Household spending on subscription over-the-top video services has held steady for three years, averaging just under $8 per month since 2016, reported Parks Associates Wednesday. Adoption of multiple services, or expensive services, by some consumers appears to be offset by a large base of consumers who subscribe to one or two relatively inexpensive services, including 30 percent of consumers who don’t spend any money on OTT video services, it said. “The stability in average household spend belies the activity going on under the surface,” and that trend may end this year, said analyst Brett Sappington. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon continue to add subscribers, services such as ESPN Plus are also experiencing “phenomenal growth,” and Disney and AT&T's WarnerMedia plan to enter the fray this summer. Sappington sees three possible scenarios in the morphing market: More households become OTT streaming households, rival services begin to pull subscribers away from Netflix “or that spending number will go up.” The deluge of OTT platforms created more competition for video based on choice and content quality, but even as consumers spend more time viewing digital media, OTT platforms are experiencing a lag in customers’ insights, loyalty and revenue, said Barry Nolan, chief strategy officer, Swrve. OTT platforms need to deliver “the perfect message at the perfect time,” he said.
Cablevision founder Charles Dolan asked the New York Public Service Commission to look into Altice USA's compliance with conditions the PSC put on the 2016 buy of Cablevision. In a letter Tuesday to the state, Dolan said Altice potentially "has flouted its commitments" by its layoffs of close to 70 workers at Cablevision's News 12 subsidiary. It said a finding that Altice violated the conditions should be met with an order it restore or replace the terminated workers and should bar further staff reductions. The layoffs are also subject of Dolan family litigation in Delaware Chancery Court against Altice (see 1809050032). Altice emailed that it "continues to invest in News 12 and we are pleased with the network’s ongoing achievements, including growth in ratings and digital viewership," "has met all of its workforce commitments" and is "in compliance with our merger agreement.”
The market for children’s programming “has changed significantly in recent years, including a marked shift to online consumption,” Viacom and NCTA told an aide to FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly Wednesday, per a filing Monday in docket 17-105. Modernize rules to “provide non-broadcast program networks greater flexibility to serve their audiences,” they asked.
NSI bought Platinum Tools to broaden its product portfolio and reach new customers, it said Thursday. Platinum Tools provides cable management solutions, structured wiring products, tester kits, cutters, crimpers and other products for electrical, industrial, security, audio/video, commercial, residential, datacom and telecom applications. On possible organizational changes resulting from the acquisition, an NSI spokesperson emailed that the companies are working to create a “unified path forward” over the next 90-100 days. Meantime, it’s “business as usual,” she said. Platinum employs about 40 and will continue to operate out of Newbury Park, California.
Communities such as Rochester, New York, and Milwaukie, Oregon, are exceeding and violating the cable franchise fee caps for cable operators, highlighting the need for the FCC to move quickly and affirm such fees are legally barred or else they will just proliferate, NCTA said in a docket 05-311 posting Thursday. The FCC hasn't specifically addressed such fee limits, so state and local governments keep imposing duplicative right-of-way fees on provision of non-cable services over cable systems beyond the 5 percent cable franchise fee cap Congress established, NCTA said. The cities didn't comment.
As 80 percent of internet traffic will be video content this year, the AdRoll digital marketing platform announced Wednesday an artificial intelligence-based solution to reach customers across desktop, tablet and mobile web. Machine learning determines the optimal bid price per impression and analyzes user behavior to send the appropriate video ad to the right user.
Cable representatives took their case for in-kind contributions counting as franchise fees, counting against the statutory cap, to a meeting with FCC Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey and Office of General Counsel and Office of Economics and Analytics staffers, said a docket 05-311 posting Wednesday. NCTA, Comcast and Charter Communications said it's wrong to interpret the Cable Act definition of public educational and government access facilities so that channel capacity isn't treated as a capital cost excluded from franchise fees. Only costs associated with construction of PEG access facilities are capital costs excluded from the cap, the cablers said.
The FCC should let cable operators show compliance with kidvid rules once yearly, not quarterly as now required, the American Cable Association told Media Bureau staff in a March 6 meeting, it filed, posted Monday in docket 18-202. Give operators more time to collect and post programmer certifications, and don't fine small ones that made a good-faith effort to comply, ACA said. “Adopting these reforms would significantly reduce the 16-20 hours per quarter burden that ACA members incur trying to collect, process, and post their certifications.”
A "tier-specific" calculation for basic tier carriage would make more sense than the current leased access rate formula for channels carried on the basic tier, NCTA, Comcast and Charter Communications officials told aides to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Brendan Carr, said a docket 07-42 ex parte posting Tuesday. The cablers also said accommodating part-time leased access activity is as, or more, burdensome than a full-time leased access channel, and the FCC should ax requirements to provide part-time leased access.
Cable and state franchise authority interests agree about the need for updating the basic cable rate regulatory regime but beyond that are at odds, according to docket 17-105 reply comments posted Tuesday. The lack of consensus beyond the FCC's doing "a nonsubstantive house cleaning" of the current rules points to the need for eliminating outdated requirements but refraining from changes beyond that, Hawaii said. Pushing all rate setting to franchising authorities removes the FCC from its statutorily required role and could lead to inconsistencies in interpretation, Hawaii said. It said the agency shouldn't let cable operators set regulated rates based on what they charge for comparable services in other communities since those rates are often inflated. It said decades of FCC precedent and court decisions are justification for continuing to subject all equipment used to receive basic service tier (BST) to rate regulation. The Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable (MDTC) said the proposal to use an unregulated rate comparison as a means of rate regulation violates federal law by ignoring most of the seven criteria the agency is supposed to use in determining BST rates are reasonable. MDTC disagrees with Hawaii that the Further NPRM adopted in October (see 1811300003) could lead to a regime under which any equipment that can be used for both the BST and expanded tiers would be unregulated, and the FCC should make clear that's not the aim. It opposed using the unregulated rate before a franchising authority's certification as the initial regulated rate since rates in unregulated communities aren't "necessarily ... reasonable." NCTA said in many cases the Hawaii and MDTC proposals would worsen existing burdens on operators, local franchise authorities, consumers and the agency. It said its updated competitive benchmark methodology for rate setting falls within the FCC's recognition that a benchmark based on rates charged by systems subject to effective competition is consistent with the Communications Act. NCTA said arguments against changes to equipment rules aren't grounded in policy or law.