Conditions from Comcast's buy of control in NBCUniversal require Comcast to sell NBC content to Apple's over-the-top service, emailed Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant investors Tuesday. The conditions require NBCU to sell its programming to online video distributors at comparable rates to other programmers, and Apple already has deals with Disney and Fox, Gallant said. “Apple could use the condition to obtain NBCU programming that is comparable to whatever Apple acquired from Fox, Disney, etc.” If Apple made the transaction condition argument, the FCC likely would need to decide what is “comparable programming” and “economically comparable terms,” Gallant said. “The potential for regulatory delays might be a deterrent for Apple to pursue the regulatory enforcement angle.” The FCC OTT multichannel video programming distributor rulemaking “shows the agency is highly focused on promoting OTT competition and probably would move quickly on any Apple complaint,” he said. Comcast didn't comment.

Eight in 10 U.S. households have at least one HDTV set, and 52 percent have multiple HDTVs, according to data from Leichtman Research Group. LRG said the multiple figure is up from 46 percent five years ago. The budding Ultra HD TV market is at 1.6 percent U.S. household penetration, analyst Bruce Leichtman told us. Of the tiny percentage of 4K TV owners, 85 percent reported having an "excellent" experience with the TV and none rated the experience as poor, Leichtman said. Awareness of 4K Ultra HD TV is on the rise at 41 percent, versus 30 percent last year, and 26 percent of those who have seen 4K TV expressed interest in getting one, versus 6 percent who had not seen it, Leichtman said. Of the consumers who bought any TV last year, 38 percent reported having an Internet-connected model. Overall, about 11 percent of all smart TVs in the U.S. are Internet-connected, LRG said. Of the single-HDTV households, 89 percent subscribe to a pay-TV service; but the percentage expands to 91 percent in multi-HDTV homes, LRG said. Roughly a quarter of U.S. households purchased a TV in the past 12 months, mirroring a 20 percent or higher trend in place for the past 11 years, Leichtman said. “While HDTV now seems commonplace in the U.S., much of the growth of HD has come in recent years,” Leichtman said, as more than a third of households have bought their first HDTV in the past five years. The phone survey of 1,231 adults in the continental U.S. was conducted in January and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percent.

The Digital Entertainment Group added 12 new member companies, the group said Tuesday. They are Alchemy, Comcast, DirecTV, DreamWorks Animation, Imax, MGM, Playster, Sellthru Co, The Orchard, Testronic Labs, Verizon Digital Media Services and Yekra, the DEG said. "These new companies represent diverse areas all serving the home entertainment industry -- from cable providers, content providers, consumer electronics, cloud storage solutions, streaming services, content distribution, quality assurance solutions and wireless solutions," it said. "Just as the industry evolves, so must the DEG.”

Dish Network filings claiming to have uncovered “new evidence” that Comcast and Time Warner Cable are competitors doesn’t live up to its billing, Comcast said in a reply filing in docket 14-57 Monday. Dish had claimed that confidential documents submitted by Comcast showed that the cable giant had examined starting its own out-of-footprint over-the-top (OTT) service that would have been in competition with TWC’s video customers. Those claims “founder on the rocks of logic and fact,” Comcast said. The internal documents that Dish mentions confirm that “while Comcast has reviewed the prospects of offering an OTT product, Comcast has consistently rejected its business viability and has concluded not to offer such a product,” Comcast said. “Consequently, there is no actual or potential horizontal competition between Comcast and TWC.” Even if Comcast or TWC were considering entering the OTT business, it wouldn’t necessarily put the two in competition with each other, Comcast said. “Given the proliferation of actual OVD [Online Video Distributor] competitors and potential OVDs, it is impossible to conclude that Comcast or TWC could be a uniquely important OTT competitor out of footprint,” Comcast said. The documents highlighted by Dish “only reinforce some of Applicants’ core public interest rationales for the transaction," Comcast said.

A group of broadcast companies worked together to hamper Aereo’s ability to sell its assets at auction after it declared bankruptcy, the now-defunct streaming TV service said in a complaint filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York Monday. ABC, CBS, Univision, WNET and numerous other broadcasters argued in a series of court filings that Aereo’s network of antennas and other equipment could only be used to infringe broadcast copyrights, the complaint said. The broadcasters ran a "concerted campaign of tortious conduct" that had a “substantial chilling effect” on the sale of those assets in February, the complaint said. During the lead-up to the auction, several prospective purchasers “expressed concern regarding the consequences of purchasing the Debtor’s content-delivery assets given the Broadcasters’ conduct,” Aereo said. Instead of Aereo’s technology being bought by an online video distributor service that could have made use of it, Aereo’s tech was sold “piecemeal” the complaint said. “The Debtor’s patents were sold to RPX Corp., a company specializing in defensive patent acquisitions, for $225,000; the Debtor’s trademarks, domain names and customer lists were sold to TiVo Inc. for $1,000,000; and portions of Aereo’s equipment was sold to Alliance Technology Solutions, Inc. for $320,000.” The value of Aereo’s patents “is highest when owned by an entity actually practicing the technology disclosed in those patents,” the complaint said. The piecemeal sale “forced by the lack of bidders, severely reduced their overall value,” said Aereo. The defunct company is seeking damages to be determined at trial, the complaint said. The Supreme Court found against Aereo in a case concerning its right to retransmit broadcast content, prompting its shutdown and bankruptcy filing (see 1406260071). Several broadcasters contacted for comment on the Aereo complaint declined to respond. NAB declined comment on the complaint.

The FCC likely will classify linear over-the-top distributors as multichannel video programming distributors, but that won’t increase OTT competition (see 1503060046), said Guggenheim Securities analyst Paul Gallant in an emailed note Friday. It would offer OTTs access to vertically integrated programming and require local TV stations to “negotiate in good faith” for signal carriage by OTTs and MVPDs, he said, but that wouldn’t give OTTs more access to marquee content and the Copyright Office would have to say that OTTs qualify for compulsory copyright licenses. Comcast's planned buy of Time Warner Cable is focused on its effect on online video competition, Gallant said. Mediacom’s requested FCC inquiry into programmer leverage over OTTs and other pay-TV distributors could affect OTT entry, he said. There's a small chance the commission could ask about programmer bundling and volume discounts and start such an inquiry, he said. A programmer inquiry could improve OTTs’ access to programming more than OTT-as-MVPD would, he said.

The FCC will vote on an NPRM about implementing Section 102 of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization Act of 2014 at its open meeting March 26 at 10:30 a.m., the commission said in a news release Friday. The STELA Reauthorization Act orders the commission to adopt rules allowing the modification of commercial TV stations’ local TV market for purposes of satellite carriage rights, the commission said. This includes the promotion of consumers’ access to TV broadcast station signals originating in their state of residence, it said. Also at the meeting, commissioners will vote on transferring a number portability contract to Telcordia from Neustar (see 1503060037).

The FCC Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee (DSTAC) plans its second meeting March 24, the FCC said in Thursday's Federal Register. At the meeting, two working groups studying the currently available forms of downloadable security and the requirements of the companies that would use the solution developed by the DTSAC will present their findings, it said. The meeting will be 10 a.m.-4 p.m. in the Commission Meeting Room. DSTAC first met in February (see 1502230067).

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System will send a common alerting protocol message containing the national periodic test event code along with geocodes for four participating states March 18 at 2:30 p.m. EDT, said Al Kenyon, FEMA’s IPAWS national test technical lead. He spoke on an IPAWS north central regional emergency alert system (EAS) participant webinar Thursday. The test will be done for about 2,000 EAS participants in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, he said. “This is above and beyond the day-to-day requirements of EAS,” Kenyon said. “We’re doing what we can to make it better.” Representatives from Digital Alert Systems, Monroe Electronics, Sage Alerting Systems and Trilithic Emergency Alert Systems discussed how to configure their devices for the upcoming test. In a Sept. 17 IPAWS test, about 90 percent of the participating stations successfully transmitted the test message, Kenyon said. “A 90 percent success rate where you don’t have the opportunity to pretest the test is very good.”

The 13 largest U.S. pay-TV providers lost about 125,000 net video subscribers in 2014, and annual net pay-TV losses in 2014 were 95,000 subscribers, comparable to 2013, said the Leichtman Research Group (LRG) in a news release Tuesday. In 2014, the top nine cable companies lost about 1.2 million video subscribers, the fewest since 2008, it said. In 2014, the top phone providers added 1.05 million video subscribers and satellite-TV providers added 20,000 video subscribers, it said. Comcast had the most video subscribers for cable, and DirecTV, the most subscribers for satellite TV, a spreadsheet in LRG's news release showed. Meanwhile, U.S. pay TV had modest year-over-year growth in Q4, Pivotal Research Group (PRG) said in a Tuesday report. Pay TV will also have growth in subscribers in 2015, PRG said. Pay-TV penetration in U.S. households declined 0.9 percent to 85.9 percent, it said. Broadband remains healthy and cable will continue to take net new broadband subscribers, PRG said. Wireline phone subscription losses dropped 50 percent year over year, PRG said. The cable industry faces the risk of reregulation, especially with reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service creating the "potential for regulation medium to long term," analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak said. If the government doesn't approve Comcast's planned buy of Time Warner Cable, it could create a "temporary downside in all the names," he said. Other risks for cable include aggressive product price increases, increased competition from Google Fiber, potential over-the-top video competition and wireless substitution for phone and data, and rising programming costs, he said. The satellite-TV industry faces the risks of increasing competition and programming expenses, Wlodarczak said. If cable makes higher speeds more widely available, like 500+ Mbps, there could be Internet-based alternatives for satellite TV, he said. AT&T and Verizon pushed their video products "at the expense of satellite," he said. Satellite-TV operators lack internal triple-play bundle services, but since they are partnered with major telcos, the coming of 4G might help, he said. DirecTV focuses on the same market that regional Bell operating company and cable companies do, and Dish Network's market is at risk in the current economy and from consumers switching to over-the-top (OTT) alternatives, Wlodarczak said. OTT and retransmission rights will become substitutes for multichannel TV, he said.