Some of the conditions suggested for a joint NCTA/American Cable Association FCC petition for approval to email customers such information as instructions and services offered would make electronic notification more burdensome and actually undermine the benefits sought in the petition and should be rejected, NCTA/ACA said in a joint filing Friday in docket 16-126. The petition drew a variety of suggested conditions (see 1606130028). "Most problematic" is an opt-in consent requirement before cable operators could send notices electronically, since cable operators already have that and the point of the petition was for Media Bureau approval to not have opt-in consent, the two said. Seeking and obtaining individual opt-in consent from customers runs contrary to the paperwork-saving benefits of the petition, they said, adding the FCC hasn't required opt-in consent for other electronic notifications to customers, such as annual backup power notices. They said they agree with a collection of local governments that the emailed version include a route for opting out. But NCTA/ACA said the bureau needn't specify that route "so long as the option chosen is readily available and not difficult to exercise." They said local governments' suggestion cable operators be banned from selling or marketing with those customer email addresses would be superfluous: "There is no basis -- and no history of email abuse -- to support these conjectural concerns." They also said use of customer email addresses already is regulated. NCTA/ACA said some suggested clarifications are unobjectionable -- for example, a requirement that customers can withdraw their consent at any time, as suggested by NATOA and Minnesota Association of Community Telecommunications Administrators; or the local governments' suggestion for what would constitute a "verified email address."

Sky promises the U.K.’s “most comprehensive Ultra HD service” on Sky Q Silver when it launches the service Aug. 13, the entertainment company said in a Thursday announcement. It requires a subscription and a Sky Q Silver set-top box, Sky said.

NCTA, which has had concerns about a Globalstar broadband plan, discussed those issues with an aide to FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly, joined by an executive at Charter Communications. A two-sentence ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 13-213 said the cable representatives and Justin Lilley of TeleMedia Policy Corp. last week discussed with the aide what the document said was described in a filing last month in the docket. In that earlier filing, NCTA with Cox Enterprises met with the aide to say "open questions about interference caused by Globalstar warranted additional investigation." The cable representatives said then (see 1606070044) that issuing special temporary authority for Globalstar's technology and joint testing that CableLabs had proposed would be better than a pending draft order. O'Rielly and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn didn't initially vote on the order about the company's terrestrial low-power system (see 1606240056). Globalstar didn't comment Wednesday.

Twitter will live-stream the GOP and Democratic national conventions under a partnership with CBS News, the companies said in a news release Monday. Twitter will present video of the entire convention alongside tweets related to the event. Twitter and CBS News previously partnered for two presidential debates during the recent primaries.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment settled FTC allegations for allegedly not telling customers it paid online "influencers ... thousands of dollars" to post positive videos on social media sites like YouTube to promote the videogame Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, said the commission Monday in a news release. Commissioners voted 3-0 to issue an administrative complaint and accept the proposed consent agreement, which will be published in the Federal Register soon and available for public comment through Aug. 10. The consent order said Warner Bros. must "make such disclosures in the future and cannot misrepresent that sponsored content, including gameplay videos, are the objective, independent opinions of video game enthusiasts or influencers," the release said. In 2014, the company's ad agency Plaid Social Labs hired online influencers "to develop sponsored gameplay videos" and post them on YouTube, and promote them on Facebook and Twitter -- videos that were viewed more than 5.5 million times, the FTC said. It said Felix Kjellberg, who's known by his YouTube alias "PewDiePie," alone garnered more than 3.7 million views. The company paid influencers anywhere "from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars," provided a free game in advance and instructed them to promote it "in a positive way and not disclose any bugs or glitches they found," the commission said. Not only did Warner Bros. fail to disclose it paid influencers, but the FTC alleged the company didn't tell influencers "to include sponsorship disclosures clearly and conspicuously in the video itself where consumers were likely to see or hear them." Instead, the influencers were told to post disclosures in a box below the video -- less likely to be seen by consumers, the commission said. In an emailed statement, Warner Bros. said it "always strives to be transparent with our customers and fans when working with social influencers, and we are committed to complying with the related FTC guidelines."

Charter Communications is distributing Univision content under the terms of a Time Warner Cable contract that should end Dec. 31 but that Charter insists runs through June 2022, Univision said in a lawsuit filed Friday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The suit asks for a declaratory judgment that its agreement with Charter expired June 30, its TWC agreement ends as of Dec. 31, and the license fees in Univision's TWC agreement apply only to the legacy TWC system and only through the end of this year. According to Univision, it tried to talk contract renewal terms with Charter before the May close of its TWC and Bright House Networks acquisitions but was rebuffed. The broadcaster alleged that after the TWC/BHN takeover, Charter said it was electing to distribute Univision programming across its combined Charter/TWC system under the terms of the TWC agreement until June 2022 and under the fee terms of that agreement. Univision said a multiple-system operator acquisition clause in its Charter contract should terminate its TWC agreement at the end of this year. Univision said Charter "rested [its] claims upon the blatant fiction that TWC -- and not the pre-Acquisition Charter team running New Charter -- now 'manages' all of those cable systems." In a statement Friday, Charter said it has a long-term contract with Univision "and we expect them to honor it.”

Newseum President Jeffrey Herbst wants an "all-out war" against online anonymity. "We should be sending as a signal to everyone -- and especially young people -- that it doesn't count unless you put your name on it. And you should not pay attention to it unless you know that someone else's name is credibly on it," said Herbst at a Hudson Institute event Wednesday. Herbst, who was Colgate University's president until last year, said he wasn't pushing for speech codes or government regulations, but social mores should make it "unacceptable" to post derogatory or similar comments without attribution on sites like Facebook and Yik Yak, which allows anonymous discussion threads. Herbst said he still supports anonymity for whistleblowers and dissidents in authoritarian countries. He cited studies saying most Americans had at least some issue with incivility on social media sites. A Newseum and Knight Foundation survey of college students, he said, found that "41 percent" said conversation on social media wasn't civil and 74 percent found it too easy to say something anonymously in that space. Herbst said there has been some movement on news websites against anonymous comments and several reporters have made it a point to do more sourced reporting. He said pressure can also be put on venture capital firms not to invest in anonymous social sites like Yik Yak. That company didn't comment right away. The Newseum and Knight Foundation are working to find examples where communities are addressing such issues without curtailing free speech and he plans to write a best practices guide in the fall, he said. "I reject the idea that it's just going to be this way and we can't do anything about it." Herbst said this effort will "take a long time and move slowly."

Consumer ease of use, media interoperability and support for HEVC video codecs are among the new functionalities enabled by DLNA 4.0, Duncan Bees, Digital Living Network Alliance vice president-technology and strategy, told us. A test and certification program will be available late this year, he said. Citing the "broad shift" in video from HD to 4K resolution, Bees said 4.0 supports user-generated and premium service content. The guidelines support IPv6 to ensure DLNA 4.0-certified devices will continue to function as more networks transition to the protocol, he said.

Parker Broadcasting of Dakota License gets to keep its KRDK-TV Valley City, North Dakota, station on Cable One's virtual channel 4, the FCC Media Bureau said Tuesday in a letter to Parker and Gray Television denying Gray's request for reassignment of program and system information protocol (PSIP) channels. Gray wanted channel 4 reassigned from KRDK to its KVLY-TV Fargo, in response to a Parker must-carry complaint against Cable One (see 1603040033). While Gray is trying to preserve its CBS affiliation on channel 4, it needs a mutual agreement from KRDK for that waiver request to be considered, the bureau said. The bureau said Gray is seeking the reassignment to avoid viewer confusion and allow maintenance of local brand identification that comes with channel 4, but brand identification priority is in the context of over-the-air TV, not pay-TV carriage. Gray's attempt for virtual channel 4 to make sure its CBS programming is carried on Channel 4 by pay-TV systems "is not relevant to the intent of the PSIP standard," the bureau said. Gray didn't comment Thursday.

Lionsgate will buy Starz for $4.4 billion, the buyer said in a news release Thursday. The deal “significantly increases the combined company's content creation capabilities, enhances its leadership in premium scripted programming and scales its global distribution footprint” across platforms, it said. It's expected to “accelerate the growth of Lionsgate and Starz's own” over-the-top services, said Lionsgate. The combined company will include a 16,000-title film and TV library, 87 original series on 42 U.S. networks, a $7 billion feature film business and “the STARZ platform” reaching 24 million, it said. It "will enable us to compete successfully in today's rapidly evolving global entertainment marketplace," said Lionsgate Chairman Mark Rachesky. The buyer said both companies' boards approved, and shareholders and regulators will be asked for their OK's.