A virtual discussion on diversity in tech and tech startups is set for March 24 by the FCC Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment and the Media Bureau, said a public notice (see 2102110071). The roundtable will feature organizations that support minorities, women and small businesses in the tech field and highlight best practices for encouraging employment diversity, the PN said. Support organizations “are rapidly becoming economic cornerstones for minority communities, thereby expanding workforce training and employment opportunities in underserved communities,” the PN said.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's rejection of a lawsuit brought by a California pastor and his religious organization claiming discrimination by Vimeo when it deleted a series of the plaintiffs' videos promoting sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE). In a decision Thursday (docket 20-616) by Judges Rosemary Pooler, Richard Wesley and Susan Carney, penned by Pooler, the 2nd Circuit said the video hosting service deletion of the church's account fell squarely in good-faith content policing immunity of Communications Decency Act Section 230. Vimeo "is statutorily entitled to consider SOCE content objectionable and may restrict access to that content as it sees fit," the panel said. Outside counsel for the plaintiffs-appellants didn't comment. Santa Clara University Director-High Tech Law Institute professor Eric Goldman blogged the ruling was a win for internet services, but both Democrats and Republicans have proposed Section 230 amendments that would overturn the ruling. He said the court's reliance on Section 230(c)(2)(A) opens the door for a motion to dismiss.

Decisions about which Disney feature films will play in which theaters are “a function of the exhibitors that own those theaters and whether or not they agreed to the terms of the Walt Disney Company,” said CEO Bob Chapek during the company’s virtual annual meeting Tuesday. A Peoria, Arizona, shareholder had asked why she and her Girl Scouts troop were denied seeing Raya and the Last Dragon on the big screen when a local theater chain told her it couldn’t make a deal with Disney. Raya debuted theatrically last week with simultaneous release on Disney+ as a $29.99 "premier access" streaming option. “We hope to be able in the future to have all theaters playing all Disney films,” said Chapek. Disney has “a small army of people that spends every waking hour” protecting the “very valuable data that’s entrusted to us” for Disney+ and its other direct-to-consumer streaming services “so it doesn’t get into the hands of bad actors,” he told another questioner. Guarding Disney+ against hacks is “something that we spend a lot of time on,” he said. “We realize the trust” that subscribers “put in our hands when they decide to sign up,” he said. “We continue to try to improve and get better and better to protect that data for everybody’s best interests.” Disney constantly studies “a lot of different options” for managing its various businesses to increase shareholder value, “including potential spinoffs,” said Chapek. “We have nothing to announce today, but that is a regular part of what we do as we examine ways to operate more efficiently and more effectively.” He announced that Disney+ surpassed 100 million global paid subscribers in its first 16 months.

Fox Sports will broadcast the Big East men’s basketball tournament live in 5G for the first time from Madison Square Garden, said the network Tuesday. This will result in a “crisper and more reliable feed with less on-site cabling,” said Fox. The tournament begins Wednesday at 3 p.m. EST on FS1 and the championship game is 6:30 p.m. EST Saturday on Fox.

The global esports and games streaming industry will grow 70% over the next four years, to $3.5 billion by 2025, Juniper Research forecast Monday. It defined esports as livestreaming games, often featuring professional gamers, along with streaming of gameplay content to casual audiences. Market value will be driven by paid subscriptions on streaming platforms and advertising spending. Stakeholders should invest in revenue-generating areas, including broadcasting rights, live event ticket sales and sponsorship deals to realize the category's potential value, it said. Juniper predicts over 1 billion viewers by 2025, up from 800 million at the end of 2021. It expects the Asia Pacific region to have over half of viewers by 2025. Rising viewership will create more competition between content streaming platforms, including Twitch and YouTube, it said.

The Recording Academy will partner with the Berklee College of Music and Arizona State University to launch a study into women’s representation “spanning all sectors of the music industry,” said the organizations Friday. Building on previous research, the study's main goals will be to “further establish a baseline analysis” on female representation, plus “learn more about the available talent pool of women in music, and set priorities around music creators and aspects of mentorship,” they said. Data collected will be used to generate “actionable items and solutions” to promote “diversity, equity and inclusion,” they said.

Top U.S. pay-TV providers lost 5.1 million net video subscribers in 2020, up from the 4.8 million pro forma net loss in 2019, Leichtman Research Group said Thursday. The top providers collectively have about 81.3 million subs, with the seven largest cable companies having 43.9 million, direct broadcast satellite 21.8 million, telcos 7.9 million and the top publicly reporting virtual MVPDs 7.7 million. DBS lost about 3.4 million subs in 2020, compared with 3.7 million in losses the previous year. The seven largest cablers lost 1.92 million in 2020 vs. 1.56 million in losses a year earlier. Slowing their losses were telcos, with 405,000 lost video subs in 2020 vs. 630,000 lost in 2019. VMVPDs Hulu+, Live TV, Sling TV, AT&T TV Now and fuboTV added 640,000 subs in 2020, compared with 1.1 million net adds in 2019.

A recent pilot by a top-five U.S. streaming service that used targeted Gracenote program images instead of standard images resulted in an 11% increase in time spent watching titles and a 7.7% lift in titles watched, said the company Wednesday. The Nielsen unit is using video descriptors to improve providers’ content discovery and third-party recommendation results.

Roku agreed to buy Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising unit, including its video automatic content recognition (ACR) and dynamic ad insertion (DAI) technologies, they said Monday: This will accelerate Roku’s launch of an end-to-end DAI solution with TV programmers. Their new partnership will integrate free Nielsen ad and content measurement products into Roku’s platform to advance the Nielsen One cross-media measurement solution, they said. Combining technologies will allow Roku to deliver the benefits of TV streaming advertising to traditional TV, said Louqman Parampath, Roku vice president-product management. The traditional TV ad market is worth tens of billions of dollars, he noted. Measurement of ads and content on Roku devices will “accelerate the path to a single, deduplicated cross-media currency,” said Scott Brown, Nielsen general manager-audience measurement. Bringing dynamic ad insertion to all forms of TV will help monetize the addressable market by “measuring smart TV as a currency, which Nielsen can do at scale,” he said. The transaction is expected to close in Q2. Roku expects 100 employees from Nielsen’s AVA business to join the company.

CEO Bob Chapek “would challenge the idea” that Disney is in a streaming war with its competitors, “in the sense that there's one winner” that typically emerges. “We think there's going to be multiple winners,” he told a virtual Morgan Stanley investor conference Monday. He's “highly confident that we're going to be one of them.” Disney remains a big believer in the “power of exhibition to build our franchises” theatrically, said Chapek. In 2019, “the last normal year we had,” Disney fielded 11 feature films that grossed more than $1 billion at the box office, he said. “That is a big deal to us, and that'll continue to be a big deal, but we realize that this is a very fluid situation.” The “short-term impact” of COVID-19 impeding “the number of screens that are open and consumers' willingness to actually go back into theaters” is taking “longer than we want" to abate, said Chapek. The company is “watching very carefully” to discern any “shift” in consumer behavior and preferences toward returning to theaters, he said. Consumers have had the “luxury” for a year of “getting titles at home, pretty much when they want them, and so I'm not sure there's going back” to people flocking to the theater the first day a feature film comes out, said Chapek. “But we certainly don't want to do anything like cut the legs off a theatrical exhibition run.”