FCC staff asked NAB if broadcasters would support on-air application notice rules requiring one announcement per week for four weeks between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. even if some additional announcements were required. That's per a filing posted in docket 17-264 Tuesday on a Saturday call between NAB and Media Bureau Audio Division Chief Albert Shuldiner. NAB wouldn’t object to additional announcements if the flexible timing were retained. Staff also asked for NAB input on requiring online notices to be available via a tab on a station’s homepage instead of on the homepage itself. “Some broadcasters expressed concerns about a tab option, stating that their current website design does not involve the use of tabs at the top of the home page,” NAB said. Others “stated that they would find the tab option less burdensome.” NAB “would not object to an approach that could provide broadcasters with reasonable flexibility while still meeting the Commission’s goal.”

Wedbush remained “neutral” on Roku stock, Michael Pachter wrote investors before the company’s Thursday Q4 report, seeing “tremendous opportunities for revenue growth” but profitability likely in five years due to R&D, licensing and expansion costs. Cord cutting and the rise of over-the-top video services will likely contribute modestly to Roku’s player business as the company expands its licensing partnerships and ad revenue on The Roku Channel and with advertising on demand partners, Pachter said. Apple Plus and Disney Plus launches in the quarter drove increased cord-cutting, “which may have accelerated active account growth on the Roku Platform in Q4 in excess of our estimates,” said the analyst, though average revenue per user could be lower than estimated, with revenue share terms unclear.

Sonos Chief Legal Officer Eddie Lazarus said “quite a few players” in wireless multiroom audio are “infringing on our patented inventions,” on a quarterly call. The company is hopeful discussions will “bear fruit” financially, said Lazarus, who was FCC chief of staff under then-Chairman Julius Genachowski. The company views licensing talks as a long-term proposition. CEO Patrick Spence cited a successful outcome in litigation against Denon and current patent infringement complaints against Bluesound parent Lenbrook and Google (see 200206007). Separately, Sonos irked customers recently by saying it would no longer support older gear. Spence said the company didn’t get its communication right when it made the legacy product announcement. He underscored efforts to move long-time customers “into the latest and great products” via its trade-up program offering a 30 percent discount on new products. Shares closed 12 percent higher Thursday at $15.76 after fiscal Q1 sales rose 13 percent year-on-year to $562.1 million.

SiriusXM’s 360L interactive vehicular platform “is now the plan of record” with the automotive OEMs, said CEO Jim Meyer on a Q4 call Tuesday. Installations of 360L will reach 2 million vehicles by the end of 2020, “and will accelerate sharply in the years to come,” he said. The platform marries "satellite broadcasting with two-way internet connectivity,” said Meyer. SiriusXM expects 360L to improve paid-subscriber "conversions" and reduce churn, he said. “It’s our first platform that can handle significant over-the-air updates.” The "backward-compatible" platform can introduce new features across the “fleet” of SiriusXM car installations, said Meyer. “This provides a path to move Pandora capabilities into large volumes of cars at some point.” Introducing 360L was “harder than we thought,” conceded Meyer. “It’s the first time we really had a mammoth amount of real-time data coming back” from SiriusXM vehicles, he said. Figuring out how to “accumulate” and “organize” that information brought “significant challenges,” he said. “We’ve learned a lot.” It’s ready “to step on the gas” and speed 360L’s penetration, he said. All major automotive OEMs are expected to adopt SiriusXM's new “wideband chipset” over the next few years, said Meyer.

Google hardware revenue fell in Q4 vs. the “fairly strong” hardware growth rate in the year-ago quarter, said Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat on parent Alphabet’s Monday earnings call. A “difficult hardware comparison” included the launch of the Pixel 3 last year, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter wrote investors Tuesday. Overall revenue grew 17 percent to $46.1 billion, below analysts' consensus of $46.94 billion. Revenue in the “other" line -- Google Play, hardware and YouTube's Premium, Music and TV subscription offerings -- rose 10 percent to $5.3 billion, due to growth in YouTube and Play, offset by declines in hardware, said Porat. Google’s “other bets” had a $2 billion operating loss, vs. a $1.3 billion loss, said the company. Pachter noted in other bets that Alphabet “has the luxury of funding its experiments” in artificial intelligence, “self-driving cars, high speed Internet and various new hardware initiatives while continuing to generate growing losses.” He’s “skeptical that many of these initiatives will pay future dividends.”

Antitrust authorities cleared the way for Tencent to buy part of Vivendi’s Universal Music Group. An FTC early termination notice dated Friday and released Monday ended the transaction's Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period. The deal has involved a 10 percent UMG stake.

Amazon shares closed up 7.4 percent Friday to $2,008.72 after Q4 earnings driven by Amazon Web Services, advertising and Prime one-day delivery. Sales gained 21 percent to $87.4 billion, beating analysts’ forecasts and topping its guidance of as much as $86.5 billion. The company has more than 40 million active users for Fire TV, while Amazon Music has more than 55 million customers worldwide.

To comply with the Television Viewer Protection Act (HR-5035) passed in December (see 1912190068), the FCC Media Bureau is proposing rules for retransmission consent talks between MVPD buying groups and large station groups. Comments are due 15 days after Federal Register publication, replies in 25 days, said a public notice Friday.

If Roku doesn't reach an agreement with Fox to redistribute its channels, it will be "forced to remove FOX channels from the Roku platform because we can't distribute content without an agreement," blogged Roku Friday. That was hours ahead of the 11:59 p.m. deadline when its distribution agreement with Fox was set to expire. Saying it doesn't want that to happen, Roku said it "tried for months" to get Fox to sign an agreement -- "and we offered FOX an extension but they declined." Vizio reminded football fans Friday that its TVs support Apple AirPlay 2 and Chromecast built-in, providing streaming for cord-cutters and viewers who might be blocked from watching the Super Bowl due to retransmission fee conflicts (see 2001290047). Vizio SmartCast TV owners could watch by pulling up the Fox Sports or Fox Now apps on a smartphone or tablet, selecting the game and tapping the Chromecast or AirPlay button to stream to sets, it emailed.

Traditional pay-TV offerings will evolve to become “indistinguishable from a pure” over-the-top package of services, said ABI Research analyst Michael Inouye. Though cord cutting is often seen as “a consequence of expanding OTT consumption,” the market dynamics “are more complex,” Inouye said Tuesday, noting the pay-TV industry embraced OTT “as a complement and value-additive.” The OTT video market will top $200 billion by 2024, 90 percent fueled by subscription and advertising revenue, ABI said. The remainder will include digital purchases, electronic sell-through, rentals and transactional video on demand, Inouye emailed us. Disney Plus and Apple Plus, with aggressive pricing and packaging, plus continued expansion by long-term players in the subscription VOD market, are pushing the segment to new highs, ABI said. There are 700 million-plus OTT SVOD subscriptions and 1 billion for pay TV market.