zinn and outside lawyers for the company said, according to a filing posted Friday in docket 15-64. "Despite some recent revisionist history being put forth by opponents of competition, Section 629 has always been about extending the principle of Carterfone to the video navigation devices market and giving consumers a choice among retail products for the consumer interface," it said of the Communications Act section on a retail market for video navigation devices. An NPRM on the DSTAC report may soon circulate (see 1512150072). NCTA pushed back against TiVo. Despite the company's comparison of Section 629 to Carterfone, "the FCC has repeatedly found that the telephone network does not provide a proper analogy for video," NCTA General Counsel Neal Goldberg responded by email. "From the beginning of its work implementing Section 629 in 1998, it said that ‘the telephone networks do not provide a proper analogy to the issues in this [video device] proceeding due to the numerous differences in technology between Part 68 telephone networks and MVPD networks.’ It reiterated that conclusion in 2010.”

A jury awarded BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music $25 million in their lawsuit against Cox Communications for the cable company's failure to penalize its Internet customers who repeatedly infringed copyrighted materials. The verdict filed Thursday after a 10-day trial said the jury found BMG had proven three of the four questions put to it: that Cox subscribers violated BMG copyrighted works, that Cox is liable for contributory infringement, and that Cox's conduct was willful. The jury said it didn't agree that Cox had vicarious liability for the infringement. BMG and Round Hill sued Cox in 2014 in U.S. District Court, Alexandria, Virginia, alleging Cox failed to comply with the Copyright Alert System, which lets ISPs terminate Internet services to repeat infringers (see 1411280050). BMG didn't comment Friday. Cox is "unhappy with the decision, will review the ruling in detail and [is] considering options, including appeal," it said in a statement.

Comcast said it looks "forward to participating" in an FCC probe into a variety of industry practices involving products that don't count against customers' data caps. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on Thursday said the agency had written Comcast, AT&T and T-Mobile, asking company representatives to come in and talk about Stream TV, the Sponsored Data and Data Perks programs, and Binge On, respectively -- a move criticized by the GOP commissioners (see 1512170030). In a statement Friday, Free State Foundation President Randy May said he was concerned the FCC "will end up banning most zero-rated and sponsored data plans without evidence of consumer harm. The pro-regulation forces appear to driving the Commission's agenda. And at the end of the day the agency seems to be more concerned with protecting competitors than protecting broader consumer interests." In a statement Thursday, Comcast said its Stream TV video service "is not a zero-rated Internet service but a cable service that only works in the customer's home. Our Stream TV service does not go over the public Internet." At the same time, the company said, "We are happy to cooperate with this request."

Cord-cutting trends and network experimentation with lower advertising loads only explain some of the declining market values of large public content companies -- a $57 billion drop over the past 13 months, a Needham analyst wrote investors Wednesday. Investors also worry that multichannel video programming distributors are undermining their own revenue growth by putting identical content on less lucrative distribution platforms, said Laura Martin. Content companies putting their content also on digital platforms with low or no ad loads "are undermining their most valuable asset -- the dual revenue stream business model of linear TV -- because they retrain a consumer to expect high content quality at a significantly lower cost to that consumer," she said. When VOD contains full ad loads that can't be fast forwarded through, those viewers "are more valuable" than DVR views, she wrote. Meanwhile, 15 percent of ads are being blocked by consumers, and Apple's announcement this fall it would enable ad blocking apps points to accelerated adoption of consumer ad blocking, Needham said. But ad blocking "makes it less likely that the online video ecosystem will be a successful disrupter of the TV ecosystem," said the analyst, saying any possible demise of TV will come from incumbent companies shifting viewing identical content from high-value linear TV viewing hours to lower value digital platforms. A la carte channel offerings ultimately will likely account for less than 10 percent of total U.S. TV revenue "owing to the 'tyranny of choice,'" Needham said: "Too many choices overwhelm consumers and often leads to lower customer satisfaction levels or, worse, stops them from buying anything at all."