Tremor Video is selling its buyer platform to mobile advertising technology company Taptica International for $50 million, it said in a Monday announcement. Tremor said the sale lets it focus on its video self-service platform work and gives it resources to put toward over-the-top and connected TV.

Sweet Micky and Showtime settled a copyright infringement complaint brought by the documentary production company owned by Pras Michel of the hip-hop group the Fugees (see 1701190023), with a joint dismissal (in Pacer) signed by U.S. District Judge Gary Klausner of Los Angeles entered Monday.

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology approved a Charter Communications application for modification of a two-year experimental license, giving it more sites for millimeter wave coverage testing in anticipation of 5G wireless development. In the authorization given Monday, 74 separate test sites were approved across Florida.

The public apparently agrees with Public Knowledge that media consolidation like AT&T/Time Warner threatens viewpoint diversity and tends to drive up prices for consumers, PK Senior Counsel John Bergmayer said in a statement Monday, pointing to Civis Analytics polling results showing bipartisan opposition to AT&T/TW. PK said as regulators look at AT&T/TW and Sinclair/Tribune, a top priority needs to be enforcement of antitrust principles and communications policies explicitly "designed to prevent price gouging and designed to promote diversity of viewpoints." AT&T didn't comment.

Universal Electronics’ shares closed down 4.8 percent to $62.70 Friday as positive results for Q2 were offset by Q3 guidance below analysts’ expectations. UE had Q2 revenue of $177.9 million vs. $176.5 million in the year-ago quarter, but earnings-per-share guidance was short of consensus. Dougherty & Co.'s Steven Frankel, noting accelerating revenue and growing production volume in a new China factory, said Comcast purchases will become a smaller percentage of overall revenue. He cited a growing need of MVPDs to launch next-generation set-top boxes. CEO Paul Arling said Comcast, Cox and Shaw continued to upgrade customers to the X1 platform and its voice remote and that additional operators worldwide are in design and testing stages of the company’s technology. Chief Financial Officer Bryan Hackworth said Comcast was 24.2 percent of sales in the quarter and DirecTV was 10 percent.

Control4's partnership with Comcast is based on set-top boxes and DVRs, “not necessarily” the Xfinity Home platform, said the home control company's CEO. Martin Plaehn on his company’s earnings call Thursday said Comcast’s role providing content delivery and an internet pipeline to the home is “an enormous business driving most everything there.” The "intersection with our business is meaningful," he said. On Amazon’s Alexa and connected homes, Plaehn said more than 10,000 Control4 customers use Alexa daily for home automation experiences and usage is growing "consistently."

TDS Broadband agreed to acquire Crestview Cable in Oregon, TDS said in a Friday news release: The deal adds 21,000 service addresses to the adjacent BendBroadband system acquired by TDS in 2014. The companies need FCC approval of cable TV relay service license assignment, local franchise authority approvals and other consents, a TDS spokeswoman said. They expect to get all OKs by Oct. 7 and close in early Q4, she said.

National Amusements, controlling shareholder of CBS and Viacom, should force a merger of the two, BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield wrote Friday. NA seemingly has no intentions of selling either, and the scale and size of each is such that it's unlikely acquisitions could diversify them away from their legacy businesses and the challenges in the TV advertising and cable network subscription business, he said: Failed individual CBS and Viacom efforts at mergers and acquisitions like CBS-Starz and Viacom-Scripps (see 1707310062) might have gone better if CBS-Viacom were combined. BTIG said a CBS-Viacom brings cost savings from a unified TV and film studio, removes inefficiencies, better positions the combined company for direct-to-consumer business with Viacom producing not-for-linear TV content for CBS All Access, cuts the risk of carriage disputes, helps in the pursuit of other M&A in and outside of the legacy media sector, and would give more cash flow and scale to help pursue sports rights. NA -- which backed and then called off CBS-Viacom talks last year (see 1612120060) -- didn't comment.

A National Labor Relations Board determination that CNN and Team Video Services (TVS) were joint employers of technicians who then were laid off was faulty because the NLRB standard for making that determination was inconsistent with precedent and didn't explain why precedents don't govern, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided (in Pacer) Friday. The ruling by Judges Merrick Garland, Cornelia Pillard and Brett Kavanaugh and written by Garland included a Kavanaugh partial dissent. The majority opinion said the NLRB isn't barred from finding CNN a joint employer or using a different standard for determining joint-employer relationships, but the court can't enforce that. The D.C. Circuit granted CNN's cross-petition for reconsideration on labor law violations that flowed from the joint-employer finding, but it granted the board's application and denied the Time Warner unit's petition for review on violations not dependent on the joint-employer finding. Kavanaugh said NLRB failed on finding CNN a successor employer to TVS. Kavanaugh didn't see substantial evidence that CNN hiring decisions discriminated against former TVS workers. NLRB counsel didn't comment; CNN said it's reviewing the decision.

Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray's favorite hobby is suing or threatening litigation against people making political statements he dislikes, the ACLU of West Virginia said in an amicus brief (in Pacer) Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Wheeling, West Virginia. The brief -- on behalf of HBO, Time Warner and comedy talk show host John Oliver -- was in opposition to a Murray motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction. It also asked the court to issue an order to show cause why the case shouldn't be dismissed. The snark-filled brief called the case "beyond meritless" and at one point puts a picture of Murray alongside a photo of the Austin Powers franchise character Dr. Evil and says, in response to the defamation claim that Oliver compared Murray to "a geriatric Dr. Evil," that "truth is an absolute defense." The restraining order motion (in Pacer), filed in June, sought to bar the defendants from rebroadcasting the defamatory statements subject to the Murray lawsuit and publicly discussing the substance of the litigation. The Murray plaintiffs said that after suing in June, Robert Murray, his family and employees "have been inundated" with threats and harassment and that continued publication and public access to the defamatory statements "will only enlist additional people to Defendants’ perverse 'call to action,' with additional grave consequences." Murray outside counsel didn't comment.