Mediacom's complaints about "additional station" provisions in retransmission negotiations are a tempest in a teapot -- "fantastic tales designed to encourage [the FCC] to come rushing to its aid as they negotiate private contracts with local broadcasters," NAB said in a filing Tuesday in docket 15-216. It and Mediacom have been in a war of words over "additional station" language -- which refers to when a broadcaster's retrans deal with a pay-TV company lets the broadcaster expand the deal to include any stations it acquires during the pendency of the contract. The cable company has urged the FCC to add such language to its review of the totality of circumstances test (see 1602160054); NAB has dismissed Mediacom as trying to game retrans consent rules in its favor (see 1602120020). In its latest filing, NAB said the "additional station" dustup and proposed changes to retrans consent rules are equally an effort by pay TV to "play this endless 'gotcha' game to gain regulatory advantage." What "matters is that broadcasters have no ability to unilaterally demand terms and conditions from pay TV operators like Mediacom," NAB said. "A retransmission consent overhaul would require the Commission to delve deeply and frequently into the quagmire of thousands of negotiations and to judge the validity of tens of thousands of different proposed terms, even those terms that are never accepted." "Our efforts to alert the Commission to the new hunting license tactics of the broadcasters has really concerned their industry lobbyists," emailed Mediacom Group Vice President-Legal and Public Affairs Tom Larsen Wednesday. "I don’t know if I have ever seen NAB go to such lengths to distort the truth about a real issue that is occurring today in the retrans marketplace."

Samsung’s Korean parent applied Feb. 15 to register the “VR” trademark for five international classes of goods and services, Patent and Trademark Office documents show. Samsung foresees using the trademark for a wide variety of purposes, from “computer application software” for smartphones and tablets that enable users to stream music, to set-top boxes, DVD players and even 3D glasses, said its application (serial number 86908035). The colors black, white and "sea blue" are “claimed as a feature” of the mark, which consists of a sea blue square with rounded edges enclosing the "VR" in black block letters on a white background, Samsung’s application said. Though "VR" is the common abbreviation for virtual reality, there is no mention of virtual reality goods or services in the application.

Consumer confidence in the overall economy and in tech spending dipped in February as financial conditions worsened “across a number of metrics,” CTA said in a Tuesday report. Its index of consumer expectations, which measures consumer sentiment about the U.S. economy as a whole, and index of consumer technology expectations, which measures consumer expectations about tech spending, both fell about three points, it said. Consumer sentiments are turning negative, “despite a strong foundation for consumer spending coming from employment gains, wage growth and solid consumer wealth,” CTA said.

A 2005 public TV digital cable carriage agreement was renewed by the Association of Public Television Stations, NCTA and PBS, they said in a news release Sunday. The original agreement, signed before the transition to digital broadcast, provided that cable companies would carry at least one public broadcast station in digital, as well as HD and multicast channels (see 0502010133), and ensures those multicast channels still will be carried, the parties to the deal said. While the renewal is for 10 years, it also has language bringing the parties back to look at the terms in three years because of the rapid technological changes in broadcast, APTS told us Monday. APTS changed its name Monday to America's Public Television Stations.

KEYC-TV Mankato, Minnesota, is asking the FCC to reclassify four out-of-market stations and rule they no longer enjoy significantly viewed status in that market, which would stop cable operators from importing their signals. In the Media Bureau petition Friday, KEYC said it was seeking significantly viewed status changes for WCCO-TV, KMSP-TV and WFTC, all of Minneapolis, and KAAL Austin, Minnesota, regarding a variety of communities around the Mankato area. KEYC said its petition was based on viewership levels of those out-of-market stations in the subject communities. The out-of-market stations didn't immediately comment Monday.

Raycom Media renewed retransmission agreements with 12 cable operators at the end of 2015, it said in a news release Friday. Senior Vice President Pat LaPlatney said, “In our experience, over ninety-eight percent of all retransmission consent negotiations follow this pattern of successful resolution with no interruptions of service for the customer." NAB has said broadcasters executing such deals shows retrans consent negotiations are healthy (see 1602170070) -- a contention hotly contested by cable and allies (see 1601140026).

FCC-proposed rules for invigorating the third-party set-top box market (see 1602180065) would “encourage innovative developers to create products which will lower consumer costs, increase the selection of content available to consumers and allow new applications for TV,” said Hauppage, which was on the agency's Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee and is a member of the Consumer Video Choice Coalition, along with Public Knowledge and TiVo. The NPRM is seen as being largely derived from the CVCC-supported recommendations in the DSTAC report. Hauppauge also helped create demos of the CVCC-backed concept for both Congress and the FCC. The demos showed consumer devices can deliver both live TV content and over-the-top content “without requiring a change to the TV distribution systems of current cable and satellite providers,” Hauppage said. The FCC's proposed rules will give more minority programmers the opportunity to “have their content seen and their voices heard,” said BET founder and RLJ Entertainment Chairman Robert Johnson in an emailed statement. Johnson praised Commissioner Mignon Clyburn for joining Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel “in supporting the universal set-top box proposal.” The FCC inserting itself into the video market is “unlikely to serve consumers or competition,” said USTelecom President Walter McCormick in a statement. “The FCC’s thumb on the scales will inevitably straightjacket innovation and harm competition, neither of which will serve the public interest.”

Producers and distributors of video content have “a shared responsibility to ensure that closed captioning is both available and accurate,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a Friday statement on the closed captioning order approved Thursday (see 1602180047). “This agency has a responsibility to seize on this moment in time which, for the first time in human history, offers us real opportunities to address the communications challenges faced by tens of millions of Americans with disabilities.”

The chief executives of prominent tech companies are well represented on the list of the “top 100 most overpaid CEOs,” as compiled and released in a report Wednesday by the green group As You Sow. “Everyone wants to be properly compensated for the work they do -- it is part of the American dream and bedrock of the capitalist system,” said the report. CEOs “have a difficult job and make decisions daily that could impact millions of lives and should be reasonably rewarded for the productive contributions they make to the economy and society,” it said. “However, as shown in this report, by every pay performance measure, many CEOs are being paid entirely too much and that means the process which determines CEO pay is broken.” In deciding and approving pay packages for top executives, “there is little alignment between pay and performance,” it said. “Overall, these practices promote an unsustainable system.” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, with a “total disclosed compensation” package of $84.3 million, places fifth on the list of the top 100, followed in seventh place by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who makes $42.1 million, the report said. Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav tops the overall list with a $156.1 million pay package, the report said. Discovery, Microsoft and Yahoo representatives didn't comment.

Morgan Murphy Media negotiated 35 retransmission consent contracts in 2015 without interruptions and with a small number of extensions, the broadcaster with four TV stations said in a letter NAB released Wednesday. Two negotiations in the year resulted in blackouts -- one with an identified rural cable operator and the other with Dish Network, both of which have since been resolved, Morgan Murphy said. Pointing to that broadcaster, plus numerous other instances of broadcasters completing retrans deals -- typically with no disruptions and those disruptions generally being short lived -- NAB in a statement said retrans talks "are successfully concluded on nearly every occasion with no drama and no disruption of service" and that American TV Alliance assertions of a crisis in retrans matters are "based on pure fiction." ATVA has said the number of TV blackouts is up substantially over the past five years (see 1602120020).