Charter Communications will carry six regular season Los Angeles Dodgers games being broadcast on KTLA-TV Los Angeles, including Vin Scully Appreciation Day Sept. 23, said Charter and KTLA owner Tribune Broadcasting Friday. The games also will be carried on regional sports network SportsNet LA, which also is part of Charter's lineup, they said. "Let's root, root, root for broadcast negotiations/if they don't agree it's a shame," said Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., in a statement. Cardenas and other members of the Los Angeles congressional delegation wrote the FCC in 2014 asking it to mediate stalled talks between Time Warner Cable -- now part of Charter -- and other pay-TV providers that had resulted in a wide Dodgers blackout (see 1505130041).

The FCC set-top plan amounts to “stripping content of its legally guaranteed protections” and is akin to money laundering, said Bartlett Cleland, research fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation, in a blog post. “Content laundering rather than money laundering.” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's pursuit of a set-top plan after the U.S. Copyright Office said much of what he proposed would violate copyright law (see 1608050053) shows “continuing arrogance” and “regulatory hubris,” Cleland said Thursday. "In the end, the FCC is looking for a way to require that content be made available to third party set top box makers who are not part of any contract for its use.”

The FCC involving itself in programming negotiations "is almost certain to result in less diversity on pay TV systems," NAB said in a filing posted Thursday in docket 16-41. Citing the American Cable Association urging the FCC to act on bundling -- particularly forced bundling of specialty or niche programming (see 1608290048), NAB said that would lead to "extremely unfortunate exclusionary effects." Naming a variety of networks that specifically target non-white audiences, NAB said ACA appears to suggest those should go on cable lineups only in communities with big non-white populations. "There is simply no reason for the Commission to adopt policies ensuring that niche programming only reaches a narrow audience," NAB said, saying such programing depends on reaching nationwide or near-nationwide audiences. Instead, NAB said, the agency should reject any "ability of pay TV operators to discriminate against 'urban' or 'Spanish-language' channels." NAB defended bundling practices during the FCC's independent programming proceeding (see 1603300055). "For broadcasters to suggest that ACA's position promotes 'segregation ... according to race and ethnicity' is unfortunate and highly misleading," the association said in a statement. "ACA made a simple point: Overall diversity increases when individual small cable operators can choose the programming that best serves their particular local audiences (like independent Spanish-language programming in Puerto Rico). And overall diversity decreases when big conglomerates can force their national networks upon local audiences that may not want them (like the Esquire Network in some rural areas). Nothing about this position should surprise broadcasters -- who, after all, have a rule allowing them to reject unwanted network programming."

Yamaha added to its MusicCast wireless multiroom audio lineup Tuesday with the launch of a network receiver with Bluetooth for streaming via Napster, Pandora, Rhapsody, SiriusXM, Spotify and vTuner, said Yamaha. Music can be controlled by Android and iOS apps, and the device includes FM and streaming music presets.

Samsung announced two series of curved quantum dot gaming monitors, it said in a Monday news release. The 24- and 27-inch CFG70 and the 34-inch CF791 include interactive LED lighting, a user dashboard, and AMD FreeSync technology that’s said to reduce input latency, stutter and lag.

The FCC's revised set-top apps proposal (see 1608240064) would allow programmer content to be distributed through pay-TV apps constructed with their own native code, not just with HTML5 as the pay-TV-backed apps set-top plan would mandate, Univision said in an ex parte posted Thursday in docket 16-42. It concerned a conference call Friday between Univision executives and FCC Chief Technology Officer Scott Jordan and an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler. Univision and the FCC officials discussed measures to prevent discrimination against programmer apps, the data that would need to be shared to allow universal search, and the makeup of a licensing body for the set-top plan. Also Thursday, AT&T filed in the docket, criticizing a recommendation by a tech group to combine elements of various set-top plans (see 1608250052).

In the battle between proprietary Dolby Vision and open HDR10 high dynamic range technologies, HBO, Paramount, Sony Pictures, and Universal are rallying in support of Dolby Vision, said a Wednesday ABI Research report. Dolby Vision could become the format for streaming movie and VOD delivery, while HDR10 primarily supports live event and broadcast channels, said analyst Khin Sandi Lynn. Markets with less widespread broadband deployments such as India will require infrastructure upgrades to be able to support the bandwidth required for 4K video delivery, she said.

MTV's Video Music Awards are “lathered in profanity” and celebrate illegal drug use, said the Parents Television Council in a news release Wednesday. PTC wants VMA advertisers to know last year's ceremony was inappropriate despite being rated as being acceptable to children 14 and older, PTC said. The 2016 VMA show will air Sunday.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson “is not persuaded” she erred in February's ruling that CD-copying hard drives shipped in Chrysler, Ford and General Motors infotainment systems fall outside the scope of the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) (see 1602220055). Her Monday order (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied an Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC) motion that she reconsider her February ruling (see 1605180048). AARC is “hard-pressed” to explain how the AHRA’s “murky legislative history upon which it relies can support the conclusion” that a digital musical recording “could be either analog or digital,” Jackson said. AARC’s “contention that Congress somehow nevertheless meant that a ‘digital musical recording’ could be analog or digital flies in the face of the plain text of the statute, and the AARC offers no support for its implicit suggestion that a statute should not be interpreted to mean what it says,” she said. The jurist agreed with AARC’s contention that her ruling “does not preclude the possibility that a hard drive partition could constitute a DACR under the statute,” she said of a digital audio copied recording.

FCC rules approved in February that allocate responsibility for closed caption quality to both video programming distributors and programmers (see 1602180047) take effect Sept. 22, the agency said in Tuesday's Federal Register.