Small, rural multichannel video programing distributors face plenty of retransmission negotiation problems with broadcasters but don't file formal complaints with the FCC largely due to the costs of doing so and the question of how long it might take to get a resolution, said WTA, Interstate Communications and Northeast Nebraska Telephone (NNT) in an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 15-216. Often the legal costs "and economic damage from failure to reach agreement" outweigh the benefits of filing a complaint, they said, noting the FCC's review of the totality of circumstances test to good-faith negotiating. WTA and others said small, rural MVPDs "are in a vastly inferior bargaining position" with network affiliates and talks are usually of the "take it or leave it" ilk, meaning their aggregate per-subscriber retrans consent fees paid to local stations have gone up exponentially in the past 10 years. They also pushed for more transparency so the FCC could decide whether large MVPDs pay notably less in retrans consent and other programming fees than small MVPDs. WTA said some MVPDs have created a "broadcast fees" line item on consumers' bills that still complies with contractual nondisclosure obligations but gives subscribers some idea of the drivers of cable and IPTV rate hikes. Small MVPDs also have seen broadcasters seek contractual language regarding new linear cable networks that could be bought or created in the future, yet balk at retrans consent terms that reflect the costs rural pay-TV providers face when they have to engage third parties in receiving broadcast signals at their head-ends, they said. The rise of retrans consent fees and other programming costs could be slowed through such steps as a la carte pricing and allowing MVPDs to negotiate for retrans with stations outside their designated market areas, WTA and others said. The filing recapped a meeting WTA, Interstate and NNT representatives had with FCC staff, including Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake. In a statement Friday, NAB said broadcast retrans consent fees "remain just a small fraction of a typical cable bill. The fact is that high cable rates can be pegged to exorbitant set top box fees, high DVR fees, and rising fees for cable networks that are rarely watched.”

Lobbying over a coming FCC NPRM to untie set-top boxes (see 1602100036) from mostly being provided only by multichannel video programming distributors continued, filings Wednesday and Thursday in docket 15-64 and other statements showed. Allowing consumers to access content from multiple sources on one device would "limit the power of traditional content gatekeepers,” the Writer’s Guild of America, West said about coming FCC set-top box proposals in meetings this week with Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel and aides to Chairman Tom Wheeler, an ex parte filing posted Thursday said. “Seven companies (CBS, Disney, Discovery, Fox, NBCU, Time Warner and Viacom) control almost all television programming and a handful of MVPDs control how that content is distributed to consumers.” The proposals would increase consumer costs, and threaten security and copyright, NCTA said in meetings with aides to Commissioner Ajit Pai. TiVo has been providing consumers with “a competitive set-top box option for over a decade without any of the parade of horribles” listed by NCTA, TiVo said in meetings with Rosenworcel, Pai, Clyburn and aides to Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, according to an ex parte filing. Also Thursday, the Future of TV Coalition, which unveiled itself the day the FCC said the NPRM was coming, said broadcasters are opposing what the rulemaking would seek. "Big news in the AllVid debate" as NAB "went on record with deep concerns about the FCC’s AllVid proposal," the MVPD- and programmer-backed group said, citing NAB CEO Gordon Smith's comments to be shown this weekend on C-SPAN (see 1602100066). "This development is critical because the organization that is so deeply rooted in the local broadcast TV ecosystem is pulling the curtain back on the real motives and hidden costs of the AllVid rule." AllVid was something the previous FCC chairman pursued to try to let consumers access encrypted MVPD programming from sources other than pay-TV-provided set-tops, which the current FCC has said is off the table.

More than 10 terabytes of data were uploaded and downloaded inside Levi’s Stadium during the Super Bowl, said Comcast, which provided the dual 10 Gbps connections for the stadium’s Wi-Fi network. The record data consumption was equivalent to streaming 6,000-plus hours of HD video or nearly 1.2 million 2 megabyte images, the cable ISP said Tuesday. More than half of the volume was generated by the Super Bowl 50 Stadium app, which allowed users to order food, check scores and watch Super Bowl commercials and replays, it said.

The pay-TV industry isn't popular, with large numbers of people thinking the service is too expensive and its providers are "greedy," according to Harris Poll results commissioned by broadcast TV ally TVFreedom released Tuesday. Ninety-four percent of pay-TV subscribers think providers should be required to make fees easy to understand, 90 percent believe one shouldn't need to get a double- or triple-play package to get the lowest TV service pricing, 74 percent believe DVR/set-top box rental fees are too high, and 51 percent feel they have affordable, competitive choice in pay-TV providers, Harris said. Among pay-TV subscribers, it said, 21 percent said equipment rental fees are their biggest complaint, other than price, about their service, followed by poor service or connection quality. Harris also said that among all those surveyed, 86 percent believe pay-TV services are too expensive, and 77 percent believe pay-TV providers put more weight on profit than service quality. Harris said, 52 percent describe pay-TV providers as "greedy," with 22 agreeing with the adjective "unpleasant" and 18 percent with "heartless." Positive adjectives like "convenient" (26 percent) and "innovative" (13 percent) were less often selected. The poll was done online in December of 2,047 U.S. adults ages 18 and up, of whom 1,536 subscribed to a pay-TV service, Harris said. NCTA didn't comment.

Charter Communications' broadband-related commitments should be extended to 10 years in any regulatory approval of its buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, Public Knowledge said in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in FCC docket 15-149. It recapped a meeting between PK and FCC staff including Owen Kendler, who's heading the commission working team overseeing the deals' review. At the meeting, PK argued Charter's proposed broadband-related conditions aren't enough to protect the public interest, largely because their three-year span is too short. "If the purpose of such conditions is, among other things, to protect consumers by ensuring that online video has an opportunity to grow without being thwarted by cable incumbents, then any such conditions must be of a sufficient duration to allow new competition to develop," PK said. The group said it did applaud Charter's aversion to data caps, "were the commitment to be sufficiently extended." It also said it highlighted a number of public interest dangers it saw in Charter/TWC/BHN. Also armed with a litany of dangers, Stop Mega Cable Coalition members met with FCC staff to urge the agency "solve or prevent the harms" that would come with the $89.1 billion deals, said a separate ex parte filing Tuesday in the docket. Involved in the meetings were coalition representatives from Common Cause, Consumers Union, Demand Progress, Dish Network, Future of Music Coalition, Open Technology Institute, NTCA, Public Knowledge, USTelecom and Zoom Telephonics. They met with FCC staffers including front-line representatives of Chairman Tom Wheeler, and separately with members of the transaction team including Kendler and Media Bureau Director Bill Lake. The meetings were Friday, the day USTelecom announced it was leaving the coalition over a disagreement about the goal of stopping Charter/TWC/BHN, with USTelecom interested in it being approved with conditions (see 1602050056). According to the ex parte, coalition members said dangers of Charter/TWC/BHN include the potential of New Charter and Comcast acting as gatekeepers to the over-the-top market due to their high-speed broadband market share, the outsized leverage New Charter would have over small and independent programmers, and the increased power New Charter would have to block out competing modem manufacturers. In a statement, Charter said its "pro-broadband and online video friendly approach, which has won the support of industry leaders like Netflix, includes no data caps, no usage based billing, a commitment to an open internet and a generous interconnection policy." Charter also said it "continue[s] to engage with the FCC on their thorough review of the pending transactions.”

The number of TV viewing hours disrupted by retransmission consent-borne blackouts was down again in 2015, and a minuscule fraction of TV viewing hours are blacked out annually, NAB said in a filing Monday in docket 15-216. NAB's filing was to reinforce broadcasters' recent repeated assertions that the market is operating effectively and that arguments by multichannel video programming distributors and allies are overblown, as the FCC considers changes to the totality of circumstances test for good-faith retransmission consent negotiations. "While the 'crisis' alleged by the pay TV industry has no basis in reality, the appearance of a crisis ... directly serves its interest in government intervention in the retransmission consent marketplace," NAB said. Only by closing its totality of circumstances NPRM will the FCC "remove the incentives for pay TV providers to create service disruptions and thus promote the interests of viewers," NAB said. Its filing also included an analysis by BIA Kelsey Chief Economist Mark Fratrik of carriage interruptions from 2011 through 2015. During those five years, carriage blackouts affected roughly 0.015 percent of total annual hours seen in the U.S., roughly the same as in a similar look at 2006-2011, Fratrik said. "The average household is still more likely to be unable to view a local television station from electricity outages than from carriage interruptions caused by unsuccessful retransmission consent negotiations," he said. The total number of affected viewing hours in 2015 was 53 million, down from 68.5 million in 2014, which was itself down from 191 million in 2013, Fratrik said. That 53 million was about twice the 26.3 million affected viewing hours in 2011, according to Fratrik's analysis. In a separate filing Monday in the docket, NAB criticized the American TV Alliance for its use of a retransmission consent dispute between Nexstar Broadcasting and Cox Communications as reinforcing its call for totality of circumstances test reform (see [Ref:1602040041]). The two reached a new multiyear agreement Thursday, but ATVA's proposal on prohibiting blackout of marquee events -- such as Sunday's Super Bowl -- encourages broadcasters to withhold their consent to retransmission earlier but to provide that single event to be carried by the pay-TV provider, NAB said. "ATVA's own proposal therefore creates perverse incentives for broadcaster to avoid granting extensions during impasses that could expire too close to any event that might be considered 'marquee,'" it said. ATVA didn't comment.

Multichannel video programming distributor apps allow consumers to view MVPD content on multiple devices without endangering licensing and copyright agreements, said NCTA in meetings with aides to FCC Commissioners Mignon Clyburn, Mike O’Rielly and Ajit Pai last week. The “government intervention” into navigation devices “could increase consumer costs, threaten security, ignore content licensing agreements, and undermine consumer protections,” said the association in a filing posted Monday to docket 15-64. NCTA and other pay-TV programmers and distributors have opposed a coming NPRM to make it easier for non-MVPD set-top boxes to get content that's now mainly received in homes via an MVPD-provided set-top.

Fifty-seven percent of U.S. households subscribe to VOD from Amazon, Hulu or Netflix, and 48 percent of U.S. adults stream at least one of the services monthly, a Leichtman Research Group report said. Some 81 percent of U.S. households have a DVR, subscribe to Netflix or use VOD from a cable or telco provider; 30 percent use two of the services; and 13 percent use all three, Leichtman said. Seventy-seven percent of consumers 18-24 stream a VOD service monthly, compared with 63 percent in the 25-44 age group, 50 percent aged 45-54 and 23 percent 55 and over, the researcher said. The number of adults streaming from Netflix on a weekly basis is now 37 percent, up from 8 percent in 2010, Leichtman said, and 83 percent of Netflix streaming users watch their Netflix content on TV. Other findings: 64 percent of pay TV subscribers have a DVR, up from 45 percent in 2010; 65 percent of households with annual incomes above $75,000 have a DVR; and 61 percent of all cable subscribers have used VOD from their current provider. The December phone survey canvassed 1,214 adults ages 18 and older in continental U.S TV households. Margin of error is 2.8 percent.

Altice debt levels, broadband speeds and cable modem policies are among areas of interest to the FCC Wireline Bureau as it reviews Altice's plans to buy Cablevision. The agency posted its information request Thursday in docket 15-257 as it reviews Altice's planned $17.7 billion takeover of Cablevision. The bureau's seven-page request seeks a comparison of Altice's expected post-transaction debt levels compared with the eight largest U.S. cable companies and an explanations of how the deal would affect current peering policies of the two companies. Merger opponent Communications Workers of America raised the issue of post-deal debt, arguing it would result in cuts to employment and to customer service (see 1601270048). The bureau said it wanted information on Altice's plans for upgrading residential broadband speeds and how this differs from Cablevision's current upgrade plans. It asked numerous post-acquisition cable modem billing policy questions of Altice, including its plans for pricing of integrated and unintegrated modems and what the two companies' policies have been in the past regarding separate line-items on customers' bills for such modems. Modem maker Zoom Telephonics pushed for the FCC to designate Altice's Cablevision application for hearing, or for it to impose cable modem-related conditions (see 1512080013).

New Charter should be required to launch more independent channels as a condition of Charter's buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, Ride Television Network CEO Michael Fletcher and President Craig Morris told FCC Media and Wireline bureau staff and Owen Kendler, who's heading the FCC working team overseeing the deals' review, said an ex parte filing Thursday in docket 15-149. Ride executives also said the FCC should launch a proceeding about making this an industrywide requirement and look at multichannel video programming distributors "requiring 'most favored nation' treatment by programmers but not offering the same to independent programmers." Ride said large MVPDs "for the most part, have little interest in launching new, independent channels," leading to artificial constraints on consumer choice. In a statement, Charter said it "is committed to providing its customers access to diverse and independent programming and we carry more than 100 minority focused networks and offer more Spanish language programming than any other major provider. We appreciate the support for New Charter by numerous independent programmers including TV One, Baby First, RFD-TV, One World Sports, Fuse Media, Ovation, Inspire, AXS TV, The Blaze, Condista, Bounce TV, Crown Media and Reelz.”