Walmart bought advertising technology firm Thunder Industries and is developing a display self-serve platform for suppliers, Janey Whiteside, the retailer's chief customer officer, blogged Thursday.

Broadcasters shouldn’t be allowed to black out major events or own multiple top-four stations in a market, said the American Television Alliance in an FCC filing Friday in docket 15-216 blasting Apollo Global Management and Cox Media Group for blocking AT&T customers just before the Super Bowl over retransmission consent negotiations. “Apollo Global has chosen to use the moment in which it can inflict maximum harm on viewers in order to extract maximum fees well into the future,” ATVA said. The blackout affects Seattle; Dayton; Yuma, Arizona; Greenwood, Mississippi; and Eureka, California. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., sent Cox a letter Thursday over the blackout affecting his constituents. Switching to another MVPD or a streaming service isn’t an option for all his constituents, Huffman said. Many “live in rural areas with limited access to broadband and other distributors,” he said. Many of those in his district had switched to AT&T from Suddenlink over a previous blackout, Huffman said. He will add provisions requiring that interim carriage be provided during retrans negotiations to a bill aimed at repealing the UHF discount. Friday, AT&T said retrans blackouts “fly in the face” of NAB assurances that broadcasters wouldn’t have service interruptions during the pandemic. “While NAB successfully lobbied Congress for stimulus relief for local broadcasters, to ‘serve their communities during this critical time,’ CMG has now turned their back on those very communities,” the update said. “It’s time that Congress and the FCC take a fresh look at this broken retransmission consent system that encourages blackouts and skyrocketing rate increases at consumers’ expense.” If "the companies don’t fix this problem, the FCC should act," said Public Knowledge Legal Director John Bergmayer. The FCC "has the statutory authority to order interim carriage during program carriage disputes," Bergmayer said. "Timing blackouts to coincide with marquee events like the Super Bowl should be considered unlawful under the ‘good faith’ standard that governs retransmission consent negotiations." NAB declined to comment, and Cox Media Group didn’t respond to a request for comment.

With Fuse Media entering into a carriage agreement with AT&T for its networks, it dropped its carriage complaint against the MVPD (see 2012140052), Fuse said Thursday in an FCC docket 20-426 motion to withdraw complaint. Fuse's outside counsel didn't comment on the status of the company's contract breach complaint against AT&T in its U.S. Bankruptcy Court proceeding (see 2012160050).

A blackout of Cox local stations on AT&T's DirecTV in 20 markets, including five where a blackout could jeopardize Super Bowl viewing, demonstrates that broadcasters "intentionally cause maximum disruption and harm for consumers in order to extract exorbitant fees," the American TV Alliance said Wednesday. Cox said the blackout came Tuesday after AT&T opted not to "reach a fair and reasonable deal." Local stations in 16 states are affected. AT&T said it's "disappointed Cox Media Group and Wall Street financier Apollo Global Management have intentionally put our customers into the middle of a private business matter. Broadcasters like Cox gin up these contrived blackouts at the precise time it hurts their viewers the most, extract higher fees, and then use their own news outlets to try to intentionally mislead people and skirt any accountability for their relentless and unwarranted price-gouging. That’s a shameless violation of the public trust -- especially from a local news provider during a global pandemic."

SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz is unfazed by Google creating services and capabilities for Ford customers beginning in 2023 (see report, Feb. 2 issue of this publication), she said Tuesday on a Q4 call, her first with investors as chief. “We’ve always had a clear competitive advantage in the car.” The satellite radio platform continues “strengthening our OEM relationships,” said Witz. Reversing declining Pandora ad-supported listener hours remains a problem, as it was before SiriusXM’s 2019 acquisition of the music-streaming service, conceded Witz. Listener hours fell 7% last year to 12.5 billion. “We’re clearly focused on decline in listenership,” the CEO said. “We’re continuing to find ways to work at that,” including “improving engagement across connected devices and in the car,” she said. “It has been harder than we expected.” The “valuation” of the SXM-7 satellite is underway after it “suffered damage during in-orbit testing that resulted in the failure of certain payloads,” said new Chief Financial Officer Sean Sullivan. Though the “full extent of the damage to the satellite is not yet known, we do not expect our service to be impacted,” he said. SXM-7 launched successfully aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in December, he said. The SXM-3 and SXM-4 satellites “are expected to support our service for several years,” said Sullivan. SXM-5 “remains available as an in-orbit spare.” he said. Development of SXM-8 is “well underway, and we expect it to be launched later this year,” he said. SiriusXM bought a $225 million insurance policy on SXM-7 for its “first year of in-orbit operations,” he said. “We have notified the underwriters of a potential claim.”

Mike Fidler had no “preconceptions” about how long he would stay when he became UHD Alliance president in summer 2017 and didn’t foresee then taking on “a long-term role,” he told us now. The Sony and Pioneer veteran stepped down last week (see personals section, Jan. 28 issue). UHDA won’t seek a replacement, Chairman Michael Zink, Warner Bros. vice president-technology, emailed the board last Tuesday. Zink is adding the president title. Fidler thinks most of what UHDA “set out to do” under his watch, “we really met,” he told us. “We were able to complete the initiatives we put focus on, including Filmmaker Mode and the work we were doing on interoperability.” Fidler regrets that COVID-19 inhibited UHDA from “getting out in front of people," as “with something like Filmmaker Mode, it would have been advantageous to be able to really effectively promote it by seeing it, demonstrating it. That was very difficult, if not impossible." Fidler in hindsight “thought we could get more traction with manufacturers and retailers” on the Ultra HD Premium logo: “That’s a disappointment.” The group's website lists 32 current members, including Amazon and Qualcomm. Founders including Disney and Netflix are gone, while AT&T bought DirecTV and Warner after UHDA's formation and doesn't now belong to the organization.

Movie pricing for Kaleidescape’s new rental option (see 2101280046) is “generally around" $7.95 per title, “though premium VOD can be higher,” emailed CEO Tayloe Stansbury Thursday. “Of the 12,000 titles available in our movie store in the US, 8,000 are available for rental (5,500 available for rental in Canada).” Kaleidescape’s main rationale for offering the rental option was that “sometimes a customer is interested in a movie, but not enough to purchase a perpetual playback license,” he said. “They get the rental in the same high-bitrate format as a purchase, and if they love it and want to keep it, half the rental price is applied to purchase.” Most movies in the Kaleidescape store cost $15-$20 to buy, with some priced at $25 and $35. Rental viewing is for a 48-hour window, and the purchase option is available within 30 days of the rental transaction. PVOD movie titles “will sometimes be made available early for rental only,” and that was another rationale for the offering, he said.

Viewers watched an estimated 2.3 billion minutes of Wonder Woman 1984 during its first two days of streaming availability, emailed Nielsen Friday, giving its first public release of viewership data for HBO Max content. Nielsen releases subscription VOD viewership data publicly on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Disney+. After Wonder Woman, top SVOD programs for the week of Dec. 21-27 were Disney+'s Soul at 1.7 billion minutes, The Office (192 episodes, Netflix) at 1.4 billion and Bridgerton (eight episodes, Netflix) at 1.2 billion.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr will also speak at the Feb.11 meeting of the FCC Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment (see 2101270061).

Kaleidescape communicated to dealers this week a new movie rental option on its Strato devices for viewing feature films at the same full resolution as purchased titles, we learned. Once customers download a rental movie, Kaleidescape will give them 30 days to start watching it, with a 48-hour viewing window. A rented movie can be downloaded to only one home at a time and watched on only one player at a time, dealers were told. If a customer decides to buy the rented movie within 30 days of the rental transaction, half the rental price will be applied toward the purchase. Kaleidescape didn't comment.