The FCC requested more information from AT&T about its proposed takeover of DirecTV. The FCC wants data about AT&T’s current plans for fiber deployment, specifically the current number of households to which fiber is deployed, “and the breakdown by technology and geographic area of deployment,” the commission said Friday in a letter to Bob Quinn, senior vice president-federal regulatory. It requested a description of whether the AT&T fiber-to-the-premises investment model demonstrates that fiber deployment is now unprofitable, and asked for all documents concerning the company’s decision to limit its deployment of fiber to 2 million homes following the acquisition. “We are happy to respond to the questions posed by the FCC,” an AT&T spokesman said in a statement. “As we made clear earlier this week, we remain committed to our DirecTV merger-related build-out plans,” he said, referring to comments by AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson that it would pause fiber deployment efforts not knowing under what rules that investment would be governed.

Live Nation Entertainment and Vice launched a live music platform Thursday, the companies said in a joint news release. The platform will be distributed via mobile, TV and online, the release said. Vice will work on content and programming and both parties will focus on marketing and sales, it said.

After months or more of saying it was "gearing up" for 4K content delivery (see 1312160069), DirecTV pulled the trigger Thursday when it said it will become the first multichannel video programming distributor to deliver 4K VOD to customer homes when it launches Ultra HD programming Friday. With additional satellite capacity, DirecTV also plans to launch "linear" 4K TV services in 2016, an executive said Thursday at the SatCon conference in New York (see 1411130033). Its initial offering will consist of "a variety of new releases, popular films and nature documentaries in 4K," the company said in its announcement. Samsung will be its exclusive CE 4K "launch partner," DirecTV said. In addition to owning a DirecTV-ready Samsung 4K TV, DirecTV subscribers will need an Internet-connected DirecTV Genie HD DVR (model HR34 and above), DirecTV said. For more than 20 years, DirecTV "has been changing the way people watch TV as the first to move the industry from analog to digital to HD and now the ultimate TV experience with 4K TV," said DirecTV Chief Technology Officer Romulo Pontual. "The picture quality and depth of detail that 4K provides is nothing short of remarkable and we will continue to expand our 4K lineup as consumer demand grows and evolves." DirecTV chose Samsung as its launch partner because it’s "the leading brand" in Ultra HD, DirecTV said. DirecTV spokeswoman Jade Ekstedt emailed us Thursday to say she was looking into our question whether the company will use any of the brands it has trademarked -- 4KN, 4KNET and 4K Network -- to trumpet the new VOD service with Samsung. As for how long the exclusivity with Samsung will last, she declined comment, saying: "We don't publicly disclose the terms of our agreements." Until Thursday, DirecTV had declined to discuss its specific ambitions in 4K, other than to promise it will be there in a big way as it was with HD. In May, in discussing his company’s proposed buy of DirecTV, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson hailed DirecTV as having "more HD channels than anybody, and a really clear and elegant path to Ultra HD" (see 1405200030). Some 20 movies in 4K from Paramount and K2 Communications will be available at launch, including Forrest Gump and Star Trek (2009), with more titles to be announced soon, DirecTV said Thursday.

Kaleidescape signed a license agreement with NBCUniversal that will add 1,000 movie titles and 210 seasons of TV shows from NBCU to the Kaleidescape Store. The deal brings the total of titles available for download in the Kaleidescape Store to 8,500 movies and 1,600 TV seasons, Kaleidescape said. Titles included under the agreement include Bridesmaids, films from the Bourne Identity, Jurassic Park and The Mummy franchises; Despicable Me; and TV shows The Office, 30 Rock and House.

CEA President Gary Shapiro used a news conference Tuesday at the CES Unveiled New York conference to announce that CBS President Les Moonves will keynote the Brand Matters workshop at CES on Jan. 7 at 3 p.m. at the theater in the Westgate Hotel in Las Vegas. Shapiro hailed Moonves as "an innovator" who "does things differently," and is "leading his company to the next digital era." Two years ago, Shapiro blasted CBS for "practicing effective censorship over CNET’s editorial staff" when it ordered CNET to pull Dish Network’s Hopper with Sling DVR from consideration for its Best of CES awards (see 1301140063). CNET is an affiliate of CBS, which like ABC, Fox and NBC, has sued Dish in federal court seeking injunctions that would bar the AutoHop feature in ongoing litigation. When we asked Shapiro at the Tuesday news conference about the irony of inviting Moonves to keynote CES two years after blasting CBS for "denying CNET readers full access to information about an exciting innovation" in the Hopper with Sling DVR, he responded with a long answer about how he and CEA have long defended CES as "a very big tent." In retrospect, the dust-up with CBS over CNET was a "tiny issue," though CBS’s actions were "not pleasing to us" at the time, Shapiro said: "I have a personal philosophy that I never make these issues personal. I know that today we may disagree with someone, but tomorrow they’ll be our ally. That’s how we succeed in the business world." At CES, "people disagree with CEA’s position on any issue -- net neutrality, any other issue -- and we invite them to come onstage and present it," he said. "We treat them fairly and respectfully, and that’s indeed why we have over 100 associations supporting CES as our ‘allied associations,’ and their names are posted." CBS representatives didn’t comment.

Two library groups opposed extension of an e-reader accessibility waiver at the FCC requested by Amazon, Kobo and Sony that other industry stakeholders backed, according to comments and replies in docket 10-213. The Coalition of E-Reader Manufacturers, representing the three makers of the devices, had sought what it called an "ongoing extension." The Association of Research Libraries and American Library Association oppose the request. "While disabled persons already must routinely (and unacceptably) wait several years before various mainstream technologies become accessible, the proposed waiver extension would leave basic e-readers in a near-permanent state of inaccessibility," said the library groups in a filing last week. "The record contains ample evidence that basic e-readers are designed with, marketed, and used for advanced communications services [ACS]." CEA said an ongoing extension would serve the public interest by permitting the continued availability of the e-readers "while recognizing that accessible alternatives are available in the marketplace," according to its comments. There's no evidence that ACS is the primary purpose of the class of devices, said the association. The library groups disagreed, saying the products are designed for ACS, pointing to use of email and social media. The Internet Association backs the waiver extension request and the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau's Jan. 28 order saying uses like for social media aren't evidence of ACS. "Our thriving industry would benefit from the certainty that merely adding a browser does not mean that future smart, non-ACS devices will be limited by potentially product-altering, ACS accessibility regulations," said the association, which has members including Amazon, AOL, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo.

A new "wave" of media content in the form of "unbundled, long- and short-form content streamed at will and monetized through subscriptions, microtransactions and advanced advertising solutions" is overtaking the world, feeding "a new segment of content consumers that cuts across ages," said a Bain & Co. report. "These digital-savvy consumers already outnumber analog diehards, and content formats and business models created for them are quickly gaining momentum." Bain researchers canvassed more than 7,000 consumers in 10 countries in July and found that "all-digital consumption has become pervasive," said the report released Thursday. In developed economies, 63 percent of adults older than 36 watch video online, 93 percent listen to digital music and 34 percent read e-books, it said. The percentages for younger consumers are even higher, it said. "Digital content consumption is now firmly entrenched across age groups." As many as 20 percent of the consumers canvassed in the 15-18 age group "said they never use traditional media" such as a DVD or Blu-ray to watch videos, it said. That’s nearly triple the percentage of respondents over 35 who said the same thing, it said. Additional "stark differences" abound between digital natives and older consumers, said Bain. For example, "younger consumers rely more on their social networks to select media content," it said. "More than two-thirds of respondents aged 15 to 25 in developed countries said they choose video, music and books based on social recommendations, compared with fewer than half of those older than 35" who do so," it said. "Digital natives have spurred the growth of fresher-faced alternatives to YouTube, iTunes and even Facebook for consuming content, even as people over age 35 have embraced these platforms." Younger consumers "also have a different take" on data privacy issues than do their older counterparts, Bain said. In developed countries, nearly six of 10 of those 25 or younger "would forego personalized recommendations to ensure their data remains private, compared with three-quarters of adults older than 35," it said.

The Internet of Things market is expected to grow from $1.3 trillion in 2013 to $3.04 trillion in 2020, said International Data Corp. in a Friday news release. As this market, defined as a network of identifiable endpoints communicating through connectivity, continues to emerge, a variety of vendor strategies and key players will emerge to meet customers' needs as well as grow "new revenue streams from this net new market opportunity,” IDC said. In this market, vendors, service providers and systems integrators “must co-exist and integrate products and solutions to realize success,” IDC said. IDC's findings were released in its Worldwide and Regional Internet of Things Forecast Update, it said.

Overall U.S. spending on home entertainment content fell 1.2 percent in Q3 to $3.92 billion, the Digital Entertainment Group said Wednesday. That was "flat" compared with Q3 a year earlier, evidence of the industry’s "ongoing stability," the DEG said. But the Q3 decline followed a relatively healthy 2.1 percent increase in spending in Q2 (see 1408060045). Blu-ray penetration is now approaching 80 million U.S. homes, the DEG said, though sellthrough spending on all packaged goods, including DVD and Blu-ray, fell 8 percent in Q3 to $1.3 billion. Overall spending on electronic sellthrough was Q3's biggest star on a percentage-increase basis, rising 26.7 percent to $347 million and 33.2 percent for 2014's first nine months to $1.02 billion, the DEG said.

Liberty Media Corp. completed the spinoff of Liberty Broadband. Liberty Media and Liberty Broadband are now separate publicly traded companies, Liberty Media said Tuesday night in a news release.