Charter Communications would have to be more transparent about lobbying expenditures under an item up for a vote at the April 27 shareholder meeting. In an SEC filing Tuesday, Charter said the shareholder proposal was put forth by the Service Employees International Union's Benefit Plans Master Trust and would have the company disclose policies and procedures governing lobbying, as well as its membership in and payments to "tax-exempt organizations that write and endorse model legislation."
About half of WideOpenWest's NuLink customers in the Newnan, Georgia, area had their broadband and voice services restored after last week's tornado outside Atlanta left most without service, WOW said Tuesday. It said most NuLink customers didn't lose cable service. It said commercial power hasn't been restored in some areas, needed before NuLink services can return there.
Disney+ and ESPN+ are rolling out on Comcast's X1 app and the Flex 4K streaming player. ESPN+ became available Monday on Flex via the ESPN app, with plans to launch the streaming services on X1 in the “coming weeks,” said the companies Monday.
Universal Electronics Inc. signed Instreamatic’s AI-based voice dialog marketing platform for set-top boxes and smart TVs, it said Thursday. Conversational advertisements have been largely limited to mobile; UEI wants to bring them to smart TVs and MVPDs with personalized context.
Comcast agreed to modify some wireless advertising claims that were challenged by T-Mobile, the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division said Thursday. NAD said Comcast's claim about possibly saving money when switching to Xfinity Mobile was reasonable, but it should disclose the basis of the claim. NAD said Comcast should modify some savings claims, and the company modified marketing about its 5G service after NAD raised the issue. Comcast didn't comment.
The video services market is in a “historic state of disruption and disarray,” said Parks Associates analyst Paul Erickson Thursday, saying 45% of U.S. broadband households with traditional pay-TV service are likely to switch to a virtual MVPD in the next 12 months. A Q3 Parks survey found 29% of MVPD subscribers were unhappy with the price and value of their service, and vMVPDs are targeting the segment with different bundles and value propositions, said Erickson. An “unprecedented acceleration of consumer interest in aggregators and vMVPDs” occurred in 2020, “and there’s still a lot of room to grow viewership” through content discovery, said Nic Wilson, TiVo head-customer success, who's scheduled as a panelist on Parks' virtual Parks Future of Video conference Wednesday.
Comcast will target $1 billion over the next decade, including in-kind investments, toward closing the digital divide, like supporting its Lift Zone initiative of creating more than 1,000 Wi-Fi-connected community centers by year-end. It said Wednesday it will invest in grants for nonprofit community organizations and in its Internet Essentials program.
Some 70% of U.S. households have a smart device, said Menno Koopmans, Universal Electronics Inc. senior vice president-global sales and marketing. They tend to be in different categories, creating a “fragmented” market, she told a Friday event. The key to the smart home succeeding is interoperability, Koopmans said: It's the next frontier for UEI. The company developed an Apple TV program for MVPDs built around that streaming player, and it wants to do more, said Koopmans. Colliers analyst Steven Frankel wrote investors Monday that the company is positioned to benefit from new offerings such as its Apple TV 4K remote.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied, without comment, the FCC's request to postpone the April 15 oral argument in a challenge to its cable TV local franchise authority order and put the appeal in abeyance, in a docket 19-4161 order (in Pacer) Friday. The agency didn't comment.
Discovery and monetization are challenges that streaming sports services face in the post-pandemic world, a Brightcove webinar was told Thursday. Even as fans turned to watching shows about sports in the absence of live sports, streamers, too, had a decline in time spent watching sports content, said Brightcove analyst Jim O’Neill. As live sports reemerged in the second half of 2020, more viewers turned to streaming, while traditional sports TV ratings flagged. “Traditional delivery of content, including sports, is being challenged" by desires to cut pay-TV costs and rising adoption of over-the-top video services, he said. The pandemic forced golf's U.S. Open from its familiar June slot to September, where it competed with other professional sports. “Nobody wants to go up against the NFL,” said Amanda Weiner, U.S. Golf Association senior director-digital media and ticketing. USGA's biggest challenge last year was losing the “at-work audience” that would sneak a second screen at work to watch, Weiner said. USGA launched its streaming app on Roku and Apple TV, adding Amazon Fire TV last year, to reach people "where they were," said Weiner. She said more is in the works. Livestreaming has become a critical way for USA Volleyball to reach fans amid spectator restrictions, said Chief Marketing Officer Kassidi Gilgenast. It’s a big change “to get our fans to the small screen,” said Gilgenast. USA Volleyball tried its hand at in-house streaming a few years ago but realized it needed partners, Gilgenast said. By providing a link that takes people directly to a match livestream, "we’re much more likely to convert that user, especially on the social side, to a viewer.”