Comments are due Oct. 26, and replies Nov. 2, on EchoStar's petition for a waiver that would let it import and sell AirTV, an Internet-enabled set-top box that doesn't include an analog tuner, the FCC Media Bureau said in a public notice Wednesday in docket 16-329. The PN said FCC rules require that through Aug. 31, 2017, TV broadcast receivers must be capable of receiving all channels allocated by the FCC to the TV broadcast service. In its petition filed last week in docket 12-1, EchoStar said AirTV was made for use with applications running on mobile devices and will offer access to digital HDTV content broadcast over the air and is aimed at the "cord cutter" market. It also said since the FCC is sunsetting in 2017 its requirement that all over-the-air digital tuners include over-the-air analog tuners, there's no reason to think allowing AirTV less than year before that sunset 'would frustrate the limited remaining lifespan of the rule or otherwise harm consumers."

The average monthly cost of basic cable went up 2.3 percent, to $23.79, during the 12-month span ending Jan. 1, 2015, and the bill for expanded basic service went up 2.7 percent, to $69.03, the FCC Media Bureau said in its latest annual Report on Cable Industry Prices, posted Wednesday in docket 92-266. The bureau said expanded basic rates were higher due at least in part to cable operators providing more channels; the average price per channel for expanded basic service meanwhile went down 1.8 percent, to 46 cents per channel. Between 2005 and 2015, the price per channel dropped 1.4 percent on an average annual compounded basis, the bureau said. When comparing communities with a finding of effective cable competition vs. those without, the cost of expanded basic service was seen going up on average 2 percent to $70.31 in the former and 3.3 percent to $67.85 in the latter, the bureau said. And during that year span, it said, prices per channel dropped 0.6 percent in communities without effective competition to 49.7 cents per channel, while they dropped 3.3 percent in effective competition communities to 41.2 cents per channel -- the result of cable operators in effective competition communities carrying more channels on expanded basic lineups than operators without effective competition. Basic and expanded basic costs and rates of increase also varied by the type of competition the cable operators faced, according to the survey. The cost for basic ranged from $20.06 a month when the effective competition was from a rival cable operator in a cable overbuild area, to $25.57 when cable operators either have competition from wireless operators offering pay-TV service or themselves serve fewer than 30 percent of households in a service area, according to the survey. The average cost for expanded basic, meanwhile, ranged from $69.46 when the effective competition was from the incumbent operator in a cable overbuild area, to $74.05 when the competition was from a rival in that overbuild area. The bureau said the data came from a random survey of 800 cable operators.

Amblin Partners will get access to Alibaba's online streaming platform Youku Tudou, its over-the-top provider Tmall and its e-commerce marketplaces, as part of a deal the two announced in a news release Sunday. It said Amblin and Alibaba agreed to co-produce and finance films for global and Chinese audiences and to work jointly on marketing, distribution and merchandising of Amblin Partners films in China. Alibaba also is acquiring a minority stake in Amblin, with an Alibaba representative joining the Amblin board, they said.

While cable has big opportunities in wireless, investors are "so single-mindedly focused" on Charter Communications' 2019 and 2020 cash flows that anything that could disrupt its free cash flow per share -- such as capital spending on wireless -- "could trigger disappointment" among those same investors, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett wrote investors Tuesday as the firm downgraded its rating of Charter to "neutral." He said cable -- now enjoying a contraction of regulatory pressures with the FCC reversing itself on business data services and set-top boxes -- likely will face a relatively quiet regulatory front after the election until at least early 2017. Charter didn't comment.

More than just an ancillary revenue stream, over-the-top video is maturing into a major revenue opportunity and key brand-building tool, said a survey of TV stations, pay-TV operators, programmers, TV service providers, new media and other firms released Friday. Akamai underwrote the survey, which said 45.6 percent have launched an OTT service, 10.3 percent plan to launch in the next quarter and 35.4 percent plan to launch in the next year. Sixty percent have begun or plan to begin a subscription-based service, it said, though subscriptions aren't as popular as advertising as a revenue-generation model. While 59 percent of the average OTT library is HD video, that's expected to grow to 71 percent within a year. End-user features like search recommendations are on the rise, it said. On-demand delivery is the main mechanism for delivering video from 79 percent of the surveyed OTT providers, with 65 percent offering live linear content such as sports and events, according to the survey; 44 percent plan to support downloading for offline viewing.

Despite the magnitude of Hurricane Matthew, the storm shouldn't materially affect the financial positions of Comcast or Disney, Moody's said in notes to investors Thursday. It said Comcast has millions of subscribers in Florida and along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts, but only a portion of the Florida subscribers are directly exposed to the storm. It said that because Comcast's theme park holdings in Orlando generate less than 5 percent of revenue, and the storm is coming during the off-season, the loss of a few days of operation isn't expected to be significant to overall revenue and cash flow. Parks and resorts generate 31 percent of Disney's annual revenue, but Orlando's Disney World is only a portion of that, Moody's said.

Turner's FilmStruck subscription VOD service FilmStruck will go live Oct. 19, the company said in a news release Thursday. FilmStruck will focus on art house, indie, foreign and cult films, including the streaming Criterion Collection library. Cost will be $6.99 a month or $10.99 for FilmStruck and the Criterion content.

Over-the-top video offerings face a particularly steep demand curve, with demand dropping sharply as prices increase, which creates a problem considering the estimated programming costs faced by Hulu as it looks to launch a virtual multichannel video programming distribution service next year, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett wrote investors Thursday. Meanwhile, the most likely subscribers for more-expensive OTT services aren't the target audience of cord-cutters and cord-nevers but households looking to trim their monthly pay-TV spending, the result being cannibalization, Moffett said. "On an absolute basis, 10 million subscribers could be perceived as a very successful launch ... but that success could be cold comfort if it's achieved only by accelerating traditional Pay TV subscriber losses by 7.3M." Cord cutting is more prevalent -- and accelerating fastest -- among younger viewers, but older viewers are more likely to pay for an OTT service, he said, saying a "sweet spot" of $40-$45 monthly might be optimal but pricing at that level might not be feasible.

A federal court again shot down litigation against Comcast by Entertainment Studios Networks (ESN) and the National Association of African American Owned Media (NAAAOM) alleging racially motivated carriage discrimination. In three-page order (in Pacer) Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter of Los Angeles said the court made clear in its previous dismissal of the first amended complaint (see 1606100017) plaintiffs' benchmarks showing demand for ESN channels were ambiguous and didn't rule out Comcast's argument that it had a legitimate business reason to refuse to contract with ESN. But the second amended complaint "merely provided the Court with different opaque benchmarks" and doesn't include any new facts that point to racial discrimination as the cause of Comcast's decision not to carry ESN content, Hatter said. He noted the court said in the dismissal of the first amended complaint if the second amended complaint has pleading deficiencies, it would be dismissed with prejudice, and said the deficiencies "have not been cured." "We properly pleaded a claim for racial discrimination in contracting under section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act, based on Supreme Court and 9th Circuit law," plaintiffs' counsel Skip Miller of Miller Barondess emailed us Thursday. "We are going to appeal and get this decision overturned, and the case will be reinstated. Then, we will go forward with discovery and trial." Plaintiffs are pursuing similar litigation against Charter and related complaints against the FCC (see 1601280063). In a filing (in Pacer) Monday in opposition to a Charter motion to dismiss, plaintiffs called the Charter motion "strong on invective but ... weak on the facts and the law." It said race-neutral reasons don't explain Charter's not contracting with ESN, and pointed to supposedly racially biased comments by Charter executives (see 1608120028) as not being stray, but constituting proof of discriminatory intent. In its motion (in Pacer) to dismiss in September, Charter said the first amended complaint is just the latest in ESN/NAAAOM's "cynical objective ... to force the distributors to carry the channels," but it fails to state a claim.

NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures and some production companies expect to have settlements worked out by month's end with parking lot attendants suing for being denied minimum wage and overtime pay. In a memo endorsement (in Pacer) filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, counsel for the plaintiffs and for NBCUniversal et al. said they reached a settlement in principle in July for a pair of lawsuits and have been working since then to finalize it. They also said a proposed settlement agreement should be submitted for preliminary approval by Oct. 28. Also named as defendants in the NBCUniversal suits were Bluegrass Films, Fuzzy Door Productions, Davis Entertainment, Woodridge Productions and Entertainment Partners. CBS and other production companies being similarly sued said in July they were discussing potential resolution (see 1607280059).