The Justice Department signed off on Altice's planned $9.1 billion acquisition of a majority of Suddenlink. In a petition asking the FCC to adopt conditions Monday in FCC docket 15-135, DOJ said it had no objections as long as commission conditions include terms of the national security agreement signed Dec. 11 by Altice, Suddenlink and DOJ. Altice, which has said it hoped to close the deal by year's end (see 1507240027), didn't comment Wednesday.

AMC Networks is a poster child for problems small and mid-sized cable operators face in getting "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" programming agreements, American Cable Association and National Cable Television Cooperative members told FCC Media Bureau staff, said an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-158. Large programming conglomerates like AMC demand escalating rates and coerce carrying of unwanted programming, ACA and NCTC said, saying such demands also increasingly don't allow for exceptions for small "channel locked" cable systems that have no capacity for additional channels. Their remaining choices -- charge unreasonable prices or drop channels -- "can be seen as a barometer for the industry as larger, more powerful pay television providers will likely face the same bundling and pricing demands and bandwidth constraints in the future," the industry groups said, saying NCTC members with roughly a million subscribers are considering no longer carrying AMC because of behavior such as forced bundling of low-rated networks. AMC also is discriminatory in its pricing and carriage, proposing rates to NCTC members twice what it charges other cable services, and the company uses such strong-arm tactics as crawls at the bottom of screens warning viewers they may lose networks soon, the two said. AMC also has removed cue tones from some operators' programming feeds, disrupting the insertion of local advertisements into commercial breaks, AMC and NCTC said. While pointing to AMC as proof of a broken video market, the two didn't recommend specific changes but asked the FCC to keep such matters in mind when assessing the state of competition in the video market. AMC didn't comment Wednesday.

Despite its protestations, Charter Communications is on a path to usage-based pricing (UBP) for broadband services, Dish Network said in an FCC filing posted Monday in docket 15-149. The heavily redacted filing pointed to internal documents as indicating "New Charter will deploy UBP the minute after any condition prohibiting it expires." UBP restricts consumers' Internet use and can be used by ISPs to discriminate against third-party services through zero rating, Dish said. "We already see this in the marketplace: Comcast's own services are exempt from the caps on Internet usage the company imposes on some of its customers." The companies Charter is trying to buy can't be expected to moderate Charter's plans as Time Warner Cable "is well known as the industry pioneer in UBP," Dish said. Dish repeatedly has urged the FCC to deny Charter's purchase of Bright House Networks and TWC (see 1512070025). In a statement Monday, Charter said, "There is no more friendly broadband provider to [online video providers] than Charter. Charter’s slowest speed is 60 Mbps, we have no data caps, no usage based pricing, no contracts and no modem fees. Also, Netflix, who strongly opposed to the Comcast/TWC transaction, supports the Charter, TWC and Bright House transactions.” Charter also noted that during the company's Q3 earnings call in October, Chief Financial Officer Chris Winfrey in response to a question about future adoption of UBP said, "We don't do it because we want to sell more services -- that's our business model [and] we don't have any plans to change it."

The Consumer Video Choice Coalition-supported security solution from the FCC Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee report would implement conditional access digital rights management and link protection, said Google Vice President-Access Services Milo Medin in a meeting Tuesday with FCC Chief Technologist Scott Jordan and Media Bureau staff. That is according to an ex parte filing posted in docket 15-64 Thursday.

The Weather Channel is seeking FCC International Bureau approval for the sale of parent The Weather Co.'s (TWC) nonprogramming assets to IBM (see 1510280018). The request for what TWC called pro forma approval came in a filing submitted Wednesday. IBM has said it expects to complete in Q1 its buy of the company's IoT properties.

Of the 79 percent of U.S. consumers who subscribe to TV, 23 percent trimmed the cord this past year by scaling back the size of their subscription package, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said in a report Wednesday. Some of that decline is due to the introduction of skinny bundles by multichannel video programming distributors, PwC said, and 57 percent of cord cutters did so because of subscription costs. In 2014, 91 percent of consumers envisioned subscribing to cable in the coming year -- a number that had dropped to 79 percent by 2015, implying close to 20 percent of cable subscribers could cancel within in the next year, PwC said. When cord cutters were asked what would get them to resubscribe, 56 percent said an a la carte customization option. Meanwhile, over-the-top video providers appear to be a threat to cable but not to each other, with 55 percent of Netflix subscribers also subscribing to at least one other OTT service, as do 91 percent of Hulu subscribers, PwC said. The study is based on an online survey of 1,200 U.S. consumers conducted in fall of 2013 and fall of 2014, a pair of consumer groups convened in September in Los Angeles, and a three-month analysis of social media, PwC said.

Multichannel video programming distributors that don't carry local broadcast signals and aren't employing retransmission consent benefits that come with MVPD regulation shouldn't be subject to the regulatory burdens of those rules either, Telletopia said in an FCC ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 14-261 on a call between Telletopia and staff of Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. The nonprofit over-the-top service (see 1511100014) said online video distributors (OVD) carrying local broadcast signals need to be classified as MVPDs to be competitive with cable, satellite and other video providers. Without a retrans mechanism for online provision of local broadcast stations, local broadcast programming can't be distributed online and stations can't be compensated, said the nonprofit. The obligations and privileges that come under MVPD regulations "are of particular importance to entities seeking to retransmit local broadcast station signals -- the full content of which is unavailable to consumers over the Internet via other sources," Telletopia said. But if an OVD classified as an MVPD isn't interested in station carriage, it said, "the obligations of the MVPD rules should not be triggered."

Any Charter Communications buy of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable should include conditions that boost residential cable Internet access for low-income households, including broadening the eligibility requirements for its program for residential cable Internet access for low-income households, the Coalition for Broadband Equity said in an FCC ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 15-149. The coalition -- an unfunded association made up of a variety of community groups, schools, government agencies and libraries scattered across five states -- said Charter/TWC/BHN should also be predicated on conditions that set "specific, ambitious and accountable enrollment goals" for that Internet discount plan, and require spending of at least $50 million a year in outreach and marketing of the plan. The ex parte recapped a phone call between coalition members and staff of Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, during which there was some discussion about the problems with using Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program enrollment as an eligibility criterion for low-income discounts, the coalition said. In a statement Thursday, Charter said it "will expand Bright House Networks’ low-income broadband service to the current Charter and TWC footprint, increase the speed, expand eligibility, and continue to offer the service at a significant discount.”

The nation's nearly 50 million pay-TV "defectors" -- who have reduced or are contemplating cuts to their pay-TV service -- vastly outnumber the roughly 22 million "desirers" loyal to or interested in expanding their pay-TV subscription, GfK said in a news release Wednesday. It said the data comes from its just-issued Cord Evolution report tracking traditional and streaming TV trends. According to GfK, defectors have marginally higher income than desirers -- $62,000 annually vs. $60,000 -- and stream less video (62 percent of defectors having done so in the past month, compared with 72 percent of desirers). Desirers, meanwhile, are more receptive to advertising, more prone to binge viewing of TV shows, and have stronger affinity for watching live linear TV, GfK said.

The FCC Media Bureau rejected a request by the Campbell County, Kentucky, Cable Board seeking certification to regulate basic cable service rates. In a letter posted Wednesday, the bureau said the county's Cable Board Form 328 filed last month failed to show why it should be allowed to regulate rates despite the agency's presumption of effective competition.