Stakeholders and FCC commissioners “cannot engage in effective policy assessment of the linear video marketplace without transparent and complete access to timely information,” said Commissioner Nathan Simington in a letter agreeing with U.S. Senators calling for the FCC to refresh the agency’s record on classifying linear streaming services as MVPDs. “We have no facts officially before us! And we really should. There’s an easy way to do it: refresh the record,” said the Commissioner’s letter. Simington said he’s not convinced the FCC has the authority to reclassify streamers as MVPDs and described his position on whether the agency can do so as “less strong” than the one laid out by FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel when she was a commissioner in 2014, when she said the agency did have such authority. Rosenworcel told Congress in March that she doesn't currently believe the agency’s powers extend to reclassifying streaming services. Simington said that he isn’t convinced that the FCC can discount language tying the definition of MVPD to spectrum and physical facilities but that he hasn’t prejudged the matter. Support for a record refresh shouldn’t be treated as meaning more “than a bona fide desire to learn more about a domain so as to more effectively and prudentially craft policy,” he said. Simington also called on Congress to “rethink the Commission’s role in the media marketplace.” If the FCC “were controlled by the enemies of localism who seek to destroy it, its recent actions in the media marketplace would be indistinguishable from those it recently has taken,” he said. The FCC should not be allowed to “feng shui the deck chairs on the legacy media Titanic,” Simington said. “Our hearts may go on, but our local news will go dark.”
YouTube will soon require video creators to disclose that they have created realistic-looking synthetic or altered content, such as by using AI tools, Jennifer Flannery O'Connor and Emily Moxley, product management vice presidents, blogged Tuesday. They wrote that when creators upload content, the hosting service will have options for them to indicate whether it contains realistic altered or synthetic material. "This could be an AI-generated video that realistically depicts an event that never happened, or content showing someone saying or doing something they didn't actually do," they wrote. Viewers will be informed by labels on the description panel or on the video player itself, according to the blog post. In addition, YouTube will make it possible to request the removal of AI-generated or other synthetic or altered content that simulates an identifiable individual, using its privacy request process.
The U.S.' largest pay-TV providers lost roughly 465,00 net video subscribers in Q3 2023, compared to a 385,000 loss the same quarter a year earlier, Leichtman Research Group said Tuesday. Those providers represent about 96% of the market, with a total of 71.5 million subs, it said. The largest cable providers had a net loss of slightly more than 1 million subs in Q3, compared to a loss of 985,000 in Q3 2022, it said. It said other traditional pay-TV services lost about 780,000 subs, compared to a 700,000 loss during the same quarter a year ago. It said virtual MVPDs added about 1.3 million subs, roughly the same as Q3 2022.
Streaming advertising is doing well, but the linear ad market in the second half of 2023 has been "disappointing," with no rebound immediately in sight, Warner Bros. Discover (WBD) Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said Wednesday as the company announced Q3 financial results. Also outside the company's control is the ongoing Screen Actors Guild strike, which helped result in "one of our lightest original content schedules in years," which in turn affected Q3 streaming subscriber numbers, CEO David Zaslav said. Also hurting streaming sub numbers were declines in the Discovery+ subscriber base due to its being incorporated into Max. WBD stock closed for the day at $9.40, down 19%. "We made a last and final offer" that met most of the actors' union goals, Zaslav said. He said WBD will launch Max in Latin America in Q1, to be followed by launches in the Nordics, Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe in the spring, with further global expansion over the next two to three years. Wiedenfels was bullish on the Charter Communications/Disney distribution deal reached in September (see 2309110034). "You can imagine a world where we're redoing our deals" where Max is available to cable subscribers, he said. "it created potentially a very interesting bridge to more scale, lower churn and more stability to linear."
Nexstar and Cox Communications have reached a multiyear distribution agreement covering 38 Nexstar-owned television stations in 23 markets, Nexstar's NewsNation cable news network and its digital networks Antenna TV and Rewind TV, the broadcaster said Tuesday.
Disney might have to pay Comcast an additional $4.2 billion to $5.8 billion for its share of Hulu atop the agreed-upon price, LightShed Management's Rich Greenfield wrote Thursday. Disney announced Wednesday it was buying Comcast's 33% stake for $8.61 billion, with the potential of having to pay more after an appraisal of the streaming platform's fair value is done. Disney said the appraisal should be completed sometime in 2024. Greenfield said the challenge in putting a value on Hulu is its deep integration within Disney and the benefits it brings Disney through bundling with Disney+ and ESPN+ and through its Hulu+ Live TV virtual MVPD service. He calculated it ultimately could be worth $40 billion to $45 billion.
Disney executives met with FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, Media Bureau Chief Holly Saurer, and Commissioners Brendan Carr and Anna Gomez about “ongoing changes in consumer preferences,” according to a brief ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 14-261. That docket is associated with proposals to reclassify linear streaming services as MVPDs, and the filing was also posted in quadrennial review docket 22-459. The Monday meetings involved discussion of Disney’s “history of partnering closely with ABC affiliates to accelerate comprehensive access to digital content distribution” and Disney’s investment in “on the ground reporting” at the ABC stations it owns. Broadcasters supporting the reclassification have said networks have a disparate level of control over contracts involving digital distribution of local news content generated by their affiliates, threatening the existence of local news. “We outlined broad trends in the media marketplace that both shape and respond to the needs of viewers,” the filing said.
Cable news network Newsmax will no longer be streaming for free on over-the-top platforms like Roku, YouTube, Xumo and Pluto starting Wednesday, it emailed subscribers Tuesday. "Under our cable agreements Newsmax has to go behind a paywall," it said, urging people to instead sign up for its Newsmax+ streaming service.
Paramount Global has completed the $1.62 billion sale of its Simon & Schuster publishing business to KKR, it told the SEC Monday. The companies announced the deal in August (see 2308070066).
Mediacom will join Comcast and Charter Communications in offering the Xumo Stream Box streaming device to its Xtream internet customers in the coming months, Comcast said last week. Xumo is a joint venture between Comcast and Charter.