Parker Broadcasting of Dakota License gets to keep its KRDK-TV Valley City, North Dakota, station on Cable One's virtual channel 4, the FCC Media Bureau said Tuesday in a letter to Parker and Gray Television denying Gray's request for reassignment of program and system information protocol (PSIP) channels. Gray wanted channel 4 reassigned from KRDK to its KVLY-TV Fargo, in response to a Parker must-carry complaint against Cable One (see 1603040033). While Gray is trying to preserve its CBS affiliation on channel 4, it needs a mutual agreement from KRDK for that waiver request to be considered, the bureau said. The bureau said Gray is seeking the reassignment to avoid viewer confusion and allow maintenance of local brand identification that comes with channel 4, but brand identification priority is in the context of over-the-air TV, not pay-TV carriage. Gray's attempt for virtual channel 4 to make sure its CBS programming is carried on Channel 4 by pay-TV systems "is not relevant to the intent of the PSIP standard," the bureau said. Gray didn't comment Thursday.

Lionsgate will buy Starz for $4.4 billion, the buyer said in a news release Thursday. The deal “significantly increases the combined company's content creation capabilities, enhances its leadership in premium scripted programming and scales its global distribution footprint” across platforms, it said. It's expected to “accelerate the growth of Lionsgate and Starz's own” over-the-top services, said Lionsgate. The combined company will include a 16,000-title film and TV library, 87 original series on 42 U.S. networks, a $7 billion feature film business and “the STARZ platform” reaching 24 million, it said. It "will enable us to compete successfully in today's rapidly evolving global entertainment marketplace," said Lionsgate Chairman Mark Rachesky. The buyer said both companies' boards approved, and shareholders and regulators will be asked for their OK's.

UltraHD messaging needs to be consistent, said Warner Home Entertainment President Ron Sanders. That has been challenging at the Digital Entertainment Group that he chairs, Sanders said in Campbell, California, at a Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers conference. It's almost like “herding cats,” he said. The “good news for our industry” is that all studios meet “regularly” under DEG, he said. “Everybody wants to have a consistent message. The problem is, they all want their own message to be the message. So we have to give up a little of what we want in order to get the greater good.” Consumers like streaming content on their smartphone, "so we also have to be able to deliver that content to that device in a format that is relevant to that screen. That’s the complexity," he said. Content executives like Sanders “don’t want to have what happened in the music business happen to us,” he said. “We want to provide business models that don’t force an all-you-can-eat model” on consumers “if they don’t want it,” he said. "Are they going to be consuming it on a flat-screen television or all the way down to a smartphone? We have to make our content relevant to all of them.” The “good news” is that “we’re seeing an expansion in consumer demand for the content that we do,” he said.

More than half of TVs shipped worldwide in Q1 were smart models, said an IHS report Wednesday. In North America, 56 percent of TVs shipped were smart, it said. Analyst Paul Gray called the trend “remarkable,” as the smart TV feature quickly pushed into entry-level products. “Good streaming content in local languages remains the key to value in smart TV,” he said. The Android operating system was in nearly half of smart TVs shipped in Q1, said Gray.

TV stations expect retransmission consent fees to hit $7.7 billion this year, up 20 percent from a year ago, and reach $11.6 billion by 2020, SNL Kagan said in a news release Wednesday. This year, cable is expected to pay $4.1 billion, with direct broadcast satellite paying $2.6 billion and telco video $1 billion, SNL Kagan said in its analysis, saying by 2020, cable likely will be paying $5.6 billion annually and DBS $4 billion, with telco video unchanged. Though retrans fees paid to TV station owners have gone up, owners also have faced bigger increases in network programming costs that then affect their affiliation renewal contracts, SNL Kagan said. Major affiliation station group owners are expected to remit $2.1 billion to the major broadcast networks this year, up 36 percent from 2015, it said. The average TV station's retrans fee per subscriber per month is expected to go from $1.40 this year to $2.21 by 2022, though some major network owned-and-operated stations, large-market affiliate stations and smaller-market stations with multiple big four networks will average more, the researcher said: The $1.87 retrans fee the TV station industry will likely receive on average by 2019 will put TV stations ahead of all basic cable networks in terms of affiliate fees per subscriber per month, except for ESPN, TNT and Disney Channel. Most regional sports networks also will have monthly affiliate fees per subscription well above the broadcast station average retrans fee, SNL Kagan said.

Dish Network is diving into "darker, more dastardly ... tactics" in its frequent retransmission consent loggerheads with broadcasters, contacting advertisers using stations with which it's at impasse, telling them they're getting less for their ad spends and encouraging them to contact the stations, said NAB Associate General Counsel Scott Goodwin in a blog post Wednesday. NAB lambasted Dish in connection with its retrans fight with Tribune Broadcasting and the lawsuit the satellite-TV provider filed against Tribune (see 1606240064). Goodwin said Dish "routinely sets out to damage the relationship between local stations and their advertisers" but didn't say if the company was employing those tactics against advertisers on Tribune stations. "The intended effect of this campaign is clear -- punish stations for not acceding to DISH’s demands," Goodwin wrote. "Impasses already hurt local stations far more than they do pay-TV providers, especially major national pay-TV providers like DISH. These DISH letters are designed to amplify that pain and force stations into submission. With these facts apparent, DISH can be seen for what it really is: villain and not victim." Dish didn't comment.

ComScore shares fell Tuesday after the company said its auditors need more time in an accounting probe to “evaluate the information collected and to reach and evaluate final conclusions.” The audit held up filing of the company's Form 10-K 2015 and Q1 Form 10-Q reports. The stock closed down 19 percent Tuesday at $23.83. “The Audit Committee continues to work vigorously to complete its review and to report its findings to the Board,” comScore said in an SEC Form 8-K filing posted on its website Tuesday. “The independent counsel and other advisers to the Audit Committee have completed a substantial amount of their factual inquiries to address the Audit Committee’s review.” The review began Feb. 19 when auditors “received a message regarding certain potential accounting matters,” it said.

Pandora warned subscribers in an email Tuesday of a “situation that could possibly affect your Pandora account.” Pandora said there’s no evidence users’ Pandora accounts were “compromised or tampered with in any way,” but user names and passwords "that were breached from a service other than Pandora a few years ago were posted on the web recently.” Pandora security teams analyzed the data and found certain Pandora users’ names were included on the list, said the company, and it urged those users to change passwords. It didn’t say which service’s user names and passwords were breached, or how many, though a Google search for “Pandora” and “password breach” brought up an article from Gizmodo Australia dated June 22 referring to a LinkedIn breach. “Last month a data breach from 2012 saw over 100 million LinkedIn usernames and passwords accessed and released onto the internet,” it said, but the link was broken and users who clicked through found a “couldn’t find the page you’ve requested” message. Meanwhile Monday, Pandora and Uber said Pandora will be integrated within the Uber driving app, enabling drivers and passengers to “listen to the music they love.” It "can be challenging to find high quality music that both drivers and riders love -- without radio ads and interruptions to the music,” said Bob Cowherd, Uber senior product manager-music and media. The partnership extends to Pandora and Uber customers in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, said the companies. “Coming soon,” they said, riders will be able to “personalize their experience” when they're on an Uber trip. Riders registered with Pandora will have access to their favorite stations on an Uber trip “so they can easily listen through the car speakers," said the companies.

Comcast is relying on "an unavailing exercise in misdirection and evasion" based on a misread of the law in its reply (see 1606080026) to Liberman Broadcasting's carriage complaint, Liberman said in its response posted Tuesday in docket 16-121. Liberman said contrary to Comcast's argument that only cable networks are video programming vendors (VPVs), Liberman "is a classic VPV in all aspects of the definition and relevant precedent," and Comcast "ineffectually tries" to recast rules against cable distributors requiring a financial interest in a VPV as a carriage condition to mean ownership stake. Comcast had made clear that if Liberman wanted to get basic carriage on the cable operator, it would need to give up a financial interest "in the increasingly valuable broadband feed and [video on demand] rights ... in the programming it produces," Liberman said. It also disputed the Comcast argument the complaint is time-barred. Liberman said Comcast raised a First Amendment challenge to the FCC prohibition on affiliation-based discrimination but didn't acknowledge the commitment Comcast made in its buy of NBCUniversal, in which Comcast waived the right to that claim. Comcast didn't comment Tuesday. The complaint, filed in April, is seen facing tough odds of success (see 1604080013).

Season two of Amazon Video’s Bosch is the first Amazon TV series to be available in Dolby Vision, said the companies Monday. More high-dynamic-range titles are to come at no premium for Amazon Prime customers, said Jim Freeman, vice president-Amazon Video. Dolby Vision titles available for purchase at Amazon for all customers include Men in Black 3, Pineapple Express and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Amazon said.