AT&T would "be better off without the albatross that is DirecTV," but the likelihood of such a deal is slim due to the rapid decline in DirecTV's subscriber base -- 18% year over year -- and its earnings, which make it tough for a potential buyer to see a reasonable return, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett emailed Monday. That followed a report that AT&T is exploring a sale. The telco didn't comment. DirecTV's combining with Dish Network and the resulting synergies between the two are of limited help, and regulatory approval would take a year or longer, Moffett said.

Some 78% of U.S. households have a subscription VOD service from Netflix, Amazon Prime, and/or Hulu, up from 69% in 2018, reported Leichtman Research Group Friday. About 55% of U.S. households have more than one SVOD service, an increase from 43% in 2018, it said. Forty percent of adults stream an SVOD service daily. The most active streamers are ages 18-44, with 63% of daily SVOD viewing. Some 30% of respondents said their Netflix subscription is shared with others outside their household, 23% for Hulu and 20% for Amazon Prime. Fifty-five percent of adults watch video on non-TV devices daily, including mobile phones, home computers and tablets; 44% watch video on a mobile phone daily, it said. The pandemic spurred an increase in SVOD and direct-to-consumer streaming video services, said principal Bruce Leichtman.

Comments are due Sept. 8 on a petition from America’s Public Television Stations and PBS urging the FCC Media Bureau to waive required baseline carriage notices for noncommercial educational translators, said a public notice Wednesday in docket 17-105. Replies are due Sept. 14. The agency requires NCE translators to email a notice to MVPDs on which they will be seeking carriage in the 2021-2023 carriage cycle, the PN says. APTS and PBS argued NCE translators are all must-carry and so don’t interact with MVPDs to obtain carriage. “NCE translators do not even know, in many cases, which MVPDs are carrying them, and no resource exists to easily determine this information,” the PN said. “Even emailing a one-time notice would impose a substantial burden, while providing no benefit to the public, to MVPDs, or to the translators themselves.”

Streaming service Tidal bought $7 million in tokens issued by Sensorium that will allow broadcasting of immersive virtual reality content to users worldwide. The relationship with the social VR platform company will allow Tidal to gain exclusive rights for its artist roster to have shows and music broadcast within Sensorium’s virtual entertainment worlds, said Lior Tibon, Tidal chief operating officer. In addition to letting fans access concerts they wouldn’t be able to attend in person, the Sensorium Galaxy alternate universe platform will allow users to interact with other virtual participants and avatars. In addition to VR headsets, Sensorium Galaxy will be available on PC, iOS and Android applications.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland granted Epic Games a temporary restraining order (in Pacer) blocking Apple from denying Epic access to Apple development tools, including for the Unreal Engine game creation platform that Epic offers third-party developers (see 2008240010). “The record shows potential significant damage to both the Unreal Engine platform itself, and to the gaming industry generally, including on both third-party developers and gamers” if Epic is denied access, said Rogers Monday. “Epic Games and Apple are at liberty to litigate against each other, but their dispute should not create havoc to bystanders.” She denied Epic’s motion to order Fortnite’s reinstatement on the App Store. Epic “has not yet demonstrated irreparable harm” from Apple’s removal of Fortnite in apparent retaliation for Epic’s installation of an in-app direct-payment system to compete with Apple’s, she said. “The current predicament appears of its own making.” Apple and Epic didn’t comment Tuesday. Rogers set a Sept. 4 deadline for Epic to file for a preliminary injunction and a Sept. 28 Zoom hearing on the motion.

The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the shift from physical media to digital home entertainment, with disc revenue falling rapidly and consumer spending on traditional pay TV declining, blogged nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon Sunday. Subscription VOD has been a big beneficiary, with its share of consumer entertainment spending rising from 9.9% in Q2 2018 to 17.1% two years later, he said. "There seems no stopping traditional pay TV’s accelerating fall from grace," he said.

A “paradigm shift” is occurring in the pay-TV industry, “with operators acknowledging the benefits of putting Cloud TV at the heart of their infrastructure," said Nuno Sanches, Kaltura general manager-media and telecom. Five years ago it was considered impossible to deliver operator-grade quality of service from the cloud, Sanches said Monday, citing economics and telecom operators not wanting to use the open internet to deliver pay-TV services. Today, multinational pay-TV operators are embracing cloud TV as “the best-of-breed solution to deliver future-proof services." The percentage of U.S. broadband households subscribing to a cable or satellite pay-TV service fell to 62% in Q1 from 67% in the year-ago quarter, reported Parks Associates Monday, while the average amount of video watched per week grew to more than 37 hours per household. The spike in online video consumption, decrease in pay-TV-only households and shift of pay-TV online are widening the gap between over-the-top video and traditional pay-TV, said Parks analyst Steve Nason: “Traditional services are looking to migrate to the cloud to get the best of pay-TV and OTT.” Parks will co-host a webinar with Kaltura on cloud TV Tuesday at noon EDT.

Microsoft backs the Epic Games motion for a temporary restraining order (see 2008180022) blocking Apple from permanently barring the Fortnite franchise from the App Store and cutting off Epic’s access to Apple development tools, including for the Unreal Engine game creation platform that Epic offers third-party developers. So said Kevin Gammill, Microsoft general manager-gaming developer experiences, in a declaration (in Pacer) Sunday in U.S. District Court in Oakland. Epic alleges Apple is retaliating for Epic’s launch of an independent in-app direct-payment system at the App Store. Apple counters that Epic is violating its App Store license. Unreal Engine is “critical technology for numerous game creators including Microsoft,” said Gammill. It’s one of the most popular third-party game engines available to game creators, he said. “In Microsoft’s view there are very few other options available for creators to license with as many features and as much functionality as Unreal Engine across multiple platforms, including iOS.” Microsoft has an “enterprise-wide,” multiyear Unreal Engine license agreement, said Gammill. It invested “significant resources and engineer time working with and customizing Unreal Engine for its own games on PC, Xbox consoles, and mobile devices (including iOS devices),” he said. Apple didn’t comment. Sony agreed last month to make a $250 million “strategic investment” for a minority interest in Epic (see 2007090044). U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who was reassigned the case Wednesday, set a Zoom hearing on Epic’s TRO motion that was to be held at 3 p.m. PDT Monday.

The FCC Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau shouldn't terminate docket 14-261 on the inclusion of some types of online video distribution (OVD) as MVPDs (see 2006020058), among the hundreds of dockets considered, said the ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliates associations Friday. The proceeding "is far from dormant" and the issues it raises remain germane, they said. Local broadcasters' ability to negotiate with OVD services for retransmission would be directly affected by whether to treat them as MVPDs subject to retransmission consent rules, they said. Since 2017, the affiliates groups contributed the majority of filings to the docket.

Arguments about the video marketplace being more competitive than ever due to streaming services ignore the fundamental question of whether the AT&T TV Now virtual MVPD has been shown to be effective competition as laid out in the Communications Act, the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable told the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday (in Pacer, docket 19-2282). It's challenging the FCC's effective competition order covering parts of the state and Hawaii (see 1912230063). The FCC's interpretation of the terms of the LEC test are contrary to the law, FCC rules and the plain text, MDTC said in the reply brief. The cost of broadband fits squarely into list of impediments that indicate a service doesn't satisfy the LEC test, it said. The FCC didn't comment.