Comments are due Sept. 30, replies Nov. 1, in docket 98-204 for the FCC’s proceeding on collecting broadcaster and cable equal employment opportunity data, said Tuesday’s Federal Register. Commissioners unanimously approved a Further NPRM in July (see 2107260059).

U.S. households belonging to a subscription VOD service from Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu are holding steady year over year in 2021 at 78%, reported Leichtman Research Group Tuesday. Just over 40% of adults stream a top SVOD service daily vs. 40% last year and 33% in 2019, it said, citing a survey of 2,000 households. Those using any of the services daily leveled off “after being pulled forward last year due to the coronavirus pandemic,” said President Bruce Leichtman. “While the breadth of households with a major SVOD service is similar to last year, those with multiple top SVOD services continued to expand.” About 27% of households report having five or more SVOD or direct-to-consumer services. Some 54% of adults watch video on non-TV devices; 58% of U.S. households have more than one of the top three SVOD services vs. 55% in 2020. Ages 18-34 make up 41% of adults using SVOD daily; ages 18-44 are 67%.

Memberful customers can share paid podcasts directly to the Spotify platform via private RSS feeds, Spotify said Monday. Memberful provides tools and support for monetizing content through customizable software. Artists’ audiences have to be able to access their content “on the platforms and apps they use most frequently," said Tiffany Perko, Memberful marketing head, noting Spotify’s podcast listening hours grew 30% year on year in Q2.

Comments are due Oct.19, replies Nov. 18, in docket 15-94 on an FCC Further NPRM on recommendations to improve the emergency alert system, said a public notice listed in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. The FNPRM stems from a unanimous FCC vote in June (see 2106170063).

Over-the-top video subscriptions will rise from about 230 million this year to 277 million in 2026, blogged Parks Associates Tuesday. In Q1, the average OTT subscription in U.S. broadband households was roughly 2.5 years. Subscriptions had a strong correlation with age, with younger consumers holding on to a subscription for a much shorter time. Younger consumers may subscribe to a larger number of services “but are more likely to churn through them,” said the report. “Information providers can design support services that appeal to consumers at different life stages, who prefer different channels, and adapt as their needs evolve,” said Everise President Dave Palmer.

Nexstar bought online political news publication The Hill for $130 million, the broadcaster said Friday. The news site will create “synergistic opportunities” with Nexstar’s new cable news network, NewsNation, and local news stations, the release said. The Hill, which is primarily advertising supported, had 48 million average monthly users and 2.2 billion total page views in 2020, Nexstar said. Nexstar said it's “ideally positioned to accelerate The Hill’s growth and further penetrate the massive political news market to grow audience share and drive increased content monetization.”

The FCC Media Bureau granted WarnerMedia’s request for a partial waiver of the FCC’s audio description requirements for its network TBS, said an order Wednesday. TBS asked for a waiver of the audio description rule’s restrictions on repeat content -- normally, a given episode can count toward an MVPD’s total amount of described content only twice on a given channel. As one of the top five “nonbroadcast networks,” TBS is required to provide 87.5 hours of described content per quarter. Due to the way TBS programming is structured, “the repeat rule results in ‘only a small fraction of the hours of [audio] described programming that TBS provides each calendar quarter’ counting towards the audio description requirement,” the order said. The bureau granted the waiver because it was unopposed, supported by consumer advocates and because WarnerMedia “made a commitment to provide a substantial amount of audio description on TBS, and other commonly owned networks, that exceeds the current quarterly requirement,” the order said. The waiver is conditioned on TBS carrying at least 1,000 hours of audio-described programming and more than 1,400 hours of audio-described programming on average during a quarter, without restricting repeats, the order said. WarnerMedia also promised to “provide audio description for 100 percent of newly produced, non-live programming aired during certain core hours on TBS, TNT, and TruTV,” the order said. The waiver expires June 30, 2024.

Virtual MVPDs Sling TV and fuboTV were the sole gainers in Q2 among major pay-TV providers who give regular reports, reported Leichtman Research Group Tuesday. Sling TV added 65,000 subscribers in the quarter to reach 2.4 million. Sports-focused fuboTV added over 91,000 subscribers, reaching 681,721 subscribers, and Hulu+Live TV lost 100,000 subscribers to 3.7 million. The vMVPD figures don’t include YouTube TV or Philo, which don’t provide regular reports. Total pay-TV subscriber losses were 1.2 million in the quarter, down from 1.5 million in Q2 2020, said LRG. Traditional pay-TV providers continued to shed subscribers, with Comcast losing 399,000 to 18.6 million, while Charter lost 50,000 to 16 million, Cox 60,000 to 3.5 million and Altice 48,300 to 2.9 million. Among other traditional pay-TV services, AT&T Premium, including DirecTV, U-verse and AT&T TV, dropped 473,000 customers; Dish 132,000 to 8.6 million; Fios 63,000 to 3.8 million; and Frontier 30,000 to 423,000, said the report.

Dish Network violated an FCC order when it didn’t carry KMTP-TV San Francisco at the start of 2021, said the Minority Television Project in an amended complaint (in Pacer) filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Friday in docket 21-2214. The complaint asks the court to force Dish to carry Minority's KMTP, and is the latest iteration of an ongoing must-carry dispute between the noncommercial educational broadcaster and the satellite MVPD that dates from 2017 (see 1711130057). Minority originally filed in March, but its complaint was dismissed in July for failing to show specific evidence that Dish had violated the must-carry rules by not carrying KMTP, after the FCC ruled in 2019 that broadcasters could electronically inform MVPDs of their must-carry status. The agency rejected a previous must-carry claim by Minority after the broadcaster sent the request using the wrong mail service (see 1801230047). In the amended complaint, Minority argues the FCC ordered Dish to carry the channel in a letter dismissing the NCE’s earlier dispute with Dish as moot after the electronic carriage order. In the July dismissal order (in Pacer) in July, the court said that language from the FCC could be considered “essentially dicta” rather than formal orders. Dish didn't comment.

Disney+ ended fiscal Q3 July 3 with 116.6 million paid subscribers, up 12.4 million from fiscal Q2, Disney announced Thursday. Hotstar in India generated about 80% of the Q3 subscriber net adds, Cowen told investors Friday. Disney+ Day, scheduled for Nov. 12, will be “an unprecedented company-wide cross-promotional campaign” to boost consumer adoption among holdouts to the service, said CEO Bob Chapek on a Thursday investor call. The event will feature a “balanced approach” to global and local content, he said. Disney is sticking with the “three-pronged strategy” it adopted last year to distribute feature films amid the COVID-19 pandemic, said Chapek. Some films went direct to theaters, others direct to Disney+, still others as hybrids with theatrical showings and as $29.99 Premier Access options on Disney+. Distribution decisions will continue to be made film by film, “based on global marketplace conditions and consumer behavior,” said Chapek.