MVPDs must file their Form 396-C equal employment opportunity program annual reports by Sept. 30, the FCC Enforcement Bureau said Monday. More than 150 local systems also have to respond to supplemental investigation questions, it said

Comments are due Sept. 4, replies Sept. 19, on the NPRM approved in July (see 1907100054) on electronic delivery by MVPDs of some required notices to broadcasters, including to low-power TV stations and some noncommercial translator stations, the FCC Media Bureau said Monday in docket 19-165.

Livestreaming video continues to be the fastest-growing category of internet video bandwidth use, and will stay that way at least through 2022, with virtual MVPDs, eSports and traditional sports driving demand, blogged nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon Tuesday. He said virtual MVPDs have a subscriber base of close to 9 million, with viewing times similar to those of traditional TV. More sports are delivering live games online, while major sports are beginning to license games to online providers like ESPN Plus and Dazn, he said.

VidAngel and studios are locking horns over a proposed permanent injunction following the $62.4 million court award in the copyright violation complaint against it (see 1906180003), VidAngel, in an opposition filed last week (docket 16-cv-04109, in Pacer) with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, said a permanent injunction's not necessary since it ended its disc-based service more than two years ago and won't use it again "absent an act of Congress or express authorization from a higher court." It said what the content companies really want is "a broad injunction to wield the threat of contempt sanctions over VidAngel for any future conduct that implicates copyright in any way -- including lawful conduct." It said the actual target is its current filtering service, which filters streaming content. Plaintiffs Disney and Warner Bros. in the injunction motion (in Pacer) filed earlier this month said even if VidAngel could pay the $62.4 million court award, those money damages wouldn't be enough "to stop VidAngel’s demonstrated intent to violate Plaintiffs’ rights." They said VidAngel's streaming without a license is harming their exclusive right to control distribution of their works.

MVPDs increasingly are adopting a no-haggle policy for subscribers, meaning more cancellations but gains in revenue after accounting for content costs, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Sunday. Both Comcast and DirecTV seem to have gone the route of not offering special deals to keep subscribers after initial sign-up deal terms expire, even if it means cancellations, with the focus on high-spending customers showing a mindset that the pay-TV cost structure no longer works for customers "unwilling to spend big," he said.

CBS and Altice USA signed a multiyear carriage agreement for retransmission consent for CBS-owned stations and carriage of cable networks including Showtime and CBS Sports on Altice's Optimum and Suddenlink cable systems, they said. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) infringes four “foundational” patents in cloud-gaming through manufacture, use and sale of the PlayStation Now game-streaming service, and its "hosting" of games on the PlayStation Now server, alleged a complaint (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California. 3DLabs CEO Osman Kent and his "chief architects" at 3DLabs, David Baldwin and Nicholas Murphy, invented the “groundbreaking technology” behind PlayStation Now, and the patents now belong to Intellectual Pixels Ltd. (IPL), a British firm co-owned by the original 3DLabs founders, said the complaint. “Decades before SIE and others started touting cloud gaming as the new frontier, pioneers in the field of graphics processing invented the fundamental technologies for enabling cloud gaming and streaming graphics applications,” it said. Though “never commercialized” at 3DLabs, “the concept of cloud gaming and streaming other graphics applications from a server or the cloud to a client device was considered one of the most valuable inventions” the firm developed, it said. 3DLabs rebranded itself ZiiLabs in 2009 and still services the “legacy” PC graphics cards it helped pioneer in the 1990s. SIE didn’t comment Friday.

Letting SiriusXM use compression technology on its traffic, weather and alert channels won't affect emergency alert system functionality or operations, the FCC Public Safety Bureau said in Thursday's Daily Digest in a conditional waiver of transmission of some truncated EAS message data on those SiriusXM channels. The compression technology is limited to those traffic, weather and alert channels and the messages' audio portion must remain intelligible under compression.

MVPD and broadcast interests disagree about C Spire's petition for declaratory ruling that a TV station's market modification means it and its broadcast streams are now local for reciprocal retransmission negotiations in those communities (see 1906040031). Gray has basically contracted away the ability of its WLOX Biloxi, Mississippi, to negotiate retrans in good faith by carriage being tied to carriage also for a CBS station, making a mockery of the market-modification process, said America's Communications Association in a docket 19-159 posting Tuesday. It said C Spire -- which filed a retrans consent complaint alleging CBS and Gray are blocking a WLOX deal unless it also pays to retransmit fees to Tegna's CBS affiliate -- isn't the only cable operator facing such issues and the FCC should simply grant C Spire's complaint or, at the least, the declaratory ruling petition. The Russellville, Kentucky, Electric Plant Board, said it's similarly been unable to obtain a station's multicast programming streams after a market modification because of the station's network affiliation agreements not allowing it to grant retrans consent outside its designated market area. There's no need for the FCC to make clear retrans negotiations include good-faith bargaining obligations, as broadcasters and MVPDs already understand, the CBS, ABC, Fox TV Affiliates associations and NBC TV Affiliates said. But it would contradict FCC precedent and step on the private retrans consent marketplace to declare that territorial restrictions in local broadcasters' network affiliate agreements that limit distribution of network programming in market modification communities violate good-faith bargaining, they said. They said the network-affiliate relationship has to give networks the ability to determine the areas where affiliates can distribute network programming as a means of serving localism, and C Spire's petition as it relates to network territorial restrictions would result in endless litigation.

Major sports broadcasters and platform providers such as Amazon could be the most significant threats to pay-TV providers’ retention of top sports rights and customers in a changing over-the-top market, Nagra reported Thursday. The vendor to MVPDs noted the array of top tech platforms experimenting in this area. “Sports have been a key driver of growth in pay-TV for more than two decades,” said Jon Watts, managing partner at consulting company MTM. He said the rise of sports OTT introduced competition and innovation to the market, “prompting traditional providers to adapt their pricing, packaging and overall value propositions to stay successful.” The supply of sports content is expanding significantly, with new sports OTT services and providers potentially reducing demand for pay TV, said Nagra. Limit the impact of sports streaming piracy by leveraging new anti-piracy technology and industry collaboration, “particularly as 5G begins to roll out,” the company recommended. Nagra’s analysis of 65 of the world’s top services shows mobile as the first priority for all players, with more than 90 percent of services on iOS and Android, followed by streaming devices such as Apple TV, Fire TV Stick, Roku and Chromecast. Smart TVs had the lowest priority for services; 36 percent were on Samsung and 30 percent on LG TVs. New aggregators are seeking distribution via traditional pay-TV bundles “with limited success, reflecting pay-TV’s lack of interest in tier-two and three sports,” it said.