Overall consumer spending on over-the-top services in the U.S. will likely peak in 2019 at $130.3 billion, and then decline to $125.7 billion by 2022, with established multiservice operators like Comcast and AT&T still commanding more than 80 percent of the revenue in 2022, Strategy Analytics reported Wednesday. It said annual revenue growth for emerging OTT players like Netflix and Amazon will fall to 4.4 percent by 2022.

NCTA and the American Cable Association have no objection to Form 3 cable systems -- those having semi-annual “gross receipts” more than $527,600 -- paying a separate per-telecast sports surcharge royalty atop the other royalties payable by cable systems under Section 111 of the Copyright Act, they said in a joint filing to the Copyright Royalty Board. Tuesday was the deadline for comments on the proposed CRB rules change.

Cable operators will enjoy reduced costs from FCC amendment of rules to allow companies to send annual notifications via email (see 1706190074), the American Cable Association said in a statement Tuesday. It said the declaratory ruling will have environmental and consumer convenience benefits. It and NCTA petitioned for the rule change (see 1605270023).

Cable's broadband growth may be slowing just as video should come under pressure from over-the-top substitution, with pricing then becoming a chief tool of the cable industry, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett Tuesday wrote investors as he downgraded outlooks for Comcast and the cable sector to neutral. He expects pay-TV subscriber declines of 3.2 percent this year, followed by 2.9 percent declines in 2018 and 2019, and 3.3 percent in 2020. The analyst said cable will continue to take market share from satellite, but those gains won't be enough to get the industry back to positive subscriber growth. Moffett said linear-TV providers, pushed by virtual MVPD competition, will increasingly negotiate rights to offer skinnier programming bundles, which will erode gross video profit per customer. He said cable is facing a broadband market that's nearing full penetration. Comcast didn't comment.

Conditions are being suggested for Liberty's proposed buy of General Communication Inc., including a five-year commitment to charge end users "reasonable and non-discriminatory prices" that approximate competitive outcomes, and mandatory service restoration agreements on reasonable commercial terms with other Alaska carriers. Monday was the deadline for comments and petitions in FCC docket 17-114 on the $1.12 billion deal, with replies and oppositions to petitions due July 5 (see 1705220015). GCI's "stranglehold on middle-mile facilities and its resulting effect as gatekeeper on competition ... is of concern and ... the proposed transaction cannot be permitted to exacerbate" it, said fiber network operator Quintillion in its petition to deny posted Tuesday. Along with the five-year commitment, Quintillion suggested the FCC condition approval on the agency adopting reporting requirements to verify direct and indirect federal spending aimed at promoting broadband and telco services in Alaska. It also urged conditions that GCI use a defined percentage of federal Alaska Plan grants and loans for developing middle-mile operations connecting unserved areas, and that for at least five years GCI offer wholesale transport services at commercially reasonable speeds on federally funded or subsidized middle mile facilities to unaffiliated providers at reasonable pricing and on a nondiscriminatory basis. It recommended the FCC bar GCI from over-subscription and throttling that materially degrades performance. Alaska Communications Systems' petition to deny recommended service restoration agreements and said the deal should be predicated on GCI, over the next five years, using any direct or indirect federal support it receives at least partially toward more middle-mile infrastructure linking rural communities with existing networks. ACS said the deal should be conditioned on a requirement any GCI infrastructure that relies on federal support be subject to common carrier requirements including that access be available on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms. GCI didn't comment Tuesday.

The number of senior citizens with smartphones is climbing, but that hasn't translated into less TV watching and more online video viewing by those seniors, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Sunday. Pointing to Pew data, nScreenMedia said between 2011 and 2016, smartphone penetration among people 65 and older went from 11 percent to 42 percent, and 32 percent of seniors were using a tablet last year. But Nielsen data shows that although video usage has doubled in the past year among 50-plus smartphone video viewers, seniors still watch only 50-some minutes a week on the devices, suggesting seniors "are snacking on short form content ... not watching long-form video." TV watching among the demographic shows no sign of abating, Dixon said, with seniors using a connected TV watching 370 minutes of TV a week up 16 percent year over year.

WideOpenWest's move from a video focus to being broadband-centric should drive financial results, analysts wrote investors Monday as they initiated coverage after WOW's initial public offering last month. Credit Suisse's Omar Sheikh said its high-speed data business will be powered in part by WOW's fiber network, its edge-out investments to expand its footprint and its ability to lure business customers from telco incumbents. He said WOW's chief risk is Comcast and Charter Communications price competition. Macquarie's Amy Yong said lesser regulatory restrictions faced by overbuilders like WOW give it the ability to jump on growth opportunities in and adjacent to its footprint. Yong said margins should improve as video penetration declines and high-speed data rises. She said WOW's competitive edges include "local-level flexibility" that lets it compete against telecom and cable pricing, with WOW typically pricing about 10 percent below multi-service operator competitors. Raymond James' Frank Louthan said the company "has a significant opportunity to pursue additional customer acquisitions through relatively low risk, edge-out opportunities."

Liberty's proposed buy of General Communications Inc. is an opportunity to review GCI's commitments under the Alaska plan and consider how they might be revised, Alaska state Rep. David Guttenberg (D) said in a letter posted Monday in FCC docket 17-114. He said Alaska's plan for broadband-oriented USF support to fixed and mobile providers approved in 2016 (see 1608310067) doesn't do enough to expand access "to reliable, reasonably priced broadband services," and multiple remote communities still have no access to mobile cellular service. GCI didn't comment.

AT&T is giving away Roku Premieres to new DirecTV Now subscribers, it said in a news release Thursday. The Premieres are for subscribers who prepay for two months, it said. AT&T Entertainment Group Chief Marketing Officer Brad Bentley said the Roku deal is aimed at facilitating cord cutting "by eliminating up-front cost and providing [consumers with] a cost effective solution to stream the content they crave from their living room couches."

"A huge chasm" sits between the allegations Entertainment Studios Networks and the National Association of African American Owned Media (ESN/NAAAOM) brought in their original complaint and the description of that case in their appellate brief (see 1704170017), Comcast said in an answering brief (in Pacer) filed Wednesday in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Calling the appellate brief "an outlandish conspiracy theory," Comcast said ESN/NAAAOM never tried to explain why the MVPD would carry networks largely owned by African-Americans while discriminating against solely African-American-owned networks like ESN, with that "contrived racial category only reinforc[ing] the implausibility of [ESN/NAAAOM] contentions." Comcast said the appeal, having largely abandoned the allegations of the original complaint, now focuses on "a single stray" remark that wasn't part of the operative complaint. And it said the First Amendment gives it editorial discretion to decide which networks to offer. Counsel for ESN/NAAAOM didn't comment Thursday. Charter Communications also has an appeal before the 9th Circuit of a lower court's 2016 rejection of its bid to have a similar ESN lawsuit against it thrown out (see 1610260069).