MVPDs looking to replace their in-house pay-TV business with a virtual MVPD partnership need to be concerned about integration, flexibility and availability of local partners, Analysys Mason's Martin Scott wrote Wednesday. Multiple U.S. MVPDs have gone this route, including Frontier, WideOpenWest and Google Fiber, as operators are putting a greater priority on broadband access in their business models, he said. Partnerships can cut the costs and complexity of running a pay-TV service while letting operators keep the value of a bundled offer, Scott noted. But, he added, drawbacks include a dependence on third‑party partners for pricing and channel lineup, as well as the complexity of integrating billing and support.
As the House Judiciary Committee looks at the antitrust exemptions in professional sports, including how leagues negotiate rights with broadcasters, Congress should also examine parity with other technologies like streaming and cable, wrote Jeffrey Westling, the American Action Forum's director of technology and innovation policy. The exemption that professional sports franchises have from antitrust liability for joint agreements to sell TV rights covers only broadcasting rights, he said Tuesday. "It may be time for Congress to eliminate the statutory exemptions" so courts can review individual transactions. That would still let leagues jointly negotiate with broadcasters, but anticompetitive agreements would be subject to court review, Westling added.
Paramount Skydance likely won't face rival proposals from other major programmers in its reported bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery (see 2509110067), LightShed's Rich Greenfield wrote Monday. Comcast would be hard-pressed to compete with "the financial firepower" of a Paramount bid backed by CEO David Ellison, he said, and a Comcast bid would face an uphill climb with the Trump administration, given the president's hatred of NBC News. Greenfield said a Disney bid would face antitrust scrutiny, and Disney's merger and acquisition interests likely don't line up with WBD's assets. Fox also likely isn't interested, and tech companies like Netflix, Amazon and Apple probably don't want linear TV assets, he added. Instead, WBD might try to separate itself into two companies to generate such a bidding war, said Greenfield, noting that potential tech bidders uninterested in linear networks might be enticed by a Warner Bros. that consists of only Warner Bros. and HBO Max.
Newsmax has dropped its antitrust complaint against Fox Corp. In a notice of voluntary dismissal last week with the U.S. District Court for Southern Florida (docket 25-cv-81091), Newsmax said it was dismissing its claims without prejudice, meaning it's leaving the door open for refiling. Newsmax had a Thursday deadline to refile its suit -- alleging monopolization of the right-leaning pay-TV news space -- after it had been dismissed for procedural errors (see 2509050007).
Paramount Skydance will reportedly make a bid to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, according to a Wall Street Journal article Thursday. The deal would include all the company’s cable networks, including CNN and HBO, the article said. Because Warner Bros. doesn’t own broadcast stations, the deal likely wouldn’t require FCC approval, communications attorneys told us. However, if it's consummated, it could make it easier for FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to apply pressure to a wider swath of media through the agency's open news distortion proceeding. Paramount recently hired a news ombudsman to appease the FCC (see 2509090065). Carr has said the agency will be monitoring Skydance Paramount’s commitments against diversity initiatives and its news policies, and he has targeted large media companies over their smaller broadcast divisions in the past (see 2412270039). It’s not yet clear how such a combination would fare at the DOJ, attorneys told us.
Rival subscription video-on-demand services are taking a wait-and-see approach as to how Netflix's games strategy plays out before following suit, but giving Netflix such a head start is risky, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon wrote Monday. He said Looper Insights consumer survey data indicates that a pairing of video with gaming could have value in reducing churn and retaining subscribers. Without games, the long-term viability of video service providers "is in question," as the next generation of potential subscribers "may opt for an Xbox Game Pass or PlayStation Plus membership over Netflix or Disney+."
Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for Southern Florida on Friday dismissed without prejudice Newsmax's antitrust lawsuit against Fox Corp. and gave Newsmax until Thursday to file an amended complaint. Cannon said in the order (docket 9:25-cv-81091) that the problem with Newsmax's suit as written is that the second, third, fourth and fifth counts in the complaint incorporate the preceding allegations, which isn't permitted. In the suit filed last week, Newsmax alleged that Fox is unlawfully monopolizing the right-leaning pay-TV news marketplace (see 2509030015).
Face the Nation will conduct only live interviews from now on after recent complaints from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, CBS said in a statement. "In response to audience feedback over the past week, we have implemented a new policy for greater transparency in our interviews," it said. Face the Nation "will now only broadcast live or live-to-tape interviews (subject to national security or legal restrictions). This extra measure means the television audience will see the full, unedited interview on CBS, and we will continue our practice of posting full transcripts and the unedited video online." Face the Nation's interview with Noem was the subject of a recent letter to the FCC from the Center of American Rights (see 2509020066).
Vimeo is laying off nearly 10% of its workforce, CEO Philip Moyer wrote Wednesday. While the company has made investments that have resulted in growth, "we know we can perform and operate even better. We undertook this decision to become leaner and more efficient and to support the next phase of Vimeo’s potential."
If not for Fox Corp.'s anticompetitive maneuvers against other right-leaning pay-TV news operations, Newsmax would have greater pay-TV distribution, and its audience and ratings would have grown more quickly, the network asserted in a federal lawsuit Wednesday.