Roku extended its smart speaker line Wednesday. The soundbar includes Roku Connect wireless protocol, Dolby Audio, Bluetooth, compatibility with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, and a voice remote. Customers can search across channels for programming based on price and use voice commands.
A series of petitions filed with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeking review of the FCC's 2008 leased commercial access order have been dismissed. In a docket 08-3369 order Wednesday (in Pacer), Judges Richard Suhrheinrich, Alice Batchelder and John Nalbandian said the NCTA, ShopNBC, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and Comcast petitions were moot due to the agency in June vacating the 2008 order (see 1906060029), which never took effect.
Comcast's NBC Sports Group and AEG are jointly rolling out NBC Sports Pub Pass. It's a customizable over-the-top platform aimed at the U.S. pub and restaurant market. It will feature soccer, rugby and cycling content, including content not seen on linear TV, Comcast said.
AT&T and Lionsgate's Starz signed a multiyear content carriage agreement giving AT&T the rights to offer various Starz offerings on DirecTV, AT&T TV and U-verse, they said Friday. It includes HD, on-demand and online services.
The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau reminded video programming distributors of emergency information obligations. An aural description must accompany visual emergency info, and closed captions should be provided with audio information, said Friday's public notice. It included information on how consumers can file complaints about inaccessible emergency information, including on an FCC website page.
The FTC added Charter Communications to its list of companies from which it's getting data on broadband customer data collection and sharing (see 1903260072). The agency said Thursday the move came as it was honing its privacy practice requests by also withdrawing its AT&T and Verizon requests and sending orders to AT&T advertising subsidiary AppNexus and Verizon ad subsidiaries Verizon Online and Oath America. Commissioners approved the moves unanimously.
Many of the same music labels suing cable ISPs Charter Communications (see 1903250004), Grande Communications (see 1802080001) and Cox Communications (see 1808020009) turned their attention to RCN. In a U.S. District Court copyright infringement complaint Tuesday in Trenton, New Jersey (in Pacer, docket 19-17272), the labels made similar complaints as they have against the other cable ISPs -- that RCN failed to terminate accounts of repeat copyright infringers using its network and operated RCN "as a haven for infringement." The suit seeks a permanent injunction barring RCN from direct or indirect infringing of the labels' copyrights or enabling or facilitating any such infringement, plus unspecified damages and an order that RCN promptly send infringement notices to its infringing subscribers. The company didn't comment Wednesday. Plaintiffs include Capitol Records, Sony Music, Arista, Atlantic, Bad Boy Records, Elektra and Warner Records.
Altice, Charter and Comcast should have residential broadband market share gains, said Wells Fargo's Jennifer Fritzsche in a series of notes to investors Tuesday. Charter, adding such share in recent years, is expected to continue gaining from legacy telco competitors with slower speeds. The analyst expects video subscriber declines in excess of 500,000 in Charter's FY 2019 and 2020, accompanied by more customers moving into higher-speed broadband tiers. She said Altice's fiber-to-the-home strategy "should 'future-proof' its network" via higher-speed tiers and lowering future operating and capital costs: Its residential broadband revenue growth has come from pricing, and growth can likely be sustained by featuring its speed offerings in Suddenlink markets where it often competes with DSL-based telcos. Fritzsche wrote that Comcast, with roughly 26 percent of the U.S. residential broadband market, should get further gains from network and customer experience investments.
Amended local cable franchise authority rules approved 3-2 at the FCC's Aug. 1 meeting (see 1908010011) take effect Sept. 26, per Tuesday's Federal Register.
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FCC Media Bureau rejection of beIN Sports' Comcast carriage complaint (see 1907020056) paves the path to distributors dropping unaffiliated networks willy-nilly and leaves customers defenseless, the Sports Fan Coalition said in a docket 18-384 filing Monday. It makes vertically integrated companies like Comcast both "referee and player in its own game," SFC said. It said even if an indie programmer can match bids of cable-owned sports programmers for sports rights, the programmer has the advantage by being able to offer better distribution, promotion and other treatment of its programming service. Also backing beIN's petition asking the agency to review the bureau order, Public Knowledge said discrimination against indie programmers by vertically integrated cable operators, a focus of the 1992 Cable Act, is an increasingly pressing issue due to consolidation. It said the bureau shouldn't have denied beIN's case before it was allowed to engage in discovery and make a case accordingly. BeIN said the bureau has never found a complainant made a prima facie case and then immediately denied the complaint, and its resolving the proceeding without a hearing while agreeing with the complainant’s prima facie case "is arbitrary and capricious." Comcast didn't comment Tuesday.