Comments are due Oct. 1 and replies Oct. 16 on a petition for declaratory ruling by the Satellite Broadcasting & Communications Association, DirecTV and Dish Network challenging Chicago's 2012 satellite dish antenna restrictions, per a docket 20-284 FCC Media Bureau public notice Tuesday. It said the Chicago rule has been in abeyance while the FCC dealt with a similar Philadelphia ordinance, which it declared invalid in 2018 (see 1804190034).

The FCC’s methodology for calculating regulatory fees is “deeply flawed” and “would not survive judicial review,” NAB said Tuesday responding to the 2020 reg payments order (see 2008310056). “However, we very much appreciate Chairman [Ajit] Pai and his staff correcting certain errors in the proposal’s original calculations to result in reduced fees for many radio broadcasters. NAB urges the Commission to convene stakeholders to take a closer look at its approach to regulatory fees to ensure they are fairly and equitably applied for all entities that utilize Commission resources.” ACA Connects praised the order for continuing to phase in higher fees for direct broadcast satellite providers. “Next year the FCC must eliminate this long-inexplicable disparity between cable/IPTV and DBS regulatory fees once and for all,” said ACA President Matt Polka. “The DBS industry is mature and its two providers, AT&T/DirecTV and DISH, are not exactly fledglings. It is time to stop treating them with kid gloves.”

“The evolution of high resolution has arrived,” reads the homepage of the 8K Association’s new Discover8K.com consumer website, launched Monday to coincide with the runup to IFA in Berlin. It lists 8KA-certified TVs from “leading brands,” currently consisting of 17 models from 8KA members Samsung and TCL. The site also gives information about “current and upcoming sources” of 8K content, and “guidance” for viewing 8K entertainment at home, including “ideal screen sizes” and seating distances. “Ultimately it will be consumers who determine how quickly 8K technology is adopted,” said Aaron Dew, TCL North America director-product development. He chairs 8KA’s marketing working group and said, “Consumers who understand the benefits of 8K ultra-sharp big-screen displays, finely-detailed 8K gaming and the power of immersive 8K video are going to speed the transition to 8K.”

AT&T would "be better off without the albatross that is DirecTV," but the likelihood of such a deal is slim due to the rapid decline in DirecTV's subscriber base -- 18% year over year -- and its earnings, which make it tough for a potential buyer to see a reasonable return, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett emailed Monday. That followed a report that AT&T is exploring a sale. The telco didn't comment. DirecTV's combining with Dish Network and the resulting synergies between the two are of limited help, and regulatory approval would take a year or longer, Moffett said.

Some 78% of U.S. households have a subscription VOD service from Netflix, Amazon Prime, and/or Hulu, up from 69% in 2018, reported Leichtman Research Group Friday. About 55% of U.S. households have more than one SVOD service, an increase from 43% in 2018, it said. Forty percent of adults stream an SVOD service daily. The most active streamers are ages 18-44, with 63% of daily SVOD viewing. Some 30% of respondents said their Netflix subscription is shared with others outside their household, 23% for Hulu and 20% for Amazon Prime. Fifty-five percent of adults watch video on non-TV devices daily, including mobile phones, home computers and tablets; 44% watch video on a mobile phone daily, it said. The pandemic spurred an increase in SVOD and direct-to-consumer streaming video services, said principal Bruce Leichtman.

Comments are due Sept. 8 on a petition from America’s Public Television Stations and PBS urging the FCC Media Bureau to waive required baseline carriage notices for noncommercial educational translators, said a public notice Wednesday in docket 17-105. Replies are due Sept. 14. The agency requires NCE translators to email a notice to MVPDs on which they will be seeking carriage in the 2021-2023 carriage cycle, the PN says. APTS and PBS argued NCE translators are all must-carry and so don’t interact with MVPDs to obtain carriage. “NCE translators do not even know, in many cases, which MVPDs are carrying them, and no resource exists to easily determine this information,” the PN said. “Even emailing a one-time notice would impose a substantial burden, while providing no benefit to the public, to MVPDs, or to the translators themselves.”

Streaming service Tidal bought $7 million in tokens issued by Sensorium that will allow broadcasting of immersive virtual reality content to users worldwide. The relationship with the social VR platform company will allow Tidal to gain exclusive rights for its artist roster to have shows and music broadcast within Sensorium’s virtual entertainment worlds, said Lior Tibon, Tidal chief operating officer. In addition to letting fans access concerts they wouldn’t be able to attend in person, the Sensorium Galaxy alternate universe platform will allow users to interact with other virtual participants and avatars. In addition to VR headsets, Sensorium Galaxy will be available on PC, iOS and Android applications.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland granted Epic Games a temporary restraining order (in Pacer) blocking Apple from denying Epic access to Apple development tools, including for the Unreal Engine game creation platform that Epic offers third-party developers (see 2008240010). “The record shows potential significant damage to both the Unreal Engine platform itself, and to the gaming industry generally, including on both third-party developers and gamers” if Epic is denied access, said Rogers Monday. “Epic Games and Apple are at liberty to litigate against each other, but their dispute should not create havoc to bystanders.” She denied Epic’s motion to order Fortnite’s reinstatement on the App Store. Epic “has not yet demonstrated irreparable harm” from Apple’s removal of Fortnite in apparent retaliation for Epic’s installation of an in-app direct-payment system to compete with Apple’s, she said. “The current predicament appears of its own making.” Apple and Epic didn’t comment Tuesday. Rogers set a Sept. 4 deadline for Epic to file for a preliminary injunction and a Sept. 28 Zoom hearing on the motion.

The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the shift from physical media to digital home entertainment, with disc revenue falling rapidly and consumer spending on traditional pay TV declining, blogged nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon Sunday. Subscription VOD has been a big beneficiary, with its share of consumer entertainment spending rising from 9.9% in Q2 2018 to 17.1% two years later, he said. "There seems no stopping traditional pay TV’s accelerating fall from grace," he said.

A “paradigm shift” is occurring in the pay-TV industry, “with operators acknowledging the benefits of putting Cloud TV at the heart of their infrastructure," said Nuno Sanches, Kaltura general manager-media and telecom. Five years ago it was considered impossible to deliver operator-grade quality of service from the cloud, Sanches said Monday, citing economics and telecom operators not wanting to use the open internet to deliver pay-TV services. Today, multinational pay-TV operators are embracing cloud TV as “the best-of-breed solution to deliver future-proof services." The percentage of U.S. broadband households subscribing to a cable or satellite pay-TV service fell to 62% in Q1 from 67% in the year-ago quarter, reported Parks Associates Monday, while the average amount of video watched per week grew to more than 37 hours per household. The spike in online video consumption, decrease in pay-TV-only households and shift of pay-TV online are widening the gap between over-the-top video and traditional pay-TV, said Parks analyst Steve Nason: “Traditional services are looking to migrate to the cloud to get the best of pay-TV and OTT.” Parks will co-host a webinar with Kaltura on cloud TV Tuesday at noon EDT.