Roku believes all TV commercials will be “targeted and measurable,” said Alison Levin, vice president-ad sales and strategy. The video streamer launched a shopper data program designed to persuade consumer packaged goods advertisers to divert more of their ad spend to streaming, it said Friday. Marketers will use such sales information to activate advertising across hundreds of channels on the Roku platform, tying exposure to in-store and online sales.
Maine's a la carte cable programming law would play havoc with existing business relationships between programmers and distributors and ultimately mean viewers have less, not more, access to content, said amicus briefs filed Thursday with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (docket 20-1104) by the MPA, WarnerMedia and Washington Legal Foundation (WLF). Maine is appealing a lower court's grant of a preliminary injunction blocking the law (see 2004300011). The state law is "a radical and surprising mandate" that's incompatible with the structure of existing licensed programming relationships between content owners and distributors and MPA members' exclusive rights under copyright law, MPA said (in Pacer). Most content wouldn't be economically viable if it were offered a la carte, and cable operators would have to stop offering all content for which they lack an a la carte license, reducing the amount of content available. WarnerMedia said (in Pacer) that the state law also is a First Amendment violation by requiring cable operators "to snip particular content out of the coherent whole in which a programmer has placed it." The WLF said (in Pacer) the lower court diverged from a plain reading of the Cable Act, which clearly says the federal government preempts state regulation of how cable TV is provided. The Maine Attorney General's Office didn't comment Friday.
Congress never intended the Cable Act to preempt states from stopping cable distributors from "bilking" residents, defendant Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey (D) said Tuesday in a motion to dismiss Charter's lawsuit challenging the state requiring prorated refunds when customers end service partway through a billing cycle (see 2005210004). "To call this 'rate regulation' barely passes the straightface test," the state filed in U.S. District Court in Bangor (in Pacer, docket 20-cv-00168). Compliance wouldn't cause operators irreparable harm, the state said in opposition to Charter seeking preliminary injunction. The cabler's outside counsel didn't comment Wednesday.
The Supreme Court denied a Comcast petition for writ of certiorari challenging a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a lower court on arbitration of consumers' complaints against the MVPD for advertised pricing of its cable TV packages (see 2004270007), SCOTUS said in docket 19-1066 this week. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday its 2019 decision takes effect immediately (in Pacer, docket 18-15288). The mandate was stayed pending the cert petition (see 2001220020).
Comcast investors rejected shareholder proposals on preparing an annual lobbying activity report and doing an independent investigation and report on sexual harassment risks, the company said Wednesday. All company proposals, including board elections and the advisory vote on executive compensation, were adopted, it said.
Comcast, Charter and Altice's combined 3.8 million mobile lines may not seem significant, but the apparent leveling off of some major wireless carriers points to the three cable companies eating into big carriers' market growth, blogged CCG Consulting President Doug Dawson Monday. Their ability to bundle mobile service with other services like broadband will likely lead to accelerating customer acquisition, he said.
Charter, Comcast and ViacomCBS will jointly and equally own the Blockgraph anonymized advertising data platform, they said Friday. Blockgraph started in 2017 and has been part of Comcast's ad technology unit, FreeWheel, but with the goal of it being a collaborative industry solution and alternative to third-party data, they said. Jason Manningham, general manager of Blockgraph under FreeWheel, will be Blockgraph CEO.
Having large cable operators continue to compile and upload attributable programming interest information to make future program access complaints easier is reasonable due to how difficult it can be to independently obtain such details, ACA Connects said in docket 20-35 Wednesday. It said the compliance burden is minimal. ACA responded to criticisms from NCTA, which didn't comment.
Viewers of Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program know it offers news but also liberal host Maddow's thoughts on that news, so a reasonable viewer wouldn't conclude her calling Herring Networks' One America News Network "really literally ... paid Russian propaganda" is an assertion of objective fact. That's according to U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant of San Diego in an order Friday (in Pacer, docket 19-cv-01713). The judge granted a motion by defendants Maddow, Comcast, NBCUniversal and MSNBC to strike Herring's defamation suit under California's Anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation law. Herring emailed us Tuesday a Friday statement that Maddow's description of his network "is demonstrably false" and it plans to appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The FCC 5-0 stood by Media Bureau decisions to add Franklin, Hart and Stephens counties in Georgia to the local markets of Atlanta's WSB-TV, WGCL-TV, WXIA-TV and WAGA-TV on Dish Network and DirecTV, in an order Wednesday. Commissioners dismissed applications for review by the licensees of WYFF and WHNS Greenville, South Carolina, WSPA-TV Spartanburg, South Carolina, and WLOS Asheville, North Carolina. The regulators said the outlets failed to prove they were aggrieved.