AT&T's good-faith rules violation complaint isn't against nine small, isolated broadcast station groups as defendants portray (see 1908070046), but against Sinclair-managed and -controlled entities that refused to negotiate, an unfair advantage, said the MVPD in a heavily redacted FCC docket 19-168 reply Monday. It said the station groups "do not even seriously dispute" they refused to negotiate or respond to proposals. Defendants' outside counsel, Marc Martin of Perkins Coie, emailed that AT&T's argument they refused to negotiate "is baseless." To "the contrary, the station groups retained a respected negotiator who followed a negotiating process that AT&T agreed to follow," he said. "AT&T is simply trying to use the FCC complaint process to bully these station groups into business concessions that AT&T can’t get at the negotiating table." Sinclair says it provides services to the station groups but isn't part of their retransmission consent negotiations.

DOJ approved Disney's divestiture of regional sports networks to Sinclair, Justice announced Friday. “Sinclair’s acquisition of the divested regional sports networks addresses the harm the Division identified in its review of the Disney-Fox transaction,” said Antitrust Division Chief Makan Delrahim. DOJ "did not find that the Divestiture Transaction would lead to competitive harm, and found that Sinclair has the incentive to use the RSNs to compete in all affected markets," the release said. Sinclair completed its $9.6 billion buy of 21 regional sports networks and Fox College Sports, Sinclair and Disney said earlier that day. Sinclair’s buy “is the largest collection of RSNs,” they said. The bundle of networks includes local rights to 42 professional sports teams -- 14 from MLB, 16 from the NBA, and 12 from the NHL. The RSNs were bought through Sinclair indirect subsidiary Diamond Sports Group. Entertainment Studios CEO Byron Allen agreed to become an equity and content partner in a newly formed indirect subsidiary of Sinclair that will be “an indirect parent of Diamond called the RSN Holding Company,” the release said.

Consumers are more satisfied with Spotify than Pandora, but Spotify customers are three times more likely to be frustrated by customer service issues, Strategy Analytics reported Thursday. More than 2,100 online U.S. reviews rated Spotify 4.07 out of five, 3.54 for Pandora. Issues with the app or software drove most consumer dissatisfaction, said SA, noting both apps received recent updates. Changing the user experience made Spotify harder to navigate, said SA analyst Kevin Nolan, and Pandora users report the app “no longer worked properly.”

College students have another cut-rate streaming music option, with SiriusXM the latest service to offer favorable pricing for on-demand music. SiriusXM’s $4 monthly Student Premier package, 69 percent off the regular price, combines commercial-free music with Personalized Stations Powered by Pandora, SiriusXM Video, college conference channels, sports, comedy, news and entertainment channels. Subscribers can listen on a mobile phone or tablet, laptop, streaming media players, Xbox, PlayStation and Amazon Alexa-powered devices, it said. Earlier this month, Amazon announced (see 1908060054) Prime Student members can get its Music Unlimited service for 99 cents a month, in addition to the $6.49 monthly Prime fee. Spotify’s $4.99 monthly Premium Student sub includes Showtime and Hulu; its management attributed lower-than-expected Q2 subscriber adds to a marketing miss, saying the student program had “no awareness.”

Big U.S. video-content industry players are increasingly focusing on high quality, an executive at a Chinese-based TV maker told us. Aaron Dew, TCL director-product development, cited growing HDR content from Hollywood studios and providers Amazon, Netflix and Vudu, along with compatible video sources including Apple TV and Xbox One. In North America, his company is supporting “all mainstream HDR formats,” he said. With HDR10 Plus “just starting to emerge,” TCL is keeping a “close eye on it,” he said.

Comments are due Sept.13 on a petition from consumer groups for an inquiry and rulemaking on closed captioning for live programming, said an FCC public notice in Wednesday’s Daily Digest and on docket 05-231. Replies are due Sept. 30. The groups, which include Telecommunications for the Hard of Hearing and the National Association of the Deaf, want the inquiry to focus on more-accurate, higher-quality captions for live programming, and to be followed by rulemaking on live captioning and ruling on automatic speech recognition technology, the PN said.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 2-1 reversed a lower court's dismissal of a class-action antitrust complaint against DirecTV and the NFL over the MVPD's Sunday Ticket package (see 1707030002). In the docket 17-56119 opinion Tuesday by Judge Sandra Ikuta and joined by George Steeh, the 9th Circuit said the allegations by the plaintiffs -- primarily sports bars and individual subscribers -- on their face are an adequate allegation of injury to competition, and even though the alleged antitrust conspiracy involves multiple levels of producers, distributors and sales, plaintiffs sufficiently allege an injury that can withstand motion to dismiss. In his dissent, Judge Randy Smith noted the Supreme Court 1977 Illinois Brick says indirect purchasers can't use a pass-on theory to recover damages and don't have standing. He said plaintiffs haven't alleged NFL teams set or conspired to set the price paid by consumers, and their claim for damages stemming from an alleged horizontal agreement among the teams fails that test. Defendants' outside counsel didn't comment Wednesday.

A week after announcing a partnership bringing on-demand Spotify to premium-tier AT&T Wireless customers (see 1908050032), Spotify said it's partnering with Bango to broaden access to mobile customers worldwide. The partnership will allow millions of customers to choose a Spotify subscription to be bundled with their mobile plan, or as a “bolt-on,” the companies said Tuesday. Bango’s Resale technology allows Spotify to reach new customers, and its data insights will help target specific customers with offers to generate higher customer adoption, they said. Resale distribution partners, such as communications companies, “find these value-added bundles keep their customers loyal and attract new, higher value customers,” said Bango.

Verizon Media will sell social network Tumblr to WordPress owner Automattic, Verizon announced Monday. The deal is reportedly for less than $20 million. Verizon acquired Tumblr through its 2017 purchase of Yahoo, which paid $1.1 billion for Tumblr in 2013.

If or when there's a Viacom/CBS deal, the combined company would be the second-largest player in U.S. TV advertising, wrote MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson in a note to investors Friday. Churn at Showtime and CBS All Access could be reduced and usage increased with the addition of Paramount's film library and Nickelodeon content, he said. The CBS/Paramount production asset would become a serious competitor to Disney, Comcast, AT&T and Netflix, he said. The combined company could reap faster affiliate fee growth with Viacom benefiting "from the big stick of the CBS Broadcast Network," he said.