Charter Communications will break ground early next year on a new headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, it said Tuesday. The 500,000-square-foot, 15-story building will be ready for occupancy in 2019, it said. Charter said it contracted with Connecticut developer Building and Land Technology for construction, with an option to expand the site into a two-building campus. Charter moved headquarters from St. Louis to Stamford in 2012 (see 1210040052). It said it's receiving $10 million in loans and $10 million in tax credits from the state in return for a pledge to add 1,100 headquarters jobs.

Disney and Altice reached a carriage agreement in principle and extended a deadline as they finalize terms, Altice said Sunday. The previous deal was to expire Saturday. MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson emailed investors Monday that the pact is "a very bullish sign for Disney" and should be a template for an array of ABC/ESPN affiliate agreements between now and 2022: The deal points to ESPN still having negotiating clout "and that the doom and gloom could be lifting," he said.

Legislators left little doubt Congress believed violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act would be a concrete injury, as it created a statutory damages provision that is triggered by VPPA violations, the Electronic Privacy Information Center said in an amicus brief backing a plaintiff suing ESPN over treatment of his Roku device viewing data. Judges Susan Graber, Mary Murguia and Morgan Christen of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday approved (in Pacer) EPIC's request for leave to file the brief, saying the plaintiff has standing under Spokeo to sue ESPN, which the network disputes (see 1709250050). EPIC's docket 15-35449 brief (in Pacer) said a VPPA disclosure provision violation is a per se concrete injury, and any court that demands a plaintiff prove harm atop the concrete injury Congress deemed actionable is substituting its own judgment.

The FCC needs to be sure broadcasters’ ATSC 3.0 deployment won't "disrupt consumers or impose costs and burdens on cable operators,” NCTA told commission staff in Thursday meetings, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 16-142. NCTA wants the FCC to require broadcasters “to continue to transmit a robust ATSC 1.0 signal" during the transition. “Rather than end certain key transition requirements after an arbitrary three-year period,” as NAB's Sept. 8 filing proposed, the commission “must continue to require simulcasting until it determines that conditions warrant allowing a broadcaster to no longer provide an ATSC 1.0 signal,” it said. During the move, NCTA thinks the 1.0 “simulcast stream must continue to serve the same coverage area and community of license from a ‘host’ station as it did prior to the launch of the ATSC 3.0 signal on its regularly assigned channel,” it said. “The ATSC 1.0 simulcast signal should be required to transmit the same format as before the transmission of the companion ATSC 3.0 signal, with the same programming except where technically infeasible due to the nature of ATSC 3.0.” If 3.0 signal transmissions are to be “completely voluntary,” as broadcasters have proposed, “there is no basis for allowing broadcasters to use access to an ATSC 1.0 signal to secure new carriage rights for ATSC 3.0 signals in a manner that imposes costs and hardships on MVPDs and their customers,” said the cable group. NAB didn’t comment.

Broadcasters relocating ATSC 1.0 signals during the move to ATSC 3.0 should be required to give MVPDs 90 days' notice, AT&T said Friday in FCC docket 16-142. Stations should have to provide an additional 30 days' notice if the shift happens during the repacking, AT&T said. “Relocation of broadcast stations’ ATSC 1.0 signals will result in significant and costly burdens for nationwide satellite distributors such as AT&T.” A broadcaster relocating its signal requires engineers to make physical changes to AT&T’s equipment, which is often in remote locations, it said. Difficulty is exacerbated during the incentive auction repack “given the potential need to coordinate among repacking stations, channel sharing stations, and ATSC 3.0 transition stations simultaneously and across the nation,” AT&T said. Broadcasters haven’t shown why the notice requirements requested by MVPDs are a burden, it said.

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau reminded video programming distributors, including broadcasters and MVPDs, in a public notice Thursday of obligations to make televised emergency information accessible to people with disabilities. The bureau said rules mandate emergency information in the video portion of a newscast be made accessible aurally, and that emergency information provided in the audio portion of programming be accessible via closed captioning or other visual presentation methods.

Cord cutting is accelerating, with roughly 23 percent of people surveyed who don't subscribe to a pay-TV service having been subscribers within the past 12 months but then quitting their subscriptions, up 4.8 percentage points year over year, TiVo reported Wednesday. It said of those without pay TV, 46 percent catch over-the-air broadcasts using an antenna, a trend up 12 percentage points over the past two years. Price and availability of subscription VOD services continue to be the leading reasons for cord cutting, TiVo said. It said 8.9 percent of those who subscribe to a pay-TV service switched providers in the past three months and churn is up 3 percentage points over the past three years. Comparing commonly selected a la carte channels with existing virtual MVPD offerings, the company said virtual MVPD offerings skew heavily toward sports and medium-to-large market channel offerings, indicating the virtual MVPD market can further diversify offerings without any notable increase in bundle size and that no bundle contains just core channels and most-watched channels, even though that's a bundle commonly cited as desirable by viewers. The survey of 3,069 adults in the U.S. and Canada was done by an outside party during Q2. The results show pay-TV operators can stem subscriber losses by aggregating online video services for customers, and they need to do so quickly since consumers increasingly are opting for subscription VOD over pay TV, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Wednesday.

The percentage of U.S. TV households that subscribe to a pay-TV service fell again in 2017 to 79 percent, from 84 percent in 2014, 88 percent in 2010 and 81 percent in 2004, said a Leichtman Research Group report Tuesday. The decline in pay-TV penetration isn’t only about recent disconnects, said President Bruce Leichtman. Among nonsubscribers, “about one-third subscribed in the past three years, one-third subscribed over three years ago, and one-third never subscribed," he said. Twenty-nine percent of TV households with annual incomes under $50,000 don’t subscribe to a pay-TV service vs. 16 percent with incomes above $50,000, said the report, and 30 percent of consumers that moved in the past year don’t currently subscribe to a pay-TV service, a higher level than in previous years. Thirty-nine percent of one-TV households are nonsubscribers vs. 24 percent of two-TV households and 12 percent with three or more TVs, it said. Ten percent of respondents in the August telephone survey of 1,201 adults age 18 and older planned to subscribe to a pay-TV service in the next six months, including 7 percent who never subscribed.

Fox's FX+ subscription VOD service -- which debuted earlier this month on Comcast's Xfinity platform (see 1708070022) -- also will be available for Cox's Contour subscribers starting in October, Fox said Monday. It said the complete FX Networks library should be available on FX+ in 2018.

Xfinity TV customers will be able to access cable service via the Xfinity TV Partner app on 2017 and 2018 LG webOS smart TVs beginning next year, Comcast and LG announced Monday. Subscribers will be able to watch live and on-demand programming -- including public access channels and cloud DVR recordings -- accessible from the X1 guide, without a set-top box, they said.