Comcast added Philips Lighting to its Xfinity Home third-party product portfolio, it announced Wednesday. Adding the Philips Hue system rounds out the lighting options “for now,” with Philips joining Lutron’s Caseta switches and plug-in modules, Sengled smart LED bulbs and GE switches, Daniel Herscovici, general manager and senior vice president of Xfinity Home, told us. On the road map for iControl expansion to other markets outside of Comcast’s current cable footprint now that the acquisition is complete (see 1703090014), Herscovici said Comcast is in “active discussions” and “focused on doing things we’ve committed to.” Those include building out an IoT Center of Excellence and investing in the iControl platform “to enhance what wholesale customers can get out of the solution.”

The acceleration of cord-cutting and cord-nevering is due more to costs than virtual MVPD growth, Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge said Wednesday at a MoffettNathanson event. He said subscriber losses over the past five years are at the margins, with the bulk of customers sticking with pay-TV packages. Programmers increasingly are interested in "rekindl[ing] an affiliation" instead of just a transactional relationship, with Charter helping them sell their products, Rutledge said. He said in coming years, the cost trajectory for content "is marginally going to change to our benefit, but not much. On the edges, there's a lot of pressure on the price for content companies."

EstrellaTV's sizable white area distribution is a sign the network is home to largely undesirable programming, Comcast argued in a meeting with FCC Media Bureau and Office of General Counsel staffers. EstrellaTV parent Liberman Broadcasting countered it's a deliberate strategy. The companies Tuesday in docket 16-121 (see here and here) recapped a joint meeting with the FCC on Liberman's 2016 unsuccessful carriage complaint (see 1604080013) and current petition to reconsider (see 1609260049). Finding the EstrellaTV complaint gives it standing in white areas, even if the Media Bureau affirmed its dismissal order, would be valuable, Liberman said. It said in a proceeding before an administrative law judge it would ask that the FCC order Comcast to carry EstrellaTV on similar terms to Comcast-owned Telemundo. Liberman said nothing in the 2016 order disqualifies EstrellaTV from qualifying as a video programming vendor (VPV) under Section 616 of the Communications Act, and determining Liberman isn't a VPV would take away a tool to prevent unlawful MVPD behavior. It said the plain language of the Communications Act, FCC precedent and that EstrellaTV is distributed the same way cable network feeds are point to it qualifying as a VPV. It also argued it's similarly situated to Telemundo, with both having the same target audience and common advertisers. Yet Comcast distributes Telemundo in all of the Telemundo owned-and-operated stations and affiliate markets it serves, but carries EstrellaTV in only three EstrellaTV O&O markets, Liberman said. Comcast said the bureau should affirm its August order finding EstrellaTV isn't a VPV and lacks standing to file a program carriage complaint. It said the bureau should deny EstrellaTV's petition for recon. Comcast argued the record isn't established enough to rule whether EstrellaTV is a VPV with respect to its white area feed. It said if EstrellaTV wants to pursue that line of complaint, it should file a new one, but when looking at the existing record, EstrellaTV has no basis to assert it's a VPV for purposes of its white area feed. It said stations are EstrellaTV's primary distribution mode, so a white area feed -- serving areas outside broadcast signal range -- makes no sense. The cable firm said the Liberman demand for compensation for the white area feed "is out of step with how it is treated in the broader marketplace," since there's no evidence it gets such license fees from other MVPDs. Meeting participants were Comcast representatives including Senior Vice President-Legal Regulatory Affairs Frank Buono, Liberman representatives including CEO Lenard Liberman, and Media Bureau and Office of the General Counsel staffers.

Pay-TV's largest-ever Q1 subscriber loss is because "existing without pay TV is now viable for many," nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon wrote Monday: The cord-cutting trend is due to a confluence of issues, including more availability of premium sports programming and quality scripted shows online, increased consumer love of subscription VOD, and decreased complexity in watching since setting up a Roku or smart TV has become largely intuitive. The analyst said such cord cutting will accelerate amid increased costs of pay-TV packages.

FilmOn X is ending its two remaining appeals arguing whether streaming services are eligible for compulsory licenses for broadcast content, after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month denied the company's petition for a rehearing in a third such case (see 1705010004). In a notice (in Pacer) Monday in the 7th Circuit, FilmOn said it's dismissing its appeal of a 2016 ruling in litigation involving Window to the World Communications. In a notice (in Pacer) Friday in the D.C. Circuit, it said it was doing likewise with its appeal of a separate 2016 ruling in litigation against a number of broadcasters. Counsel for FilmOn didn't comment Tuesday.

On circulation at the FCC might be a declaratory ruling allowing cable companies to email required notice or written information to subscribers for whom the operator has a confirmed email address, a cable official told us Tuesday. NCTA and the American Cable Association petitioned the agency for such a declaratory ruling 14 months ago (see 1603080052). A Media Bureau item on that petition went on circulation last week, the FCC says. The agency didn't comment.

Kristine Faulkner, senior vice president/general manager-Cox Homelife, will deliver a keynote on smart home services at Parks Associates’ Connections conference in San Francisco May 24 at 2:15 p.m. PDT, said Parks in a Friday news release. Some 26 percent of U.S. broadband households own at least one smart home device, but increasingly the devices are bought as stand-alone devices, “with the expectation that they will all work together,” said Parks, which pegs annual U.S. smart home revenue at more than $1.3 billion by 2020.

Showtime -- one of three programmers with affiliation agreement lawsuits against Charter Communications -- is dropping its complaint against the MVPD, according to a stipulation for discontinuance posted Thursday in New York Supreme Court. Charter in the same filing said it was dropping its counterclaim seeking a series of declaratory judgments. Univision and Fox News Network are pursuing similar affiliation complaints against Charter over which contract -- with Charter or Time Warner Cable -- survived 2016's Charter/TWC deal.

Cord-cutting is accelerating, with more than half of cord-cutters canceling legacy pay-TV service in 2015 and 2016 -- a third of them in 2016 alone, The Diffusion Group (TDG) said in a news release Thursday: That acceleration is due to higher pay-TV pricing and the rise of on-demand services, it said, saying the trend is compounded by a growing number of virtual MVPDs that somewhat mirror legacy MVPDs but are also somewhat customized. TDG said most legacy operators -- Comcast a key exception -- "are rushing into the skinny-bundle trap" by offering cheaper offerings that are in turn accelerating the decline of the traditional bundle. It said legacy operators need either to "resign themselves to being a 'dumb-pipe' provider" or to invest in IP with the aim of becoming "the go-to source for all things video" -- a direction Comcast is turning.

Charter asked to file a motion to dismiss the New York attorney general’s complaint alleging it deliberately misled customers about internet speeds. The company asked to file the motion in a letter Wednesday to the New York Supreme Court, and sought a premotion phone conference in a separate letter. The motion will argue federal law pre-empts the AG’s claims, and the complaint failed to state a valid claim. The AG allegations "impermissibly interfere" with FCC regulations under the Communications Act on how broadband providers describe network performance, Charter said. The 2015 net neutrality order said broadband providers must disclose actual speeds in terms of average performance over a reasonable period and during times of peak usage, it said. The FCC oversees a speed-measurement program that gives companies a "safe harbor" for complying with consumer disclosure requirements, Charter said. “The Attorney General ignores this federal regime. ... Instead of assessing performance based on federally approved standards, the Attorney General’s allegations of deception rely entirely on alternative, unofficial measures of broadband speed that diverge from the FCC’s methodology.” The AG lacks authority to regulate broadband internet access because it's interstate, Charter said. The case briefly moved to a U.S. District Court at the ISP's request but last month, a federal judge returned the case to the state court.