Mediacom withdrew a request for an FCC ruling on pole attachments that the cable operator filed Feb. 19, 2014, in docket 14-52, it said in a filing posted there Friday. The petition for declaratory ruling was yanked because the underlying wrongful death lawsuit against the pole owner, Interstate Power and Light (IPL), by the estate of a deceased Mediacom worker was recently settled, said the cable operator's lawyer, Craig Gilley of Mintz Levin, in an interview Friday. He said part of the settlement called for Mediacom to withdraw its petition. In 2011, a Mediacom employee working on a pole owned by IPL was injured and later died because of what the operator had said was the pole's structural failure. Mediacom had sought a clarification related to an indemnification clause in a pole attachment agreement between a cable operator and utility pole owner. IPL had asked the agency to make other clarifications. A lawyer at IPL parent Alliant Energy had no comment Monday.

Charter Communications’ proposed buy of Bright House Networks will move forward despite the demise of Comcast/Time Warner, said Charter and Bright House parent Advance/Newhouse in a news release Monday. “The companies have extended their good faith negotiating period for an additional 30 days under the previously announced agreement for Charter to acquire Bright House Networks for $10.4 billion.” The originally announced deal was part of the spinoffs and subscriber exchanges among Comcast, TWC and Charter under terms of Comcast/TWC, but Charter indicated shortly after Comcast withdrew the proposed deal that the Bright House deal could still happen. “The addition of Bright House brings additional scale and strategic flexibility to Charter over time” said Charter CEO Tom Rutledge.

ADT unveiled partnerships Thursday with LG and Nest for the connected home space. At its investor day, CEO Naren Gursahaney pegged ADT’s share of the residential monitored security market at 27 percent, versus Comcast at 2 percent, and Time Warner Cable and AT&T at 1 percent each. ADT said it's opening its Pulse platform to third parties with the goal of making Pulse an “open standards-based framework for the secure connected world.” The company has developed new APIs (application programming interfaces) and upgrades to the Pulse platform hoping to accelerate application development, integration and support of third-party services and devices, it said. The upgrades will allow “greater focus and continuous improvements to the Pulse user experience" on mobile, tablet and other Web-enabled devices, it said. ADT Residential President Alan Ferber said the company expects the integration with Nest to drive higher interest in the company’s Pulse automation offering. “This is just the start,” he said, citing future opportunities and other new partnerships. ADT will continue to work with partners Ford Sync, iControl Networks, IF (formerly IFTTT), Intel Security and Life360, the company said. A coming new mobile app will provide a single “intuitive” user experience that’s consistent across smartphones, tablets and PCs as part of ADT’s effort to allow “seamless integration” with the company’s new partners, Ferber said. An activity detail “like a Facebook news feed” will display a running event history showing “how the system has been used, by whom and when,” he said.

Cablevision's request for summary judgment in Game Show Network's carriage complaint against it is based on the idea that the cable operator can't be found to be engaging in discriminatory behavior “unless it permanently cripples GSN on a nationwide basis,” said the programmer in an opposition motion posted in docket 12-122 Thursday. “Cablevision is wrong.” That “contrary, toothless” reading of the Communications Act would immunize all pay-TV companies from liability, GSN said. By moving the channel from the basic tier to a sports tier, “Cablevision violated the program carriage rules in its zeal to promote its affiliated networks at the expense of a competitor,” GSN said. The operator recently said that if the case goes to trial before a commission administrative law judge, the network won’t be able to prove that Cablevision’s tiering decision involved “discriminatory intent” (see 1504300051).

Last quarter was the worst Q1 for pay-TV customer additions in the more than a decade that Leichtman Research Group has tracked this statistic, it reported Thursday. It said the 13 top U.S. pay-TV companies, with 95 percent of the market, together added fewer than 10,000 net video subscribers last quarter, versus adding more than 250,000 in the year-ago period. LRG said top cable operators lost 60,000 video customers last quarter and satellite TV lost 74,000, while top telco-TV service providers added 140,000, which was a 44 percent decrease from Q1 2014. Pay TV lost 370,000 subscribers in the past year, up about 700 percent from losses in the prior 52-week period, said the researcher. “In addition to changes in consumer demand for video services spurred by competition from alternatives, the decline of about 0.4 percent of subscribers over the past year was also driven by several providers becoming more discerning in customer acquisition and retention," said LRG President Bruce Leichtman in a news release.

Time Warner Cable's Los Angeles area sports network is widely available, just not on all multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), said TWC. Despite "much speculation" that almost 70 percent of the Los Angeles TV market can't watch the Dodgers on the network, SportsNet LA, it's "actually available" to more than 80 percent of the market's TV homes, channel owner TWC said in a Tuesday blog post. "We continue to believe in the network’s long-term value and remain eager and willing to talk to other providers for carriage, but at this point, fans will need to switch to Time Warner Cable or Bright House Networks" to watch it, said the cable operator. "We are in negotiations with all other providers," said an FAQ on the website that the blog linked to where consumers can ask their operator to carry SportsNet LA. "We are actively seeking distribution with providers in the Dodgers territory (DIRECTV, AT&T U-verse, Cox, Verizon FiOS, Charter, Comcast, DISH, etc.)." Despite "our repeated attempts," major L.A.-area MVPDs that don't carry SportsNet LA "have been unwilling to engage in any discussions," a TWC spokeswoman emailed us Wednesday. She said her company and Bright House Networks are the major pay-TV companies in the area distributing the network. Cox Communications remains "open to carry the network at flexible terms and reasonable pricing that doesn't overburden our entire customer base," a spokesman said. "We've also long said that we have been approaching a tipping point with sports programming costs and the [L.A.] market has shown we have reached it." Dish Network is "interested in carrying high quality content at an appropriate value," said a spokesman. "If that balance can be struck, we are willing to consider it.” Verizon has had talks about carrying SportsNet LA, "and there remain some significant differences," a spokeswoman said. "We are looking for a more customer-friendly model: for example, one that is driven by a customer's willingness to pay for or watch the channel." Comcast isn't in that market, a spokeswoman noted. Other MVPDs cited in TWC's SportsNet LA FAQ had no comment.

The FCC shouldn’t adopt a rebuttable presumption of effective competition for all cable companies, a group of broadcasters and the National Hispanic Media Coalition said in separate meetings with agency staff, according to filings posted in docket 15-53 Wednesday. Representatives of ABC, CBS, Disney, Fox and NAB said the proposed rule is unlawful. "It is odd, indeed, for the FCC to go far beyond what Congress just instructed it to do; namely, make mere administrative changes for small cable operators,” the broadcasters said. Changing the rule and taking all cable beyond rate regulation could be “disastrous” for Latinos, said NHMC, since it could lead to higher cable rates. NAB has argued the rule change could lead to cable companies no longer having to place local broadcasting on the basic tier. That’s a concern for Latinos as well, NHMC said. “If cable operators are allowed to move Latino programming to more expensive cable tiers, it is very likely that viewership and revenues of Latino networks would drop, making it more difficult to finance and produce programming that serves Latino audiences.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit should affirm the FCC’s decision not to reopen Tennis Channel’s carriage complaint against Comcast, already decided by the court in the cable giant’s favor, the FCC said in a motion for summary affirmance filed Wednesday in response to the Tennis Channel’s March petition for review of the FCC decision. “The Commission correctly determined that ‘Tennis Channel had a full and fair opportunity to litigate its complaint’ -- both before the agency and on judicial review,” the FCC filing said. Tennis Channel had argued that the Comcast decision against it had created a new test for when a company is being discriminated against and asked the FCC to reopen the proceeding so it could submit new evidence to fulfill that test. The FCC disagreed that the court had intended for the case to be reopened. “Context” doesn’t suggest “that the Court intended the Commission to conduct remand proceedings to revisit the question whether evidence of unlawful discrimination exists -- on either the existing record or a new one,” the FCC said. Since the court and the FCC have already ruled on the matter, the D.C. Circuit should affirm the commission’s ruling to bring the proceeding to a close, the FCC said.

Another group opposed an FCC rulemaking that proposed to give cable operators nationwide effective competition deregulation (see 1505060051) unless local franchise authorities (LFAs) demonstrate otherwise, saying that would "unfairly burden" LFAs. The group, Consumer Action, cited cable rate increases that have outpaced inflation. It said the commission should at least "slow down and carefully consider how these rule changes could affect consumers." There's "no reason to rush through" the congressionally mandated proceeding to streamline the effective competition process for small cable operators, said the group in a filing posted Monday in docket 15-53. Agency and industry officials and the NPRM itself say the 2014 Satellite and Television Extension Localism Act Reauthorization Act requires the revamp of at least the small-operator effective competition rules by June 2 (see 1505070046).

The FCC needs to ensure that the Downloadable Security Technical Advisory Committee “results in solutions that enable robust competition among retail and operator-leased navigation devices,” said a letter Monday to Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake and the FCC staff on the DSTAC from several committee members and non-member companies and groups, including Amazon, CCIA, Free Press, Google and Public Knowledge. That comes after a letter sent by multichannel video programming distributors in April, which opposed Public Knowledge and TiVo's efforts on the committee. “Limiting the DSTAC’s scope to downloadable security alone, without reference to the committee’s broader mandate of furthering the competitive availability of navigation devices, would result in a walled-garden approach” that doesn't promote ”vigorous competition and innovation,” the new letter said. It responded to MVPD complaints that PK and TiVo are trying to make the group's product resemble CableCARD. “Congress recognized that the FCC and the private sector need to enhance functionality like that provided by CableCARD,” Monday’s letter said. “The DSTAC’s final recommendation should avoid moving backward, by ensuring the ability of retail navigation devices to offer differentiated and innovative user interfaces, search functions, and recording and cloud functionality.” The FCC should “focus not on specific services or commercial arrangements, but on the features and choices available to consumers,” the letter said.