Companies are struggling with "unwarranted litigation risk" and bigger hurdles communicating with customers, which points to the FCC needing to provide guidance on application of key terms in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, Charter Communications, Comcast and Cox representatives told an aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, recounted a docket 18-152 ex parte posting Monday. They urged the agency to make clear that equipment should be classified as an automatic telephone dialing system under the TCPA only if it can generate numbers randomly or sequentially and is used that way without human intervention. They said the FCC should make clear a call's intended recipient is the "called party" until the caller is told the number has been reassigned, and should clarify rules governing revocation of consent.

Monthly cost of Charter Communications' basic cable service tier in the Massachusetts franchise areas where the company is trying to get a declaration of effective competition would be its national rate of $23.89 if the petition is granted, it told an aide to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, recounted a docket 18-283 posting Friday. It said regulated monthly rates for basic tier in Massachusetts are now $12.49-$23.99, while the lowest-priced DirecTV Now package is $40. Charter cited DirecTV Now as effective competition to its cable systems in Massachusetts and Hawaii (see 1809170020).

Shentel bought eastern Kentucky cable ISP Big Sandy Broadband, it said Thursday, to expand in contiguous markets.

“Speed matters and cable has a better mousetrap,” Pivotal Research Group's Jeffrey Wlodarczak wrote investors Thursday. Cable took 100 percent share of broadband net new subscriptions in Q4, 770,000 vs. the 795,000 Pivotal forecast, while telcos lost 130,000. The analyst sees “material cable data sub growth” ahead, at the expense of telcos’ copper architecture, currently numbering about 20 million subscribers, while fixed 5G is an “unlikely material competitor” over three-five years. U.S. broadband household penetration is 83.1 percent. VMVPDs reversed course and lost 75,000 subscribers vs. a gain of 1 million a year ago, Wlodarczak said, with vMVPD players finding their subscribers are “highly price sensitive.” Price hikes were met with “significant churn,” led by AT&T’s DirecTV Now. VMVPDs are “basically offering consumers fewer channels at about the same price without the quality of service,” Wlodarczak said, and limited credit checks are bringing in “very low-quality average subscribers.” The December quarter was “ugly” for pay TV, which had a 100 percent increase in subscriber losses, 300,000 more than Pivotal forecast, for the 10th consecutive quarterly subscription decline. Cable’s 320,000 subscriber losses in the quarter were in line with forecasts, while satellite TV lost 810,000, its worst quarter ever, which Wlodarczak attributed to cable’s increased bundling of broadband with “an improving video product.” At year-end, household penetration of traditional pay TV was 72.6 percent.

Comcast isn't trying to disqualify Eric Sahl as a beIN-hired expert or from future work, but he shouldn't have access to highly confidential information including viewership analyses and data put together by its enterprise business intelligence team and NBCUniversal affiliation agreement terms, the MVPD said in an FCC docket 18-384 reply posted Thursday. BeIN and Comcast clashed over Sahl's access to confidential information as part of the sports programmer's carriage complaint (see 1902260008). Comcast said Sahl's access to such information would skew future negotiations to Comcast's disadvantage.

The Delaware Chancery Court order restricting when Altice USA can terminate News 12 employees (see 1902210003) was a negotiated agreement between Altice and the plaintiff Dolan family.

As TiVo continues to hunt for buyers of its product and patent-licensing businesses, it plans this year to launch "the most advanced new content-discovery solution for the internet age," said interim CEO Raghu Rau on a Q4 call Tuesday evening. The product will "allow customers to build their own entertainment or streaming content bundle, and truly personalize their experience," he said. It will run on "natural language voice interactions, enabling personalized content discovery, monetizing audiences through sponsored promotions and delivering media engagement data to enable targeted advertising solutions," he said. TiVo has “ongoing discussions” with outside “parties” interested in buying the two businesses, Rau said. “This process is taking longer than we hoped” because of the businesses’ “complexity and uniqueness,” he said. TiVo owns an "extraordinary catalog" of "foundational" patents "across the TV and video domain," he said. Its goal was to wrap up finding buyers by year-end 2018, he said on the Q3 call Nov. 7. Though having failed to meet that target, Rau is “not willing to put a time limit on when this will happen,” he said Tuesday. TiVo's prolonged failure to find buyers sent the shares plummeting 13.9 percent Wednesday to close at $9.58.

BeIN Sports and Comcast are at odds over whether beIN's hired expert, media consultant Eric Sahl, should have access to confidential Comcast information as part of the sports programmer's carriage complaint against the MVPD (see 1902060052). BeIN, in a docket 18-384 posting Monday, called "untenable" Comcast's objections Sahl might one day represent stations operating in the same market as NBC affiliates, as he has in the past. The protective order doesn't "give Comcast a right to object to [consultants'] future career," beIN said, adding that the protective order's limits on Sahl's ability to use confidential information in future representations should assuage Comcast fears. Comcast's objection to protective order access Friday said Sahl is involved in analysis underlying business decisions made by its competitors as well as in those business decisions themselves.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., raised concerns about an FCC Further NPRM that would treat cable operators' in-kind contributions required by local franchise authorities as franchise fees and subject to a cap (see 1902040061). Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., previously raised concerns about the FNPRM's effects on public, educational and government stations (see 1811270044). “This proposal could harm my constituents by reducing their access” to PEG programming “and I request that the FCC not take any actions to reduce access” to that content, Eshoo wrote Chairman Ajit Pai Friday. The proposal “would allow cable companies to deduct the fair market value of in-kind contributions, such as channels set aside for PEG from franchise fee obligations of cable companies. Given that many city, county, and state governments face budget constraints, this policy would force them to pick between continuing to receive franchise fee revenues and preserving access to PEG programming.”

Conversion rates to vMVPD subscriptions, seen by industry as a “lifeboat” for programmers amid cord cutting, “fell off the table” in Q4, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote investors Friday. The analyst warns a 1:1 conversion rate “was highly unlikely to be sustainable” to offset linear TV declines. Though YouTube TV and Hulu Live TV did well with what he estimated as net additions of 400,000 and 500,000 in Q4, DirecTV Now and Dish’s Sling TV “did very badly.” After accounting for smaller operators including PlayStation Vue and fuboTV, “not nearly enough" vMVPD subscriptions were added to offset declines in linear TV, Moffett said, estimating total subscriptions, including vMVPDs, fell 248,000 in Q4, the worst since mid-2017.