Cable’s 600,000 subscriber losses in Q1, down 4% year on year, look “positively gentle” compared with overall traditional pay TV's 1.8 million losses (7.6%), also a record, MoffettNathanson reported. Pay-TV penetration is at 1995 levels, with as many nonsubscribing households as subs in 1988, the analysts said Friday. More distressing is where those customers didn’t go, wrote analyst Craig Moffett. VMVPDs, once viewed as “the last line of defense for cable networks, imploded in Q1,” and Moffett estimates the vMVPD category lost about 341,000 subscribers. Sony’s half a million PlayStation Vue service customers appear to have gone “nowhere” after the service shut down in January; AT&T TV Now, Sling TV and fuboTV lost subs, he said. Disney’s Hulu Live TV appears to “have hit a wall” after price increases, growing by about 100,000, “an abrupt deceleration from their recent torrid growth,” said Moffett. Numbers will drop this quarter, with sports off the air and unemployment taking hold, Moffett said. Combined traditional and vMVPDs subscriptions are shrinking 5.3% yearly, also setting a new low. Q1's sub loss "was hardly a surprise. No one has tried harder to avoid this outcome than ACA Connects and" its MVPD members, emailed the association's spokesperson. "Programmers and broadcasters have only themselves to blame. They demanded untenable rate increases year after year, forcing MVPDs to provide their customers with dozens of programming channels they didn’t want." The cost for "pay TV programming is four times higher than local TV, even though broadcast ratings dwarf that of cable," emailed an NAB spokesperson. He cited SNL Kagan data. NCTA didn't comment on MoffettNathanson's predictions. COVID-19 is stoking the cord-cutting trend, said Moffett, and even the return of sports is unlikely to bring back pay-TV customers who left traditional or vMVPDs. “The underlying causes for the defections are not transitory,” he said, raising the possibility of a “rapid death spiral for the entire category.”

More ViacomCBS networks join the YouTube TV lineup under an agreement announced Thursday: BET, Comedy Central, MTV and others. The deal covers continued carriage of CBS stations and CBS Sports Network, The CW and others.

Content companies alleging video piracy by IPTV service Nitro TV (see 2004060063) got a default judgment against named defendant Alejandro Galindo after he failed to plead or otherwise defend, said a clerk order (in Pacer, docket 20−cv−03129) entered Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

NBCUniversal’s free Peacock service will be available on Apple devices July 15, it said Wednesday. The streaming service will be integrated with the Apple TV app, giving customers a “seamless” watching experience across Apple devices, including integration with Siri for content search. They will be able to sign up via the Peacock app on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple TV. Peacock Premium will be $5 monthly.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit combined challenges to the FCC's C-band order from satellite truck operator PSSI Global Services and small satellite operators ABS Global, Empresa and Hispasat, in an order Monday (dockets 20-1143, 20-1146 and 20-1147, in Pacer). An appeal was expected (see 2003020032). PSSI's petition for review (in Pacer) said the order is "an existential challenge" to the band's occasional users and mobile users because demand for programming they deliver won't change, but available bandwidth will be reduced by 60%. It asked the court to vacate or reverse and remand the order. The satellite operators said (in Pacer) the order doesn't replace their lost C-band spectrum or reimburse them, contrary to past agency approach in spectrum reallocations, but "simply confiscates their spectrum and calls the result a mere license 'modification.'" They asked the order be reversed and vacated. The satellite operators also filed a protective petition (in Pacer) for review. The FCC didn't comment Tuesday.

Sony Pictures committed to release “hundreds” of titles in the Imax Enhanced format over the next two years, expanding its agreement with DTS. At least 100 titles will be available over the next 12 months, said the companies Monday, and “hundreds” more are expected in following years. Imax Enhanced is available on four streaming platforms in 14 countries and across 17 CE brands. DTS and Sony also developed Imax Mode for residential viewing.

TV broadcaster Howard Stirk Holdings agreed to pay $100,000 for violating FCC retransmission consent good-faith negotiation rules, said a Media Bureau consent decree Friday. The settlement involves an FCC ruling of violations of good-faith rules by several broadcasters that -- like HSH -- operate sidecar stations with Sinclair (see 2001170038). Deerfield Media and other broadcasters found in violation filed an application for review of the ruling, but HSH didn’t join in that appeal. The stations “refused to negotiate, unreasonably delayed negotiations, and failed to respond to proposals,” said the order. “The Bureau explained that the AT&T Order “constitute[d] only a partial resolution of this matter” and “reserve[d] the right to take enforcement action proposing a forfeiture” against the station groups, including HSH,” said a footnote. HSH agreed to admit violating good-faith rules and institute a compliance plan that includes the requirement that it engage independent counsel during retrans negotiations for the next three years to advise it on compliance.

The COVID-19 pandemic began hurting Comcast business operations in Q1, but bigger effects are expected in Q2, the company said Thursday, announcing Q1 results. Cable and broadcast advertising, already down, will be weaker in Q2 due to canceled sports programming and a weak economy, said Chief Financial Officer Mike Cavanagh. Film revenue will be down heavily in Q2 and Q3, as tentpoles like Fast and Furious and Minions sequels move to 2021, he said. Residential broadband and enterprise trends are better than feared, New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin wrote investors. Pivotal Research's Jeffrey Wlodarczak said 2020 is "a wash [with] a return to relative normalcy for cable in ’21." He said the cable business should have slower growth this year and "a nice rebound in '21 while NBC and Sky will have an ugly ’20 [and] return to normalcy by ’22." For the quarter, Comcast revenue was $26.6 billion, down 0.9%. Filmed entertainment revenue was down 22.5%. Comcast said since March 1, upstream traffic has grown 33% and wireless data use over Wi-Fi is up 40%. It said 95% of its call center employees are working from home. Comcast ended Q1 with 19.9 million residential video subscribers, down 950,000 year over year; 26.9 million residential broadband customers, up 1.4 million; and 9.8 million residential voice customers, down 250,000. It has 2.27 million wireless subscribers, up 862,000.

The FCC approved a reorganization of the Media Bureau, combining the Engineering Division with the Industry Analysis Division, as expected (see 2004010038). The order was approved with Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel concurring. No statement was provided explaining her issues with the order. A Rosenworcel aide told us the commissioner didn't think now was a good time to be disbanding the Engineering Division. The reorganization resulted from the creation of the Office of Economics and Analytics, which moved staff from IAD to that new division, the order said. “The key objectives of this organizational change are to more efficiently deploy Commission resources, enhance the Bureau’s understanding and analysis of the media industry, and rationalize and modernize our organizational structure.”

Sonarworks unveiled a desktop computer application to personalize headphone sound. Over 2020, users will be able to take their SoundIDs to mobile devices and across streaming, social or music database platforms and devices to ensure a “consistent personalized sound experience,” said the company Tuesday: The SoundID profile is stored in the cloud and can be used to connect to different enabled devices.