Starz added 800,000 streaming subscribers in fiscal Q3 ended Dec. 31, finishing the quarter with 28 million global customers, said Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer on a Thursday investor call. “We're well on our way to our goal of 50 million to 60 million global subscribers by 2025, the vast majority of which will be high-value streaming subs,” he said. “Amazingly, in spite of the challenges” from COVID-19, Lionsgate is shooting 19 scripted television series and another 20 unscripted shows globally, and five feature films “have returned to production,” he said. Lionsgate’s fiscal Q4 ending is perhaps the first time “where all the players are kind of on the field right now,” except for Paramount+, said Starz CEO Jeff Hirsch when asked about streaming competition. The “big broad-based streaming services,” including Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu, “are trying to service everybody in the home,” he said. “That's where the real competition is going to be, and you're going to see people competing on ad spend, people competing on price and people competing on bundling.”

Entertainment Studios Networks and the National Association of African American-Owned Media settled their 5-year-old complaint charging Charter Communications with racial animus in opting not to carry ESN content. The plaintiffs filed a notice of voluntary dismissal Wednesday (in Pacer, docket 16-cv-00609) in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. ESN settled similar litigation last year with Comcast (see 2006110011).

MVPDs in the COVID-19 pandemic era need to ramp up efforts to engage subscribers with new innovations and business models “or risk accelerating customer losses,” blogged Parks Associates analyst Kristen Hanich Wednesday. Three in five pay-TV households are interested in streaming movies and TV shows from an over-the-top video service as part of their subscription, Hanich said, and many providers are responding to demand: The number of customers receiving OTT services has jumped 50% in a year. Nearly 80% of pay-TV households have both pay-TV and OTT subscriptions, with the number of OTT services among households with any online video service averaging 3.8 subscriptions vs. 4.2 for pay-TV homes. Other findings: 43% of pay-TV households want video calls on their TV; 40% want to control smart home devices and security systems; and 34% are interested in playing video games on TV via a cloud gaming service. Pay-TV providers must keep offering their most valuable content, including live sports and cultural events, Hanich said. In addition to offering streaming channels, they need to target new services to customers and “be willing to take a hit on pricing until this chaotic market stabilizes.”

Comcast will increase its Internet Essentials program to 50/5 Mbps March 1, doubling the download speed, it said Tuesday. It also expects to launch 1,000 wireless "lift zones" by year-end to address the homework gap.

Charter Communications will spend $5 billion, including $1.2 billion from Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase 1 (see 2012070039), to bring up to 1 Gbps service to more than 1 million locations in mostly rural areas of 24 states, it said Monday: Timing for the "multiyear" buildout will depend partly on utility pole permitting and make-ready efforts. "The more cooperation we have with the pole owners and utility companies, the faster" the work, CEO Tom Rutledge said.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' rejection of a Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable (MDTC) appeal of an FCC decision (see 2012180023) distorted both court precedent and the congressional balance between consumer protection and using the LEC test to promote competition. That's according to MDTC Monday in a petition for rehearing en banc (in Pacer, docket 19-2282) of the decision upholding the agency's finding that vMVPD service AT&T TV Now is effective competition to cable TV, ending basic rate regulation in parts of the state. The FCC didn't comment.

The best on-demand streaming services are YouTube TV (for value), Hulu + Live TV (families), Netflix (original content), Hulu (newer content) and Sling TV (live TV budget pick), Reviews.org reported. Average monthly costs are $57.25 for internet, $50.17 for cellphone plans and $39.96 for streaming services. Canceling one $10 monthly streaming service adds up to saving $7,253 over a lifetime over 78.5 years.

Charter Communications ended 2020 with 19,000 more video customers than it had a year earlier, and it expects to do better in its video trends this year than the MVPD industry overall, CEO Tom Rutledge said during an analyst call Friday as the company announced Q4 results. Rutledge said the growth was driven in part by its broadband connectivity growth. He said industry growth will continue to decline "at a moderate pace," while Charter "won't have quite the internet growth … we had in 2020." Charter ended 2020 with 15.6 million residential video subscribers. It also ended the year with 27 million residential broadband subs, up 2.1 million year over year; 9.2 million residential voice subs, down 228,000; and 2.3 million residential mobile subscriptions, up 1.2 million. Rutledge said this year should have a return to pre-pandemic trends in internet subscriber additions, plus a full recovery of the advertising business as the economy also fully rebounds. He said that during Q4, Charter's minimum broadband speed offering of 200 Mbps went from being available in about 60% of its footprint to 75%. Rutledge said the 210 citizens broadband radio service priority access licenses that Charter bought for $465 million will be used on targeted 5G small cells. He said that over the next four to five years, up to a third of Charter's traffic might end up on the CBRS spectrum. The stock closed down 7.2% at $607.56.

Forty-three percent of U.S. broadband households with traditional pay TV are likely to switch to a virtual MVPD in the next 12 months, reported Parks Associates Thursday, reversing a trend of slowing growth. Before the pandemic affected streaming video consumption, vMVPD subscriber growth was “waning, with some vMVPDs posting continued losses,” said analyst Paul Erickson. Though COVID-19 drove growth “and in some cases recovery in the category, recent increases in vMVPD pricing make it uncertain how consumers will respond long term,” he said. The absence of live sports and performances challenged vMVPDs, but services like Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV successfully pushed advantages in pricing, content and platform flexibility, Parks said. Though traditional pay-TV operators have either deployed over-the-top services, or plan to, Parks expects vMVPDs to continue to grow “dramatically,” and gradually become “the dominant offering in the pay-TV landscape,” said Erickson. Some 17% of vMVPD subscribers switched from traditional pay TV within the past 12 months, said the analyst. VMVPDs should “remain conscious of consumer price sensitivity while keeping a strict adherence to a consumer-centric experience,” Erickson said.

Average video services per person grew 35% in Q4 over the year-ago quarter, to 6.7, among broadband-only subscribers, reported TiVo Wednesday. As the pandemic continues, “shifting consumer patterns in the video service landscape are proving to be more than mere anomalies,” the company found in 4,526 responses to a survey done for TiVo by a third-party company. “People are adjusting to a new normal.” Subscription hopping is prevalent during the pandemic, TiVo said, with 25% saying they added at least one new video subscription during the COVID-19 period; 15% canceled at least one. TVs are “overwhelmingly” the preferred screen for viewing subscription VOD (71%), ad-supported VOD (54%), virtual MVPD (58%) and network apps (43%). Smartphones came in second, followed by PCs and tablets. Respondents preferred watching streaming content via media players such as Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV and Chromecast (46%) compared with smart TVs (28%), set-top boxes or digital video recorders (13%), game console apps (6%) and Blu-ray player apps (1%).