With Viacom programming blacked out for Cable One subscribers, cable operators are ratcheting up complaints about fees charged by programmers, while one programmer insists its fees remain low. Cable One CEO Tom Might said total programming costs for the cable operator have gone up 50 percent in four years, “while total viewing is exactly flat.” This increase has to be passed through to Cable One customers, “who now have to pay a lot more for their same viewing,” he said in a press release. Video subscribers are starting to make other choices, like accessing content online or through other over-the-top solutions, he said. Viacom channels were dropped from Cable One’s lineup this week due to a retransmission consent dispute (CD April 2 p16). Disney/ABC, Viacom, NBCUniversal and other large companies represent the majority of Cable One’s programming increase, and broadcast retransmission demands make up the rest, he said. “As a result, an increasing number of lower income consumers are being priced out of the video subscription marketplace each year.” Several of the programming groups, including Viacom, “have substantially less viewership than they did when we last negotiated, yet they still ask for enormous increases at renewal time,” he said. Cox Communications offers a comprehensive video package and balances the specific programming provided with the cost of that programming, a Cox spokesman said. “Programming acquisition represents our highest operational cost and it is increasing at levels that cannot be sustained long-term.” Most of the increase is due to retrans and sports programming, he said. To keep programming costs down, broad distribution for emerging independent networks is key, said Charles Herring, Herring Networks president. Herring, a smaller programmer, tries to find opportunities to fulfill customer programming needs at a cost-competitive price, he said. “With broad distribution, required programming operational revenue can be spread out across a larger base of subscribers, thus reducing the affiliate fees … charged to each” multichannel video programming distributor. Herring’s newest channel, One America News Network, gained national distribution on Verizon FiOS TV and smaller regional cable providers, he said.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted Sky Angel 30 days to again amend its complaint against C-SPAN. The complaint stems from an affiliation agreement between Sky Angel and C-SPAN to carry two C-SPAN channels on FAVE-TV, a subscription service, Judge Rudolph Contreras said in a memorandum opinion (http://1.usa.gov/1ecWYxj). A few days later Sky Angel was asked to remove the channels from the FAVE-TV lineup, the memorandum opinion said. Sky Angel’s complaint was dismissed previously for failing to state a claim against any defendant and “to plead both a relevant market and C-SPAN’s power over that market,” it said. C-SPAN filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, the opinion said. “Because the amended complaint fails to rectify the deficiencies identified in the court’s earlier opinion, the court will grant the motion to dismiss the amended complaint.” The court “will give Sky Angel one more opportunity to amend its complaint within 30 days,” it said. Sky Angel didn’t comment.

Viacom and the National Cable Television Cooperative reached a deal to renew carriage of Viacom’s networks by NCTC’s member companies. The deal was reached late Tuesday after some NCTC member distributors stopped carrying Viacom channels in their lineup (CD April 2 p16). Viacom and NCTC couldn’t reach an agreement by the time the previous deal expired March 31. Terms of the agreement aren’t being disclosed, the companies said in a news release.

The FCC should revisit Tennis Channel’s carriage complaint against Comcast, using evidence already in the record that shows Comcast’s decision not to carry Tennis Channel on the same tier as the Comcast-owned Golf Channel was not in the cable company’s financial interests, Tennis Channel argued in a comment filed Monday (http://bit.ly/1gLIXv3). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in Comcast’s favor in May (CD May 29 p1) because the FCC hadn’t based its arguments in support of Tennis Channel on evidence showing that carrying the channel on that tier would be in Comcast’s interest. That amounts to imposing a new test on the evidence, Tennis Channel said. However, applying new tests to evidence already in the record would violate “basic principles of administrative law,” Tennis Channel said. “The court’s mandate therefore must be read as having returned the case to the Commission to make the factual findings required by the court’s holding regarding the legal standards,” said the reply comments. Though Comcast argued in its own filing (CD March 20 p24) that the court did not explicitly remand the case back to the FCC, “there is no reason for the Commission to assume that it is foreclosed from exercising its normal responsibility when an appellate court vacates an order,” Tennis Channel said. The FCC should take up the case again, and set a new briefing cycle limited to the “narrow issues left unresolved by the court’s opinion."

Viacom programming is no longer part of the Cable One or Cedar Falls Utilities line-ups. Customers of neither company can access BET, Comedy Central and other channels as a result of their cable providers’ inability to reach carriage agreements with Viacom. The programmer demanded an increase of more than 100 percent to carry all 15 of its channels, Cable One said in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/ObY05x). Cedar Falls Utilities began offering replacement channels Tuesday, including Disney Junior, FXX and MeTV, it said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1omYyGu). The blackout affects some members of the National Cable Television Cooperative (CD April 1 p6). Viacom is continuing negotiations with some NCTC members, including Massillon Cable TV, MCTV President Robert Gessner said in a statement.

The FCC Media Bureau shouldn’t grant Buckeye Cable’s petition for a waiver of the integration ban until it acts on TiVo requests to reconsider the similar waiver already granted to Charter Communications and to clarify its CableCARD rules, said TiVo in a comment filed Thursday (http://bit.ly/1dV1PDa) in response to Buckeye’s waiver petition (CD March 6 p18). “There is no policy or factual context for action on this petition” until those pending matters have been addressed, TiVo said. Buckeye wants the waiver so it can deploy its new set-top “Hybrid Box,” which it says will allow customers to receive digital video and easily transition to receiving IP video without having to get a new box. The IP portion uses downloadable security, necessitating the waiver. Since the Buckeye waiver petition’s “core legal and factual arguments rest directly on the Media Bureau’s grant of a waiver to Charter,” the commission should rule on TiVo’s application for review of that waiver before taking up Buckeye’s waiver, TiVo said. Similarly, since there’s still an open proceeding on which of the commission’s rules governing CableCARDs survived the EchoStar decision, the commission should clear up that matter before handling Buckeye’s petition, TiVo said. “The commission should clarify its CableCARD expectations, by acting on TiVo’s petition, before it considers waiving them,” TiVo said. If the bureau does approve Buckeye’s petition, it should require the company to submit for comments “a specific demonstration of why and how its system will support interoperability with other systems, and how it would support IP-based retail products on a national basis,” TiVo said.

Cox Media began an effort to conduct addressable TV advertising trials. It is part of an ongoing strategy “to develop advanced advertising products and new programmatic sales capabilities,” said Cox Communications, the cable operator that owns the Cox Media ad company, in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1rBhPDe). Cox Media entered an agreement with Invidi Technologies to measure the effectiveness of addressable ads delivered according to specific viewer geographic, demographic and other predetermined qualifiers, said the cable operator. Cox Media will use Invidi’s technology platform “to explore the benefits of serving uniquely tailored advertisements to individual Cox Communications video subscriber households,” it said. “Cox viewers will benefit from this new technology through increased relevance of the advertisements they view."

NCTA continued to urge the FCC to make the unlicensed national information infrastructure sub-band at 5 GHz usable by Wi-Fi. As Americans rapidly increase their use of Wi-Fi, existing unlicensed spectrum resources are becoming increasingly congested, NCTA said in an ex parte filing in dockets 09-182 and 10-71 (http://bit.ly/1rAcUCB). “If we do not designate additional unlicensed frequencies suitable for Wi-Fi soon, this problem will become acute.” NCTA also said it supports a rule to prohibit non-commonly owned broadcast stations in the same local market from jointly negotiating for retransmission consent. It urged the FCC to narrowly define the circumstances “in which two ‘commonly owned’ broadcast stations may be exempt from the prohibition on joint negotiations.” The association takes no position on whether the FCC should attribute joint sales agreements for purposes of calculating ownership caps, though it said there are significant differences between broadcast JSAs and multichannel video programming distributor interconnects. Such interconnects took heat from NAB (CD March 19 p21), as broadcasters oppose a draft order set for an FCC vote Monday that would attribute some TV JSAs. Without MVPD interconnects, “advertisers that seek to reach an entire local market efficiently would be limited to purchasing advertising on a broadcast station,” said NAB. When MVPDs in a local market pool their local advertising inventory, “they introduce a new competitive alternative to the broadcast purchase that would not exist without the joint activity,” it said. The filing recounted a meeting with Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and her staff.

The FCC Media Bureau has changed the way it issues orders granting unopposed effective competition petitions, a spokeswoman told us Wednesday. Instead of issuing them individually, unopposed effective competition petitions will be granted in large omnibus orders issued several times a year, the spokeswoman said. The change is a result of the FCC’s ongoing effort at process reform, and is a change in the way the orders are issued rather than a change in the way petitions are handled, she said. The first mass order was issued Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1htp5cf), granting 55 unopposed petitions for effective competition from Bright House Networks, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable. All the petitions cited video competition from DirecTV and Dish Network. The numerous communities involved are all over the country, and include Bourbon County, Ky., Chattahoochee, Fla., Honolulu, Louisville, Ala., and Mankato, Minn.

Low customer satisfaction scores for both Comcast and Time Warner Cable are a reason to prevent the two companies from merging, said Consumers Union, the policy division of Consumer Reports, in a release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1gyGF3r). “A merger combining these two huge companies would give Comcast even greater control over the cable and broadband Internet markets, leading to higher prices, fewer choices, and worse customer service for consumers,” said Consumers Union Policy Counsel Delara Derakhshani in the release. Comcast ranked 15th among 17 TV providers in Consumer Reports National Research Center’s survey of TV and Internet services consumers, and TWC ranked 16th. Comcast earned “particularly low marks from consumers for value for the money and customer support” while TWC had “particularly low ratings for value, reliability, and phone/online customer support,” the release said. “The FCC and Department of Justice should stand with consumers and oppose this merger,” said Derakhshani.