Citing schedule and travel conflicts, AT&T in a docket 19-168 posting Friday asked the FCC for a seven-day extension, to Aug. 23, to file a reply to nine station groups' answer to its good-faith negotiations rules violation complaint (see 1908070046). It said the extension was unopposed.

Viacom's Q3 revenue was up 6 percent in what CEO Bob Bakish said was the long-promised return to advertising sales growth. In a call with analysts Thursday, he said domestic ad sales grew for the first time in 20 quarters, "a significant milestone." He said Viacom will launch BET Plus this fall, a streaming service featuring a variety of original content, in partnership with producer/director/actor Tyler Perry. He said its Pluto TV streaming service has grown from 12 million active monthly users at the start of the year to 18 million in July, and user growth should continue as Viacom broadens distribution and content. Chief Financial Officer Wade Davis said Paramount is on track for full-year profitability, its first since 2015. Asked about Disney Plus competition to Nickelodeon, Bakish said Disney pricing "does look very competitive," but Viacom's strategy is to play in the various price points from free to big, more-expensive bundles. It didn't take questions on a possible Viacom/CBS deal. Viacom said revenue for the quarter was $3.36 billion, up from $3.24 billion last year.

The AT&T-CBS blackout that began in July (see 1907190056) was resolved Thursday, with the two announcing a multiyear carriage agreement covering the broadcaster's 26 owned local broadcast stations in 17 markets and national CBS Sports Network and Smithsonian Channel channels on AT&T video platforms. Terms of the agreement weren't disclosed.

The CBS All Access streaming subscription VOD and livestreaming service will add children's programming to its library starting later this year, including some original programming, CBS said Thursday. The broadcaster also said its CBSN Local, its set of local streaming news services, will accelerate rollout in the 13 major U.S. markets where CBS TV Stations has local news operations. CBSN New York launched in December, CBSN Los Angeles in June, with Boston and Bay Area services to roll out this year. CBS said Thursday it will launch CBSN in remaining markets in early 2020. Those markets are Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver, Miami, Sacramento, Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

Verance will add Project OAR support to its Aspect watermarking platform, said the company Wednesday. OAR, for Open Addressable Ready, is the Vizio-led consortium of media companies formed in the spring to develop open technical standards for addressable advertising on connected TVs (see 1903120071). Watermarking technologies like Aspect “are expected to factor into the accurate delivery and decisioning” of addressable TV advertising, said Verance. Aspect has been in “wide commercial trials” with broadcasters and TV makers since being designated ATSC 3.0's A/335 video watermark standard three years ago, said Verance. It’s working with broadcast equipment vendors to include OAR “watermark embedding capabilities” into products for implementation later this year, it said.

With U.S. consumers unlikely to subscribe to more than three streaming services, the 20 million to 30 million over-the-top subscribers Disney hopes to have by 2024 will likely mostly come from Netflix's 60 million U.S. subscribers, Needham analyst Laura Martin wrote investors Wednesday. Disney "will win" and Netflix "lose" the U.S. subscriber battle because of the lower price of the Disney Plus streaming service, its Disney content, lower customer acquisition costs, balance sheet and multiple content creation studios, Needham said. It said direct-to-consumer investments in technology, content and marketing required to launch OTT services will hurt Disney for several financial quarters. Netflix didn't comment.

Marketing of the Disney Plus direct-to-consumer streaming service debuting in November will “start to hit” later in August, said CEO Bob Iger on Disney’s Q3 earnings call Tuesday (see 1908060069). “I'm actually going through a comprehensive marketing plan with the team next week,” he said. “Comprehensive probably is an understatement. It is going to be treated as the most important product that the company has launched in, I don't know, certainly during my tenure in the job, which is quite a long time.” Iger succeeded Michael Eisner as CEO in 2005. Iger wants Disney Plus to launch with better than 90 percent consumer awareness, he told Disney’s Investor Day conference in April. “You will see marketing both in traditional and nontraditional directions,” and on all “the touch points that the company has, whether it's people staying in our hotels, people that have our co-branded credit card, people who are members of D23,” Disney’s fan club, he said. “The opportunities are tremendous to market this, and I feel good about some of the creative that I've already seen.”

Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will require videogame publishers to disclose the odds of users receiving certain in-game items from loot box purchases starting in 2020, said Entertainment Software Association Chief Counsel-Tech Policy Michael Warnecke Wednesday at the FTC’s loot box workshop. Loot boxes are containers of randomized items with varying levels of in-game value that users can buy online. The micro-transactions are a revenue stream for industry but also raise questions about predatory practices that lead to behavior similar to addictive gambling, said FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Chief Andrew Smith. He cited reports of consumers spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in pursuit of coveted loot box items. Consumer groups and lawmakers accused the industry of manipulating children and others into spending exorbitant amounts of money on loot boxes. Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; Ed Markey, D-Mass.; and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced legislation in May that would ban loot box practices (see 1905240066). The rates companies disclose will be the “current odds” for that particular loot box at that particular time, Warnecke said. “The commitment will apply to whatever the particular loot box is. Regardless of the method to reach those odds, those odds would be disclosed,” he said. ESA’s announcement is important and shows the industry is paying attention to its users and acting quickly, said National Consumers League Vice President-Public Policy, Telecommunications and Fraud John Breyault. But the FTC needs to continue monitoring to make sure there’s no exploitation, he said.

The global pay-TV subscriber base is expected to top 1.1 billion by 2024, ABI Research said Tuesday. That's despite competition from streaming services, which resulted in North American cable, satellite and IP TV services losing more than 1.2 million subscribers in Q1, adding that home broadband adoption rates have increased, but traditional pay-TV services dominate emerging markets. It said some pay-TV operators have launched their own, lower-cost livestreaming services or deployed Android-based set-top boxes to integrate streaming and pay-TV services.

Disney plans to bundle streaming services Disney Plus, ESPN Plus and the ad-supported Hulu tier for $12.99 a month, starting in November, CEO Bob Iger said Tuesday during the company's Q3 earnings call with analysts. For Q3, Disney had revenue of $20.25 billion, up 33 percent. The results were the first full quarter since Disney closed on 21st Century Fox in March. Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy said a couple of Fox businesses underperformed, with Fox film results down due to X-Men: Dark Phoenix doing worse than expected. There also was an operating loss at Star, due largely to higher rights costs for sporting events, she said. Disney expects about $900 million in operating losses in Q4 in its direct-to-consumer business due to investment in ESPN Plus and Disney Plus and taking operational control of Hulu, McCarthy said. Iger said given the Fox films already in the pipeline, it could be a year or two before Disney starts putting its own thumbprint on that part of the business. Asked about a possible international rollout of Hulu, Iger said that it's being pursued. He said Disney Plus would launch with close to 300 films, ramping up to 400 relatively quickly, plus 7,500 episodes of Disney TV.