Online video services run by cable operators shouldn't labor under the same regulations cable businesses do, Cablevision said in an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 14-261. Cablevision representatives met with FCC representatives about the agency's proposed re-interpretation of the definition of a multichannel video programming distributor to include some types of online video delivery. If the FCC does that, Cablevision said, "it should ensure that potential competitors in the online video marketplace are able to enter the market and compete on fair terms." Cablevision also asked for clarification of broadcasters' responsibilities to negotiate retransmission consent in good faith, referring to ongoing open proceedings on good-faith negotiations in docket 10-71. Meeting attendees included Cablevision lawyers and executives and front-office and other Media Bureau officials.

The definition of a cable TV "buying group" needs updating to include groups that operate like the National Cable Television Cooperative so the NCTC can see the same nondiscriminatory program access protections other buying groups enjoy, the American Cable Association said in an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in FCC docket 12-68. In a meeting with FCC officials, ACA and NCTC representatives said as the commission looks at program access rules, it needs to ensure buying groups "have the protection that Congress intended" and that the rights of individual members of a buying group to take part in agreements negotiated by the group are ensured. The ACA has been pushing for such language changes since 2012, saying it would let cable-affiliated programmers exclude individual members of a buying group from taking part in the master agreements negotiated by that group with programmers. Meeting participants included Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, others in the bureau's front office and Policy Division, ACA Senior Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman and NCTC Senior Vice President-Legal & Regulatory Affairs Jeff Nourse.

As of July 1, Cable One is separate from former parent Graham Holdings, Graham said in a news release that day. Under the spinoff, Graham shareholders receive a share of Cable One for each share of Graham Class A or Class B common stock they held. Cable One will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CABO.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed its own ruling that could have forced The Golf Channel to pay back more than $5.9 million in stolen money it received for its advertising. After deciding earlier this year that TGC failed to show it provided Stanford International Bank with ad services worth the money it received, TGC requested that the issue of interpreting the value of something given to a good faith transferee in the Ponzi scheme go to the Texas Supreme Court. Ralph Janvey, the court-appointed receiver of Stanford International Bank, sued TGC in 2011, trying to claw back the money given it by Stanford -- which was the focal point of what the 5th Circuit called an "undisputed ... multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme." While it operated, Stanford was the title sponsor of a PGA Tour event held yearly in Memphis, and subsequently bought ads on TGC. A federal judge in Dallas in 2013 tossed out Janvey's lawsuit on summary judgment -- a decision the 5th Circuit initially overturned in March. Tuesday, it vacated that decision and asked for clarification from the Texas Supreme Court regarding the Texas Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act.

GreenPeak Technologies unveiled a single-radio multiprotocol chipset with multichannel receive capability for set-top boxes, gateways and other IoT devices. The GP712 enables simultaneous listening for ZigBee and Thread packets using a single radio, said GreenPeak in a Tuesday news release.

The Justice Department asked the FCC to delay action on Altice's plan to buy a majority of Suddenlink. In a filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-135, DOJ's National Security Division said it was "reviewing these matters for any national security, law enforcement and public safety issue." That has been a standard step in other deals under FCC review. DOJ said it made the request with the concurrence of the Defense and Homeland Security departments.

Discovery Communications and its Eurosport sports network got all European broadcast rights for the four Olympic Games in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024 from the International Olympic Committee, Discovery said in a Monday news release. The rights, costing about $1.46 billion, include free-to-air and pay TV, Internet and mobile phone. Discovery agreed to air some coverage on free-to-air TV during the Games.

Pay-TV operators bought $15.3 billion worth of set-top boxes last year, a decline of $600 million, the first contraction in the STB market since 2002, said IHS Monday. Shipments of pay-TV STBs inched ahead nearly 1 percent during the period to 204.7 million units, but the modest shipment growth “failed to compensate for the effects of price erosion” in the competitive market, said IHS. Pay-TV STB vendors had a “great run” since 2002 on growth in pay TV, cable digitization mandates, DVRs, HDTV and IPTV, said Daniel Simmons, IHS head-connected home research. “The industry is now at an inflection point.” Mature pay-TV markets are saturated with “high-value, advanced boxes," setting up shipment declines there, while operators in emerging markets “aren’t transitioning to advanced boxes fast enough to increase overall industry value,” he said. Consolidations in the first half of the year foreshadowed a declining market, said IHS, with South Korean STB vendor Woojeon & Handan exiting the market and Swiss vendor Advanced Digital Broadcast delisted from the SIX Swiss Exchange. TiVo and U.K.-based Amino have acquired pay-TV software companies, while market leader Arris announced plans to acquire Pace, it said. IHS predicts the market will shrink further this year, to $15.1 billion, and will continue dropping to $13.2 billion in 2018 before stabilizing in 2019. Industry value will decline “across nearly all segments,” except for satellite pay-TV STBs, said IHS. Most satellite operators aren't ISPs, “so they cannot virtualize traditional STB functionality, such as DVR, into the cloud as readily,” said Simmons. Satellite operators will need to invest in STB hardware to enable advanced services that can compete with those offered by cable and IPTV operators, he said. Continued pay-TV growth in Africa and the Middle East, as well as in South and Central America, also will provide STB opportunities over the forecast period, said IHS.

Technicolor released a “single-layer solution” for coding and delivering high dynamic range content in a single stream “to accurately display the content regardless of the display type,” including standard dynamic range TVs, the HDR proponent said in a news release. Designed for broadcasters, pay-TV operators and over-the-top streaming services looking to migrate to HDR video, “it allows for the storage and delivery of one video file, which plays back on legacy SDR TVs and new HDR TVs coming to market,” Technicolor said. “Today the option to view HDR content is an either-or scenario depending on screen display, which creates duplicity and inefficiencies in delivering content to the consumer,” said Mark Turner, Technicolor vice president-partnership relations and business development. “Our single-layer technology looks to address such challenges, dramatically reducing storage and bandwidth costs by eliminating the need for two delivery systems.” Technicolor said Wednesday it submitted the technology for standardization to the Motion Picture Experts Group.

Shaw Communications plans to offer Comcast's cloud-based X1 video platform, making it the first Canadian cable company to do so, Shaw said Thursday.