The FCC on its own initiative extended by a week the reply deadline to March 5 on whether to require video clips be captioned when the content is shown via Internet protocol, said an agency notice that was slated for Thursday’s Federal Register (http://bit.ly/1bvo6Jx). The deadline for original comments was extended a week to this past Monday, at NAB’s request, said the notice signed by Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake. “Granting NAB’s request is necessary to facilitate the development of a full record.” Some stakeholders expect the agency to move to require IP video clips be captioned (see separate report above in this issue), as groups representing the deaf and hard of hearing sought such an order (CD Feb 5 p10).

The European Commission began a European regulators’ group for audiovisual media services. The high-level panel of representatives of national independent regulatory bodies will advise the EC on how to implement the EU audiovisual media services directive in a converged media age, said the commission Monday. As content becomes increasingly distributed and viewed across borders and created, distributed and viewed online, it raises regulatory challenges which make it more critical that national authorities work together and with the EC and EU countries, it said. The group meets for the first time March 4, it said.

Nielsen Holdings completed the tender offer to buy all outstanding shares of common stock of global market research firm Harris Interactive Monday, completing its deal to buy Harris, Nielsen said in a release (http://bit.ly/1bnOwNv). Harris will now become a wholly owned subsidiary of Nielsen and its shares will cease to be traded on the NASDAQ, the release said. Harris will be integrated into Nielsen’s Buy business segment, which provides information to manufacturers and retailers, though Nielsen will retain The Harris Poll brand.

Broadcaster conduct in retransmission consent negotiations “cannot be squared with the outcomes that would occur in a genuinely competitive marketplace,” representatives of the American Cable Association, Charter Communications, DirecTV, Dish Network, New America Foundation and Time Warner Cable told staff from the FCC Office of General Counsel in a meeting last week, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1el6piA). It said the multichannel video programming distributors and NAF highlighted broadcaster sharing agreements and “brinksmanship tactics” as examples of anticompetitive conduct. Broadcasters’ abilities to coordinate retrans negotiations and to engage in blackouts drive up the price for retrans to “unreasonable levels,” they said. The commission should enact rules to prevent coordinated negotiation during retrans disputes, require interim carriage during disputes, repeal its network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules and adopt “dispute resolution mechanisms” for retrans battles, they said. Those should include a “cooling off period,” a non-binding mediation system and procedures for commercial arbitration, said the filing. Pay-TV companies and public interest groups have been asking the FCC to crack down on what they call retrans abuses, including broadcaster sharing agreements, and Chairman Tom Wheeler may circulate a draft to make joint services agreements attributable for calculating ownership ceilings (CD Feb 3 p11).

The “Pay-TV industry” should be held accountable for increasing consumer bills, said a newly formed coalition of broadcasters, broadcasting associations, affiliate groups and broadcasting related organizations, called TVfreedom.org. The group supports rules that would mandate refunds to the subscribers of multichannel video programming distributors for programming black-outs, reduce “unnecessary and questionable fees” on bills, and “protect content providers from the use of their lawful content by others without fair compensation,” a release said. Retransmission consent lets broadcasters provide their communities with “local news, as well as emergency alerts, severe weather updates, public health advisories and details on time-sensitive public safety-related incidents,” said the release. “TVfreedom.org will tell the truth about the state of the video marketplace and call out the Pay-TV industry’s inside-the-beltway gamesmanship designed solely to increase their record profits,” said TVfreedom.org Director-Public Affairs Robert Kenny in the release. Membership in the new organization includes the affiliate associations of ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS, Journal Broadcast Group, TVB, NAB, the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, Bounce-TV and others. “Consumers would ultimately benefit from a system where cable and satellite TV providers fairly compensate all channels based on the ratings, popularity and quality of the programming that each channel provides to viewers,” said the new group. TVfreedom.org’s website goes live Tuesday.

The FCC seeks comment for its 16th Video Competition Report, the commission said in a notice of inquiry Friday (http://fcc.us/LiLtvH). The latest version of the annual congressionally mandated report will use the same framework and collect much of the same information as the two previous reports. The 15th report was released in July (CD July 12 p12). The report will “describe the providers of delivered video programming in each group, summarize their business models and competitive strategies, and present selected operating and financial statistics,” the NOI said. The report will also examine “the creators and aggregators of video programming and their distribution strategies,” and compare video competition in rural and urban areas, the NOI said. Comments are due March 21, replies April 21.

Correction: The cable operator Visible World has partnered with is Cablevision (CD Jan 28 p6).

TiVo’s acquisition of cloud-based services supplier Digitalsmiths potentially gives the DVR developer access to some tier one pay-TV operators that had eluded it, said an analyst. TiVo will pay $135 million cash for Digitalsmiths, with a customer roster including seven large U.S. pay-TV providers, including DirecTV, Dish Network and Time Warner Cable, said Stephens Inc.’s Tim Quillin. Time Warner Cable agreed to build Digitalsmiths’ Seamless Discovery video recommendations technology into its user interface. The Seamless technology allows users to find and view content across TVs, smartphones, tablets and PCs. The purchase will strengthen TiVo’s hand as it moves to expand into cloud services and moves core set-top DVR functionality such as search and recommendation to the cloud, Quillin said. TiVo also demonstrated network DVRs with a TiVo Cloud service at CES earlier this month. It has been deployed in Swedish cable operator Com Hem’s cloud-based service. The buy of Digitalsmiths will enable TiVo to deploy cloud-based services with operators either independently or with the TiVo interface, TiVo said. Digitalsmiths made its mark with VideoSense tech that enabled searching video by actor, line of dialog, location, genre or product. Digitalsmiths unveiled Seamless Discovery at the 2011 CES as a means for making programming recommendations to users based on viewing habits and directing them to where the content could be found, whether it was VOD, broadcast or cable. Digitalsmiths, which has 61 employees, including 49 in Durham, N.C., will remain based in that state and CEO Ben Weinberger and Chief Operating Officer Matt Perry will continue with the company, TiVo said. Privately held Digitalsmiths has annual sales of about $10 million, Quillin said. Digitalsmiths’ cloud-based service handled 90 million transactions in July, increasing to 150 million by December, Digitalsmiths said. “Digitalsmiths contributes expertise, data opportunities, and approaches that complement and extend TiVo’s extensive work in advanced television to customers seeking search, recommendations, and portability,” said TiVo CEO Tom Rogers in a statement.

The FCC should continue its stay of the benchmark that requires Comcast/NBCU to offer its content to online video distributors (OVDs) at a rate comparable to other similar industry contracts, said Viacom, Disney and Time Warner Cable in a joint ex parte filing Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1dR2WC6). The condition is part of the order approving the Comcast/NBCUniversal merger, and continuing its stay of the order and taking up a pending application for review that challenges it are in the public interest, said the joint filing. However, Comcast has argued that fulfilling this condition requires that OVDs share their contract information with Comcast, which Viacom, Disney and TWC oppose. “Allowing C-NBCU agents to amass a body of information about competitors and about the OVD programming marketplace would benefit C-NBCU and run counter to sound competitive policy,” said the joint filing. Comcast also hasn’t demonstrated any need for the stay to be lifted, the companies said. One of the reasons behind the company’s objections is that the condition allows Comcast to get information about OVD deals before negotiations with an OVD have begun, whereas an earlier version of the condition reserved that power until after other forms of negotiation had failed. However, under a similar rule, the companies said they would still object to being compelled to reveal “overbroad or inappropriate” information.

All companies that produce full-length broadcast programs should be required to provide closed captioning for both IP-delivered video clips and full-length programs, said Public Citizen in a comment filed with the FCC in docket 11-154 Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1nevhea). The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act “was intended to cover IP-delivered video clips,” said the filing, citing a letter from Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Mark Pryor, D-Ark., that states “affirmatively” that congressional intent was to caption clips. “Any other standard” would go against the principles of the CVAA, the filing said. “The widespread lack of captioning on IP-delivered video programming disadvantages and marginalizes deaf and hard of hearing people."