Discovery Communications, in a joint venture with TEN: The Enthusiast Network (TEN), is creating an automobile content-centric TEN that combines Discovery's Velocity automotive network with TEN's automotive digital, direct-to-consumer, social and live event content, as well as TEN's Motor Trend YouTube channel and over-the-top service, Discovery said in a news release Thursday. Discovery said it will have majority control of the venture and an option to acquire 100 percent. TEN's print business won't be part of the joint venture, though the agreement will allow cross-promotion, Discovery said. The deal will see Velocity content added to TEN's Motor Trend OnDemand subscription VOD service, making it Discovery's first direct-to-consumer push, the company said. It said Discovery Chief Commercial Officer Paul Guyardo will be CEO and chairman of the joint venture, with TEN President Scott Dickey and Bob Scanlon, who will be president of Velocity and TEN Video Content, reporting to him.

Edge providers routinely engage in behaviors, like discriminating against content and throttling, that they complain are "destroying the Internet" if done by an ISP, telecom consultant Jonathan Lee blogged Wednesday. He said the argument that ISPs want a cable TV-like internet, with access to collections of sites offered like subscriptions to cable channel packages, lacks explanation of how ISPs could offer such a service or profit from it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's May en banc decision in USTelecom v. FCC (see 1705010038) said ISPs can offer curated service under Communications Act Title II regulation, but no ISP has gone that route, he said.

Pay-TV set-top box customers saved $941 million in energy costs in 2016 as a result of the industry's 2012 voluntary energy-efficiency agreement for the devices, said an annual report on the agreement released Wednesday by independent auditor D+R International. Annual energy consumption of set-tops declined 23.4 percent between 2012 and 2016, the report said. During the four years in which the agreement has been in place, consumers have saved about $2.1 billion on the energy bills and spared the U.S. 11.8 million metric tons of carbon emissions, it said. “The cumulative energy saved during this period” equals the total energy used by all the homes in Washington and Chicago combined for one year, “or the equivalent of removing the carbon emissions caused by nearly 2.5 million passenger cars for a full year,” it said.

The FCC 2016 order approving Charter Communications' buys of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks apparently contains a scrivener's error on who is to do an annual report about Charter compliance with the settlement-free interconnection condition, the buyer said in a docket 16-197 filing Tuesday. The order says the company is to submit a report from the independent compliance officer (ICO), but it surely meant from the company compliance officer, Charter said, since it wouldn't make sense for the company being monitored to submit a report to the FCC from the ICO since all other ICO reports are submitted directly to the agency. The condition as worded also makes Charter reporting on its interconnection compliance incomplete and is inconsistent with all other conditions, the company said. Charter said unless the FCC says otherwise, it will file a report from the company compliance officer and the ICO will submit a compliance report 60 days afterward.

Wisconsin man Cory Groshek, in suing Time Warner Cable and another prospective employer for Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) violations for running credit checks on him, is alleging a statutory violation totally removed from concrete harm or appreciable risk of it, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in an opinion (in Pacer) issued Tuesday. The decision by Judges William Bauer, Ann Claire Williams and Jon DeGuilio and written by Bauer said Congress in the FCRA wasn't trying to protect job applicants from inadequate disclosures that credit checks might be run but to decrease the risk job applicants unknowingly would consent to when letting prospective employers get a credit report. The judges, upholding a lower court's dismissal of the original separate suits filed against TWC and Great Lakes Higher Education Corp., also said that Groshek's signing the disclosure and authorization negates his argument he suffered a privacy injury. They said the 9th Circuit's Syed v. M-I decision earlier this year, which came up in oral argument and in supplemental briefings, was inappropriate because Syed had factual allegations from which the court could infer harm, unlike Groshek. Counsel for Groshek didn't comment.

Discovery Communications told us it doesn't anticipate its planned $14.6 billion takeover of Scripps Networks Interactive will require FCC review. It didn't comment when asked for clarification Tuesday. Some had speculated SNI might turn in its FCC licenses or that any license transfers to Discovery would be routine and not necessitate opening a docket (see 1707310062).

Comcast's arguments that assertions of racial discrimination aren't genuine aren't proper arguments to support a civil procedure motion for dismissal, said Entertainment Studios Networks and the National Association of African American Owned Media in a reply brief (in Pacer) Friday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They said Comcast arguments against an ESN/NAAAOM conspiracy claim are a red herring since they dropped that claim and are focusing on Comcast's discriminatory treatment of ESN and its owner, Byron Allen, in programming decisions. It said the few African-American-owned channels Comcast carries are exceptions and therefore evidence of its racial bias. Comcast didn't comment Monday. ESN/NAAAOM are appealing a lower court's 2016 dismissal of a racial discrimination claim against Comcast (see 1704170017) and are pursuing a similar claim against Charter Communications (see 1610260069).

Cox Communications' "sham" Digital Millennium Copyright Act defense and its attempt to obfuscate through discovery abuses drove up the cost of litigation, so it can't complain about having to bear those costs, said BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music in a supplemental principal and response brief (in Pacer) filed Friday with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Cox, fighting BMG's motion for $10.48 million in attorney's fees and $2.92 million in expenses (see 1610030005), never addresses those behaviors that caused the lower court to award fees, they said. They said Cox argued the torrent piracy lawsuit raised novel issues, but the 4th Circuit and the Supreme Court in its 2016 Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons decision rejected "novelty" as protection from avoiding fees. Counsel for Cox didn't comment Monday.

TiVo expanded its intellectual property license agreement with TCL, it said in a Thursday announcement. The deal extends to “into the next decade” and covers TCL’s Roku TVs. Separately, TCL North America obtained capability to incorporate TiVo “entertainment discovery technology” into TVs for the U.S., Canada and Mexico markets, it said. TiVo didn’t respond to questions.

Either a Discovery/Scripps Networks or Viacom/Scripps Networks combination (see 1707190015) would lead to improved advertising and affiliate fee revenue, though those improvements will take time, with the more immediate benefit likely being non-programming cost savings, wrote Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker to investors Tuesday. She said E.W. Scripps management has been clear the Scripps family isn't interested in selling its broadcast interests.