Cablevision wants the FCC to "level the retransmission-consent playing field by clarifying broadcasters’ duty to negotiate in good faith," company executives and an outside lawyer and a lobbyist for the operator told Media Bureau officials. They met with front-office and other officials, including Chief Bill Lake, said a filing posted Thursday in docket 10-71. Retrans has been in the news recently, with a blackout and filings on disputes involving broadcasters, DBS and others. NAB reported earlier this week that it told agency officials that pay-TV providers are manufacturing retrans disputes (see 1507140021).

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland, California issued a declaratory judgment Wednesday in favor of Netflix, stating the Rovi patents involved in Netflix's litigation against Rovi are invalid, making Rovi's patent infringement claims against Netflix "moot." The complaint for declaratory relief, first filed by Netflix in December 2011, was in response to Rovi's attempts to license five of its patents to Netflix that Rovi said the streaming video service was infringing upon, the complaint submission said. Netflix also claimed the patents Rovi said were being infringed upon were too broad, making them invalid. The court issued a claim construction ruling as well, for the nine disputed claim terms in the case, siding with Rovi in most. "While we are pleased that the court sided with Rovi on the key claim construction issues, we are disappointed in, and strongly disagree with, the Court’s decision finding the five patents invalid and plan to appeal that decision," said Samir Armaly, Rovi executive vice president-intellectual property and licensing, in a written statement Thursday. "We are committed to enforcing our intellectual property against Netflix until the necessary licenses are in place." "We are gratified by the Court’s judgment, which confirmed that Rovi’s patents are so broad and abstract as to be invalid," a Netflix spokesperson said.

Gannett began a mobile iteration of Gravity, its digital video advertising product, for USA Today on Android and iOS apps, with LG the first featured advertiser, the media company said in a news release Wednesday. It said that 61 percent of Gannett desktop users across 140-plus markets interacted with ads in 2015 from that Gravity product.

Cablevision clarified that it's not seeking to change an FCC Media Bureau declaratory ruling denying PMCM's request to operate WJLP Middletown, New Jersey, on virtual Channel 3.10. The cable operator was responding to a Viacom request that the bureau say that Cablevision doesn't need to carry the TV station on cable Channel 33 until conditions are met. As Cablevision said in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in opposing PMCM's mandamus petition, it also said in a filing posted in FCC docket 14-150 Monday that it will "take timely action with respect to PMCM’s carriage and channel placement elections." Viacom had said that it feared the ruling and a related bureau letter to Cablevision, Comcast and Time Warner Cable could mean that WJLP could "prematurely" displace the programmer's Nickelodeon from Channel 33 on Cablevision's New York market systems. After winning a rare FCC OK to move cross-country after the D.C. Circuit ordered it over the agency's objections, PMCM sought to operate the station in what would have been a technological first for broadcasting: on the same main program and system information protocol (PSIP) channel as Meredith Corp.’s WFSB Hartford, Connecticut, while each would have different virtual PSIP subchannels (see 1409160043).

Mediacom and Media General are pointing the fingers at each other regarding a blackout in 14 markets. A retransmission consent agreement between the two expired Tuesday. In a letter Mediacom said it sent out Wednesday to customers in affected areas, the cable company said the negotiations broke down when Media General wanted retrans fees more than double what it had been paid under the previous three-year agreement, which would in turn lead to other broadcasters following suit. Mediacom also reiterated arguments CEO Rocco Commisso made in a letter to the FCC earlier this month calling for restrictions on broadcasters from imposing blackouts (see 1507070061). Media General said Mediacom apparently deliberately created the blackout situation to try to force regulation of the retrans market -- an increasingly common charge from the broadcast industry (see 1507140021). "Instead of looking out for the best interest of their subscribers, they have created this dispute to draw more attention to their legislative agenda," Richard Levine, Media General head of distribution, said in an emailed statement. "As predicted, they are now resorting to PR scare tactics and making claims concerning price increases that have no basis in fact. We hope Mediacom will put in as much effort into reaching an agreement with us as they are into posturing for reform." The 14 affected markets are Birmingham, Alabama; Davenport, Iowa/Rock Island, Illinois; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek, Michigan; Green Bay-Appleton, Wisconsin; Mason City, Iowa; Mobile, Alabama/Pensacola, Florida; Nashville, Tennessee; Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News, Virginia; San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, California; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Terre Haute, Indiana; Topeka, Kansas; and Wichita-Hutchinson, Kansas.

Worldwide online retail sales are expected to reach $1.7 trillion this year, up 17 percent from 2014, a report released Tuesday by Juniper Research said. The growth can be attributed, in part, to social media companies acting as direct sales platforms and using strategic retailer partnerships, the report said. The research also predicted that by 2020, smartphones will account for more than 40 percent of all global online retail transactions.

DirecTV's claim that the retransmission rates being sought by a group of small-market broadcasters is inordinately high doesn't square with those rates being relatively low compared with what those broadcasters are getting in deals with other multichannel video programming distributors, seven broadcasters said in a filing posted Monday in FCC docket 12-1. The DBS company's "self-admitted ability to secure rates across the entire U.S. market that are far below those paid by such a wide swath of other MVPDs with which [the seven have] recently negotiated provides prima facie evidence of massive DirecTV market leverage," the group of commonly controlled broadcasters said. Blackhawk Broadcasting, Bristlecone Broadcasting, Broadcasting Licenses, Eagle Creek Broadcasting of Laredo, Mountain Licenses, Northwest Broadcasting and Stainless Broadcasting last month filed a complaint with the FCC, asking it to step into the stuck negotiations and force DirecTV to show numbers to back up its estimations of the market value of the group's signals. Such a disclosure would violate agreements with those broadcasters, DirecTV said (see 1507010069). That DirecTV has such market leverage "makes it plain that this dispute is anything but a simple disagreement over rates and raises far more questions than it answers" as well as "raises the stakes" for the pending takeover by AT&T, which would give DirecTV even more negotiating power, the Northwest group said.

Pandora is now available for streaming in select new Toyota models equipped with the Toyota Link app suite, the Internet music service said Monday in a news release. It said Pandora will be integrated into select cars from nearly two-thirds of all new Toyota vehicles shipped in Australia.

Senior citizens are using new technology and online tools more regularly, said tech industry and online service experts during a panel at the White House Conference on Aging Monday. Representatives from companies such as Peapod and Uber said they are surprised at how many elderly citizens use their respective products. Tom Parkinson, Peapod chief technology officer, said the reason for the expanded use of the Internet-based services among the elderly is that they are beginning to focus on what the technology is allowing them to do, rather than the technology itself. An Uber representative told the audience it would begin working with two senior centers in Gainesville, Florida, to provide free and reduced-price rides and to educate the members of the centers on the technology used to access Uber. A representative from the company also said it has begun launching the senior citizen focused initiatives in several cities across the U.S. One of the problems that the older generation faces when attempting to use new technology appears when they can't see the results of the technology, such as when using cloud services, said Chuck Wallace, associate computer science professor at Michigan Technological University. Wallace said that even though more elderly members of society are embracing technology, it becomes hard for them to grasp when it they can no longer see it or readily access it.

NTIA will hold its first multistakeholder meeting on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAS) Aug. 3, 1-5 p.m., in the boardroom at the American Institute of Architects, 1735 New York Ave. NW, an agency blog post said Monday. President Barack Obama called on NTIA “to launch a multistakeholder process to develop best practices that enhance privacy and promote transparent and accountable operation of UAS by commercial and private users,” NTIA Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information Angela Simpson wrote in a separate blog post Monday. “The end goal is best practices that mitigate consumer concerns while promoting growth and innovation in this exciting sector,” Simpson said. “In April, we received more than 50 comments regarding the most pressing UAS issues and potential solutions,” Simpson said. “This input will be the basis of the group’s initial discussions.” Multistakeholder meetings are also scheduled for Sept. 24, Oct. 21 and Nov. 20, NTIA said.