Comcast Wholesale is getting into live streaming offerings as it unveiled its Live Linear Streaming service Thursday at the IBC show in Amsterdam. The service includes such offerings as seamless content ingest, comprehensive encoding and packaging, the Platform’s mpx video management system, playback, and delivery through a number content delivery networks, including Comcast's, the company said.

Cablevision is adding a cable network, WGN America, to its basic cable lineup for its Connecticut, New Jersey and New York customers in January as part of a multiyear agreement with Tribune Media, the companies said Thursday. Financial terms weren't disclosed. The deal includes retransmission consent arrangements that Cablevision Optimum TV customers will continue to receive Tribune TV stations WPIX New York; in Connecticut WTIC-TV Hartford and WCCT-TV Waterbury; and WPHL-TV Philadelphia. It also renews Cablevision's use of TV listings and movie data from Tribune's Gracenote, and sees Cablevision taking over Tribune's 2.8 percent interest in Newsday Holdings, making it a wholly owned Cablevision subsidiary.

AT&T hired Ericsson to help upgrade its premium TV offering across its satellite and wireline network, said Ericsson in a news release Thursday. The technology changes will involve AT&T's U-verse and DirecTV platforms, Ericsson said. Enrique Rodriguez, AT&T Entertainment and Internet Services chief technical officer, said the aim is "an unparalleled bundled video entertainment, mobile and broadband experience."

CableLabs thinks the most important result of the FCC Downloadable Security Technical Advisory Committee report (see 1509010068) is that “there is no collective recommendation for any new FCC technology mandate,” said Chief Technology Officer Ralph Brown in a blog post Thursday. Brown said the report found some common ground among DSTAC members, but its main value to consumers was its illustration of the extent of multichannel video programming distributor support for retail set-top devices. “There are almost twice as many retail devices on average per household, that are capable of receiving MVPD content, than there are MVPD provided set-tops!” Brown said. “Consumers can take comfort knowing that a wide variety of their retail devices can receive MVPD services.”

Netflix will launch in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan early next year, after starting service in Japan earlier this month, it said Tuesday. The video service said it plans to finish a global rollout by the end of 2016.

The FCC cable effective competition order took effect Wednesday, the date of an announcement in the Federal Register. The agency in June ruled that the cable market is effectively competitive (see 1506020060). It faces a legal challenge from NAB, NATOA and Minnesota's Northern Dakota County Cable Communications Commission before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (see 1508280033).

Given what it sees as the booming and competitive over-the-top market, the case for expanding the multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) umbrella to cover some forms of OTT services is questionable, Amazon said in an FCC ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 14-261. "The rules proposed by the commission would inhibit innovation by imposing on over the top services regulatory burdens created long ago that are neither relevant to nor tailored to address this new vibrant industry, without any of the competitive benefits [including the attendant statutory copyright licensing] that were envisioned when the rules were originally drafted decades ago." The filing recapped meetings between such Amazon executives as General Counsel David Zapolsky and Public Policy Director Brian Huseman with Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Ajit Pai. Amazon said it warned in those meetings of unintended consequences from an expanded definition of MVPD, such as its Twitch.tv live streaming videogaming service being subsequently considered an MVPD. The resulting regulatory burdens would "distort a new and alternative video segment that is growing and flourishing without any government intervention," Amazon said. In a separate ex parte filing in docket 14-261 posted Tuesday, NATOA said cable operators offering online video services to ISP customers should be subject to the same franchise fees and public interest obligations they would otherwise be for any IP cable service. In the filing reporting on a phone conversation between NATOA General Counsel Stephen Traylor and Media Bureau Deputy Chief Michelle Carey, NATOA said a line also should be drawn between delivery of online video services over what it called "the 'public' Internet rather than via the providers' own transmission path."

Eliminating the syndicated exclusivity and network nonduplication rules requires having a lot of evidence they're not necessary or harmful, and that's evidence the FCC doesn't have, said Jane Mago, NAB's now-retired general counsel, in an NAB blog Tuesday. "The record shows that the incentive to undermine exclusivity is actually stronger today, because cable actively pursues and earns a greater share of local advertising dollars," she said. "Why else would cable operators like Cablevision be asking not only to eliminate the current rules, but also to have the commission prohibit broadcasters from even bargaining for local exclusivity? The commission cannot conclude on this record that cable operators are unlikely to import duplicating distant signals harmful to local stations. That is going to be a problem for today’s FCC litigators if the commission repeals these rules." Meanwhile, the argument that broadcasters can pursue their contractual exclusivity rights in court ignores that court dockets already are crowded, meaning quickly addressing the issues is unlikely, and it's unclear what kind of civil remedy a station could pursue because a cable operator importing a duplicate signal has access to a compulsory license and isn't bound by network/syndicator/station contract, Mago said. When the FCC reinstated the syndex rule in 1988 after eliminating it in 1980, the agency "pointed to new studies and an extensive record to support its new decision," she said. "They had substantial data to rely on. I don’t see that here."

The FCC should put on hold the issue of whether some online video distributors (OVDs) should be reclassified as multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) until it first handles a variety of other issues, NATOA said in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 14-261. "It is important that the Commission first establish ‘the rules of the game’ before deciding who's eligible to play," it said. Those rules to be set include a review of program access rules, clarifying good-faith negotiation standards in retransmission consent "and a full review of the technical challenges faced by OVDs" that could make compliance with such MVPD regulations as closed captioning and emergency alert difficult, NATOA said. The organization also criticized the argument that OVDs should have the option of whether to be considered MVPDs (see 1508120012). "The goals of increased competition and more consumer choice would be hindered if these new services are not subject to the mandates that apply to established providers," NATOA said. Since competition already is strong among OVDs, there may not be a sound public policy reason for reclassifying them as MVPDs, it said, echoing NCTA (see 1508030057). In a separate filing posted Wednesday in docket 14-261, Oregon's Metropolitan Area Communications Commission also backed the idea that any OVDs reclassified as MVPDs should have the same obligations as other MVPDs, including carrying local public, educational and government community programming. However, the FCC's tentative conclusion that a cable operator's over-the-top video service shouldn't be regulated as a cable service is wrong, MACC said. Taking away cable's public interest obligations when it uses a different technology to deliver its video "would put the Commission in the position of creating incentives to undercut franchise obligations for no public or consumer purpose," MACC said.

Broadcasters' opposition to a petition for new blackout rules "takes real chutzpah" because networks and big station groups are the primary drivers in rising costs of basic tiers and in forcing carriage of unwanted channels, cable company Mediacom said in a filing posted Wednesday in RM-11752. Mediacom said broadcaster opposition focused on "a variety of alleged sins" by cable instead of addressing cable's argument for rules preventing local broadcasters from imposing blackouts unless a station's signal is available for free over the air or via Internet streaming to 90 percent of the homes in the relevant market (see 1507070061): that universal access to free broadcasts "is far from a reality." Since making those signals more accessible would actually encourage cord cutting, Mediacom said its blackout-curbing proposal "is motivated by the desire ... to respond to the unhappiness of our customers subjected to blackouts and ever-rising video costs because of content owners' and broadcast stations' pricing practices." Instead of providing evidence their signals reach most viewers in the designated market areas in which they operate, which would neuter the petition, broadcasters "provide excuses why they do not," such as the digital transition, and the 2013 freeze on license modifications, Mediacom said.