Social contracts with cable operators could offer "a measured approach" toward easing TV ownership restrictions, according to altafiber and Hawaiian Telecom. In docket 25-133 Friday, they laid out the basics of such social contracts, which involve cable operators getting flexibility in setting rates for regulated product tiers and services, and, in exchange, the cablers agreeing to benefits, including negotiated rates, limited future regulated rate increases and free services to schools and libraries. Earlier in June, altafiber and Hawaiian Telecom pushed in meetings with FCC staff for social contracts for broadcasters in the event of changes to the broadcast-ownership cap, with the contracts including such agreements as reductions in retransmission consent rates that broadcasters charge MVPDs.

President Donald Trump made repeated calls on social media this week for reporters from CNN and the New York Times to be fired over their reporting on the U.S. strikes against Iran’s nuclear program Sunday. “FAKE NEWS REPORTERS FROM CNN & THE NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD BE FIRED, IMMEDIATELY!!! BAD PEOPLE WITH EVIL INTENTIONS!!!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Spanish-language streamer ViX will likely be the fastest-growing subscription streaming service in the Americas this year, Ampere Analysis said this week. Owned by TelevisaUnivision, ViX will likely grow its subscriber base by 18% this year, hitting 10.5 million paying customers in the U.S. and Latin America, it said. That would be a higher growth rate than any other major subscription entertainment streaming platform in the region, Ampere added.

NCTA wants the FCC to seek comment on future broadcaster requests for waiver of the top-four ownership prohibition with stand-alone, transaction-specific public notices, rather than burying the notice in lists of other proceedings, the MVPD group said in an ex parte letter posted in docket 18-349 Thursday. NCTA pointed to a Media Bureau order in June granting a request for such a waiver from Imagicomm Greenwood, which noted that the application was unopposed. “This is not surprising, given that the Commission did not expressly seek comment on the applicant’s request for waiver of the Top-4 Rule,” NCTA said. “Rather, the Commission included these applications on a 31-page Public Notice along with 154 other items even though Top-4 waiver applications are not run-of-the-mill requests routinely included in general public notices.” When it adopted the waiver process in 2017, the FCC said the case-by-case review would allow affected parties to “advance any relevant concerns,” NCTA said. A stand-alone, transaction-specific notice would better comport with the prior commission’s assurances, the group said.

An FTC probe into Media Matters for America is "aimed at silencing [it] and punishing it for its speech," the left-leaning journalism watchdog group told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a lawsuit filed Monday (docket 1:25-cv-01959) against the agency. It said that due to its reporting, "state governments and now a federal agency have employed sweeping governmental powers to attempt to silence and harass an organization for daring to speak the truth." The Texas and Missouri attorneys general previously launched investigations after unflattering reporting about social media platform X, but those probes have been dropped or halted by court injunction, so "the Trump Administration has picked up where the states left off." Media Matters asked the court to declare that the FTC's civil investigative demands are a retaliatory action in violation of the group's First Amendment rights and to enjoin the FTC from trying to enforce the demands or continue the investigation.

Fox Corp. is buying Mexican sports broadcaster Caliente TV, with plans to launch a sports streaming business in Central America, it said last week. With Caliente TV, it will launch a new pay-TV channel and a subscription video-on-demand platform that will join Tubi, it said.

With the average U.S. TV viewer divvying up viewing time among traditional pay TV, subscription video-on-demand and free ad-supported TV, they're seeing about half as many ads today as they did before streaming, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon wrote. The ad loads of each service type vary sizably, he said. In the pre-streaming era, the average traditional pay-TV watcher saw 17 minutes of ads per hour, Dixon said. In Q4 2024, the average viewer sees 9.5 minutes, as the smaller ad loads of virtual MVPDs, subscription VOD and free ad-based services drag down that average.

TV viewing and radio listening continue to lose popularity, Attest said Tuesday in its annual media consumption report. Attest said 56% of U.S. consumers watch three or more hours of any type of TV per day, down from 61% in 2024 and 63% in 2023. Live TV has been hit hardest, with 28% of consumers saying they generally don’t watch any on an average day, up from 24% last year and 20% in 2023. The report said 31% of consumers listen to radio daily, down from 37% in 2023, while the percentage of those who listen a few times a week -- currently 23% -- has also been trailing off. The number of Americans who never listen to radio has grown from 11% in 2023 to 16% today, it said. As for streaming, 64% of consumers say they watch Netflix at least weekly, followed by 49% for Amazon Prime Video and 44% for Hulu. Attest said 42% of consumers listen to streamed music daily, while 21% listen multiple times a week. The data came from a survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18-67, done annually on Attest's platform in March and April.

Streaming reached an inflection point in May with its share of total TV use exceeding the combined share of broadcast and cable for the first time ever, Nielsen said Tuesday. It said streaming represented 44.8% of TV viewership in May, its largest monthly share of viewing to date, topping the combined share of broadcast -- 20.1% -- and cable -- 24.1%. Streaming's growth has been driven in large part by free streaming services and platforms, and YouTube represented 12.5% of all TV viewing in May, Nielsen said. Ad-supported services Roku Channel, Tubi and PlutoTV combined for 5.7% of total TV viewing in May, eclipsing any individual broadcast network, it said.

Discovery exchanges in a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office proceeding show a pattern of behavior by Paramount Global that has to be considered in any review of Skydance Media's proposed purchase of Paramount, Mack Toys said Wednesday (docket 25-95). The toy putty and slime maker has opposed the deal, citing Paramount's refusal to let Mack use the word "slime" --- which Paramount has trademarked -- in advertising (see 2502060068). Mack said Paramount not producing requested evidence as part of the trademark fight has "profound implications for the public interest."