Though its arguments were rejected by the FCC Enforcement Bureau, Game Show Network said in a statement to us Monday it remains confident the FCC administrative law judge will find that it "was the target of improper, affiliation-based discrimination." GSN said it disagreed with the bureau conclusion issued Thursday (see 1510150044) that it lacked proof that its 2011 retiering by Cablevision was discriminatory. "GSN presented compelling, uncontested evidence that it was subject to less-favorable treatment from Cablevision based solely on its lack of affiliation with Cablevision," the network said. "The Enforcement Bureau's opinion that such evidence is not enough would strip independent networks of any real-world protection against affiliation-based discrimination." Closing argument in the ALJ case is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 30.

Cablevision and Viacom settled out of court their 2-year-old forced bundling legal fight. According to a stipulation of dismissal filed Friday in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the two agreed to drop the 2013 lawsuit and counterclaims with each bearing its own costs and attorneys' fees. The companies signed "mutually beneficial business arrangements" and the settlement benefits both companies, they said in a news release. Cablevision sued Viacom for allegedly forcing the cable company to carry ancillary networks in order to obtain such core networks as MTV and Nickelodeon (see 1302280044). Viacom countersued, claiming the two companies' affiliation agreement was "a complete sham" as Cablevision all along had made concessions in negotiations while planning to sue to have the agreement declared void and be released from those concessions.

Closed captioning for public, educational and governmental (PEG) access programming will be the focus of an FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau roundtable discussion, 1 to 5 p.m., Nov. 10, in the Commission Meeting Room, the agency said in a public notice Friday. The event will cover such topics as rules generally covering video closed captioning, with speakers including Eliot Greenwald, deputy chief of the bureau's disability rights office; Amanda Maisels, deputy chief, Justice Department's Civil Rights Division disability rights section; Claude Stout, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing executive director; and Mike Wassenaar, Alliance for Community Media president. There also will be a session on closed captioning best practices and challenges facing PEG, with speakers including Diane Burstein, NCTA deputy general counsel; Tole Khesin, 3PlayMedia vice president-marketing; Carol Studenmund, LNS Captioning president; Christian Vogler, director of Gallaudet University's Technology Access Program; and Heather York, Vitac vice president-marketing. And there will be a session on various low-cost and free options available for PEG programming closed captioning, with speakers including Jason Barnett, Flarean Special Benefits Corp. president; Steve Brunsberg, Saint Paul Neighborhood Network operations and production manager; Donna Keating, County Cable Montgomery media services manager and executive producer; Carl Richardson, Massachusetts State House Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator; and Steve Traylor, NATOA executive director.

A consent decree to block any coordination of efforts between New Charter and Comcast is possible as regulators look at Charter Communications' planned buys of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, given the worries being expressed about such cable coordination, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield wrote investors Friday. Both AT&T and Dish Network brought up such cable coordination issues in their comments filed last week in the FCC review of the transaction, while others such asPublic Knowledge and Free Press pointed to such coordination issues involving Chairman John Malone of Liberty Broadband, which would be the largest shareholder of New Charter, (see 1510140009), Greenfield said. "At first blush, you could easily dismiss AT&T and DISH’s concerns as trying to limit the size of a threatening industry rival." But when considered in context of recent Malone comments that if not for regulators saying otherwise, he would pursue one technical platform for all cable operators, "the risk from coordination is blatantly obvious," Greenfield said. "The question becomes will regulators care and if they do, are there ways to protect consumers from these risks through consent decree behavioral conditions (especially, in the context of the failure of behavioral remedies in the Comcast NBC approval)?"

Altice and Cablevision seek FCC International Bureau approval to transfer various Communications Act Section 214 authorizations to Altice that currently are held by three Cablevision subsidiaries. The IB filing, posted Wednesday, comes as Altice is in the midst of a $17.7 billion takeover of Cablevision -- a transaction not expected to face major regulatory hurdles (see 1509170015). The Section 214 authorizations to provide telecom services are held by Cablevision Lightpath, Cablevision Lightpath CT and Cablevision Lightpath NJ.

Young millennials would be less likely to cut the cord or switch pay-TV providers if their current multichannel video programming distributors offered TV Everywhere (TVE) service, according to survey data from Epix and strategy consulting firm Altman Vilandrie. Subscriber awareness of the ability to watch programs on their mobile devices "remains persistently low" at 36 percent, the companies said. Millennials ages 18-24 are 23 percent less likely to change their pay-TV subscriptions if their providers offer TVE than if they think it unavailable, they said Wednesday. Millennials ages 18-34 are twice as likely than consumers ages 35 and up to use TVE, the companies said. The survey was conducted by Altman Vilandrie and was done online in July among 3,400 U.S. consumers.

Instead of going through independent subscription VOD services like Amazon.com, Hulu and Netflix, media companies are increasingly exploring other SVOD models -- particularly ones giving "more control over their content and opportunities to yield more profit over the next two to three years," Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said in a report released Wednesday, "Conversations on the Road: Media Companies Finally Take a Stand on SVOD." Media companies "recognize that ... they have given up too much control of their content to the SVOD operators and are not being compensated for the content's full value," S&P said. As their current SVOD distribution agreements expire, media companies will put more content into TV Everywhere, giving them that greater control and better shot at monetization, S&P said. Meanwhile, since Nielsen doesn't measure SVOD viewing, media companies, advertising agencies and others "are furiously building out their data-driven programmatic advertising capabilities," but there still is no one universally accepted audience measurement system -- meaning advertising dollars continue to move from TV "to other media that can provide a more accurate measure of return on invested capital," S&P said. Nielsen's Total Audience measurement is expected to be done by year's end, and rolling out beginning in early 2016, the report said.

CoxCom received FCC Media Bureau approval of a market modification for WMDE Dover, Delaware, which now excludes the Virginia communities served by Cox's cable system. The market modification order posted Wednesday in docket 15-120 removes Fairfax County -- which is 100 miles from Dover -- from WMDE's must-carry market. The market modification application submitted in May (see 1505210019) followed Nielsen reassigning WMDE -- but not Dover itself -- to the Washington, D.C., (Hagerstown, Maryland) designated market area (DMA), which covers four states and the District of Columbia. WMDE licensee Western Pacific Broadcast had opposed the market modification, arguing it was carried on other systems throughout Fairfax County and the District DMA. In its ruling, the bureau said that while Verizon, Comcast and Dish Network briefly carried WMDE in Fairfax County under the must-carry mandate, that doesn't satisfy the historic carriage factor and there is no evidence that any multichannel video programming distributor serving the county carries any other stations licensed to Dover, to Delaware or to adjacent eastern Maryland.

The various approval conditions being proposed in connection with Charter Communications buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable don't point to anything indicating the deal won't get FCC approval or include topics that have not come up before, New Street Research emailed investors. New Street also said the objections don't alter its opinion of the transaction likely being approved in March, with additional conditions likely but nothing "so great as to affect the material prospects" of New Charter. That Netflix is backing the transaction disarms many arguments that it could put online video distribution (OVD) in jeopardy, and Dish Network's opposition -- repeating much of what it said against the now-abandoned Comcast purchase of TWC -- is weaker this time around, New Street said. The Charter/TWC/BHN opposition also lacks the level of pushback Comcast/TWC saw in the form of opponents "hiring big name economists ... to do the kind of analysis necessary ... to block the deal," it said. The opposition comments that were due Tuesday (see 1510140009) also didn't make a case that New Charter will have the kind of market power to stifle OVD composition, the analysts wrote. Numerous opponents brought up the specter of coordinated effects, but that likely won't scotch the deals given that antitrust laws would ban such moves, though it may result in some imposed conditions aimed at preventing coordinated actions, New Street said. Charter's voluntary three-year interconnection commitments likely will shift, perhaps being extended to five years, and there might be some government-imposed "tweaks" to them, New Street said. Meanwhile, some proposed conditions, like Dish recommending a mandatory unbundling of its cable network, likely won't be seriously considered, it said.

Government regulation -- forced by pay TV -- is largely to blame for the growing "video divide" where once-free content, from broadcasts of sporting events to journalism, is increasingly rare, Jonathan Blake, retired partner at Covington & Burling, emailed us in an essay. While program choices via pay TV are abounding, providers "did not live up to their promise of no or less advertising" or of effective public, entertainment and government channels -- a requirement pay-TV providers have actually tried to eliminate, Blake said. Broadcasters already are far more regulated than cable, and now the FCC is moving to "gut television stations' intellectual property rights" through its proposed repeal of exclusivity rules, he said. All this points to an FCC that is devaluing local broadcast TV, meaning it is "less worthy of preservation, less worthy of the freedom and flexibility to adapt to new technologies, changing consumer tastes and needs, and expanding business and service opportunities," Blake said. Considering that the FCC "is just now investigating the troubled plight of AM radio" -- a decline 40 years in the making -- "Congress and the FCC should avoid a similar outcome here," he said.