Broadcast networks dispute Nielsen data showing viewership plunged during the COVID-19 pandemic, but traditional pay-TV data seems to back up Nielsen's position, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Tuesday. He said third-party data points to empty sports stadiums and the TV production shutdown hitting the traditional TV industry "much harder than it would like to admit."

Roku updated its operating system, adding features that let customers get to content faster and customize the user experience, said the company Tuesday. Roku OS 10 improves network and input configurations and performance, it said, and adds support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 and HomeKit.

FuboTV bought exclusive livestreaming rights for English and Spanish commentary to the South American Football Confederation’s Qatar World Cup 2022 qualifying matches, it said Thursday. Rights include the remaining 70 matches, scheduled to begin in June; additional match windows are scheduled through 2021 and into 2022, it said. Re-air and highlight rights are included.

Discovery+ launched on Comcast’s Xfinity Flex streaming player and will roll out to its X1 app in coming weeks, the companies said Thursday. Discovery+ is $4.99 per month with ads, $6.99 for the commercial-free version. Content includes episodes from HGTV, Food Network, TLC, ID, Own, Travel Channel, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. The service also offers nonfiction content from A&E, The History Channel and Lifetime and natural history programming from the BBC.

Pearl TV Managing Director Anne Schelle “absolutely” expects one more TV brand to join LG, Samsung and Sony on ATSC 3.0-enabled NextGenTV by the end of 2021, with a fifth brand to follow in 2022’s first quarter, she told us, though nondisclosure agreements bar Schelle from discussing specifics. She’s “hopeful” the year-end product will be announced at October’s NAB Show, and the Q1 product at CES 2022 in January, she said. The “scale that we’re starting to see” in 3.0’s rollout is what’s pulling the additional TV brands into NextGenTV, including the “broadcast push on transitioning stations,” said Schelle. “We’ll have over 65% of households covered by the end of this year, and we’re continuing to drive investment.”

E.W. Scripps' streaming news network Newsy will be available over the air for free starting Oct. 1 as it gets carried largely by Scripps-owned Ion stations and some Scripps local TV stations, plus those of other station groups, Scripps said Tuesday. It said Newsy will be headquartered in Atlanta and will have close to a dozen bureaus around the country, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Denver and Phoenix, and use Scripps' Washington bureau and its local TV stations in 41 markets.

As virtual MVPDs continue to poach customers from traditional pay TV, the need to address one of their most appealing differentiators -- no-contract subscriptions -- continues to challenge the segment, said Parks Associates analyst Paul Erickson at the company’s virtual Future of Video conference last week. “There’s a higher level of churn than in traditional pay-TV services,” a factor that’s “likely to persist,” said Erickson, asking panelists what strategies vMVPDs could adopt to stem customer defections. Nic Wilson, TiVo head-customer success, said one possibility is to bundle over-the-top subscriptions like T-Mobile’s subscriber retention tack: “Find those services so that if they cancel your service, they’re not just canceling video." Erickson said the user experience is important to reduce subscriber churn, whether it’s superior content aggregation or a smarter, more personalized experience where relevant content is surfaced to subscribers. That can help retain customers in an environment where “people are bombarded by choice.” Michael Ribero, ViacomCBS’ Paramount+ vice president-global marketing, said an vMVPD service has “got to work like regular TV.” To ask someone from the traditional pay-TV world to come over to a vMVPD service means there can be no change in quality of service from pay TV, “which worked 99.9% of the time,” Ribero said. “I can’t say that always happens in the virtual world.” Customers particularly aren’t forgiving of a subpar sports experience, Ribero said. “If you have any sort of buffering or any sort of lapse, there’s no amount of customer service, there’s no amount of rebate -- people hate you and they want to leave.” The vMVPD experience should replicate the immediacy of over-the-air and MVPD TV viewing: “Being able to turn on [the TV], and something is just on,” Ribero said, would counter OTT viewers’ increasing “discovery fatigue.” It’s also important to let customers know that a vMVPD service is a complement to Netflix and Hulu, not a competitor, as consumers try to make sense of the myriad content options, he said. Ribero said it may be time for the industry to change the way it measures churn to reflect the different needs of the OTT model. A football fan who returns to a football package season after season doesn’t fit an old churn measurement model, he said: “Is that a win or not?” The ability to do “subscription management” based on channels within a bundle would give vMVPDs a “value-add” over other services, said Greg Riker, head-business development and sales, Americas, for Comcast's Metrological. An AI-based algorithm that understands subscribers' viewing interests could serve suggestions to swap channels for one more closely aligned with their interests. That would be a way to drive value for the service, he said.

The domestic box office recovery has begun, with Godzilla vs. Kong driving the best North American opening weekend of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a five-day box office of $48.5 million, Colliers analyst Steven Frankel wrote investors Monday. The film played on over 3,000 screens and was included with HBO Max subscriptions for no extra charge. Imax generated 9.3% of the domestic box office. Attendance demonstrated “strong consumer demand for the format,” as over 1,000 Imax shows, or more than 25% of the weekend's show times, were sold out, said the analyst. It also earned $71 million in international markets.

The Supreme Court “spoke clearly” in favor of deference to the FCC, said Commissioner Geoffrey Starks in a release Friday about Thursday's Prometheus decision on media ownership (see 2104010067). “We can now move forward confidently to address media ownership in future Quadrennial Reviews in a manner that is data-driven and otherwise fully consistent with our duty to promote and ensure competition, localism, and diversity in the public interest,” Starks said. “Nothing in the Court’s holding upsets our long-established ruling that media ownership decisions must take into account how diversity will be affected.” Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel also emphasized deference to the FCC in her statement Thursday.

Dish Network and NBC regional sports networks faulted each other for a blackout of the RSNs on Dish and its Sling TV. Dish said Thursday it dropped the RSNs and Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN) due to rising rates. The "fundamentally broken" RSN model "requires nearly all customers to pay for RSNs when only a small percentage of customers actually watch them," said Dish TV Group President Brian Neylon. "As the cost of these channels continues to escalate, we no longer think it makes sense to include them in our TV lineup." Dish said the blackout is affecting viewers in 10 states and the District of Columbia. An NBC RSN spokesperson said it "offered to continue distribution on fair market terms," but the terms were declined. MASN didn't comment.