Red Ventures completed its $500 million acquisition of CNET Media Group from ViacomCBS, said the buyer Friday. Red Ventures announced the deal in mid-September, saying it was “eager to invest” in CNET’s growth “with more personalized consumer experiences” so it could “reinvigorate” CNET's various brands.

Representatives of NCTA, NAB and media companies told FCC Wireless and International bureau staff that reimbursing the costs incumbent satellite operators face for burying integrated receiver decoder equipment is important to the C-band transition. “This equipment is essential to compressing programmer services and thereby enabling the freeing up of the lower 300 MHz in the C-band,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 18-122.

Though Imax will likely resume “impressive top and bottom-line growth,” 2021 may still be challenging, Colliers analyst Steven Frankel wrote investors Friday. With several high-profile Imax films delayed a year, the “blockbuster slate” looks “satisfactory,” said Frankel, but he expects significantly slower screen growth next year as theater partners look to shore up their financial positions. Crowds will return to theaters in North America and Europe once a COVID-19 vaccine is introduced, said Frankel, who expects Imax to resume market share expansion. Noting the company’s strong cash position, Frankel said results during pandemic-related theater closures and periods of low utilization “have little impact on our 2022 estimates.” Imax reported a 56% Q3 revenue drop Thursday (see 2010290060) to $37.3 million.

Comcast's ad-supported Peacock streaming service has close to 22 million sign-ups since its July launch, is starting to help with churn, and is playing a role in increased broadband subscriptions, CEO Brian Roberts said Thursday as Comcast announced Q3 financial results. It ended the quarter with 27.84 million broadband subscribers, up 1.8 million year over year, Comcast said. It said revenue for the quarter was $25.5 billion, down from $26.8 billion last year. Roberts said Comcast is focusing on a three-pronged strategy of broadband, streaming and aggregation or bundling of services. He said its Flex streaming service and platform for broadband-only subscribers now has more than 1 million monthly active users, which more than offsets the decline in the number of traditional pay-TV video subscribers for the past two quarters. Comcast said it ended the quarter with 19.2 million video subscribers, down 1.2 million year over year. Roberts said Comcast's theme park business is still hurting from the global pandemic but is expected at least break even in 2021. Chief Financial Officer Mike Cavanagh said Comcast has spent $239 million in COVID-19 pandemic-related restructuring and severance costs so far this year and expects to spend about $480 million more in Q4. Comcast said it ended the quarter with 2.6 million mobile subscriptions. It said the wireless business is being hurt somewhat by some retail stores remaining closed due to COVID-19, but the vast majority are now open. Comcast said it ended the quarter with 9.68 million residential voice customers, down 270,000 year over year.

The FCC International Bureau approved an assignment and transfer of control of OneWeb licenses and market access grants as part of the satellite operator's planned emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy (see 2009010005), in a public notice in Wednesday's Daily Digest.

Congress shouldn’t let local news “die” because Big Tech companies unfairly leverage the ad market, Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said Tuesday, releasing a report showing newspaper revenue declining about 70% by the end of 2020 vs. two decades ago. The report said broadcasters lost more than 40% of ad revenue 2000-2018, and since 2005, papers lost about 60% of their overall workforce. “The biggest online platforms unfairly use content, take local news consumer data and divert customers away from local news websites, while providing little in return,” she said. NAB, Public Knowledge and the News Media Alliance welcomed the report. NAB supports “findings that the competitive power of a handful of digital platforms has dominated the marketplace for advertising and audiences,” said CEO Gordon Smith. “Targeted federal funding and new regulatory tools can help transition local journalism to succeed in the digital marketplace,” said PK Senior Policy Fellow Lisa Macpherson. Google and Facebook “effectively regulate news publishers by determining how (and whether) journalism is distributed and monetized,” said News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern. The "accusation" that Facebook scrapes news articles is "simply not true," a company spokesperson emailed: "We give news organizations the ability to post news on Facebook free of charge, and they have full control over how that content is accessed and monetized." The platform cited $400 million in contributions to "programs and partnerships with a focus on local news." News publishers are facing “enormous” challenges, but the report is a misrepresentation, a Google spokesperson emailed: “We provide value to the news industry by sending people to news sites 24 billion times a month, help publishers make money with our advertising products and provide support via the Google News Initiative.” The company cited a $1 billion investment in partnerships with news publishers for Google News Showcase.

Chatbots’ inability to express emotion, attitude or opinion, especially if they can’t solve a consumer’s problem, leads to user frustration and cessation of use, said Strategy Analytics Monday. Research shows a customer’s emotions have significant influence on their satisfaction with a service chatbot, said analyst Diane O’Neill. Despite some success in development of empathetic chatbots, human-level intelligence “is still not fully understood,” said analyst Kevin Nolan. Further advances are needed for chatbots to diversify into critical health-related services such as mental support systems.

Waivers for incumbent C-band earth station operators to add existing collocated antennas for interference protection were addressed individually in an FCC International Bureau order Friday, with some granted and some denied. The order resolved reconsideration petitions and waiver requests filed regarding the incumbent earth station list released in August. Close to 70 waivers were granted, including those sought by Disney, Vyve Broadband and Morgan Murphy Media. Multiple were denied. Denials included an NAB/NCTA reconsideration petition asking approval for registration of additional antennas involving collocations.

Theatrical and content production delays from COVID-19 prompted S&P Global to downgrade MGM to B from B+, said the ratings service Thursday. MGM’s twice-delayed James Bond feature film No Time to Die, now scheduled for April release, typifies similar delays expected “for some of its theatrical and television content due to the negative impacts from COVID-19,” said S&P. “While we expect that the decision to further delay James Bond may provide MGM with an opportunity for a more favorable theatrical release in early 2021, when social distancing restrictions from the pandemic are presumed to have eased," there's still "substantial risk" of further delays if infection rates remain high. MGM didn’t respond to questions.

Quibi, the short-form video service founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg in 2018 and headed by former HP CEO Meg Whitman, was a “bad idea -- that inexplicably -- managed to raise $1.75 billion” in funding, Brightcove analyst Jim O’Neill emailed Thursday, reacting to the service's shutdown after only six months. In a joint letter to employees, investors and partners Wednesday, Katzenberg and Whitman said they're “winding down the business” and seeking buyers for Quibi’s content and technology assets. They said the goal of Quibi, originally called NewTV, was to create a new category of content -- short-form entertainment for mobile devices -- but circumstances weren’t right for Quibi to succeed “as a standalone company.” They cited two possible reasons: “because the idea itself wasn’t strong enough to justify a standalone streaming service or because of our timing” during a pandemic. But, they said: “Other businesses have faced these unprecedented challenges and have found their way through it. We were not able to do so.” Though Quibi was a good outlet for experimenting with content creation, O’Neill said management “totally misread the market,” ignoring data about how consumers view content and jumping into the space “without adequate research.” In a January prediction, O’Neill wondered how the service would justify the subscription price and questioned how it would engage consumers long term. Quibi management falsely assumed because “Gen Edge and Millennial viewers consume a lot of YouTube content that they’d do the same” with what the service considered premium content, “assuming users want short-form content,” O’Neill said Thursday. Millennials are actually the most avid moviegoers, said the analyst. “They want to binge,” he said, “and they don’t always go to their phones to watch.” Amid a crowded video streaming market, O’Neill downplayed competition for eyeballs as the reason for Quibi’s demise. Parks Associates analyst Steve Nason wasn’t shocked Quibi closed shop but was surprised it happened after only six months. He cited contributing factors including “outsized expectations” and a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Eko. As recently as this week, Quibi had mixed messages, Nason said. It announced Monday it planned to take the service to connected TVs to widen its base: “That should have been done at launch,” said the analyst. “It was very shortsighted.” The Quibi failure stands out from other services that were doomed because their content didn’t connect with users. That wasn’t the case with Quibi, which nabbed 10 Emmy nominations. “Content wasn’t the issue,” Nason said.