Amazon “discarded” director Woody Allen and his Gravier Productions, reneging on a multimillion-dollar deal to produce and distribute four Allen films after allegations resurfaced at the start of the #MeToo movement that he sexually abused adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow in 1992. So complained (in Pacer) Allen and Gravier Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Allen denies the sexual-abuse allegations and said Amazon hired him to “develop its nascent entertainment studio,” promising him “minimum guaranteed payments” of $68 million-$73 million, plus a box office cut and other perks. Allen wrapped the first film, A Rainy Day in New York, in 2017 and delivered it for theatrical release this year, but the movie remains shelved indefinitely, it said. After Amazon Studios and Amazon Content Services used Allen to “promote and build Amazon Studios’ standing as a full-fledged film studio," they unilaterally terminated the contract without legal grounds and “refused to honor their commitments,” it said. Amazon didn’t comment.

Spotify's buy of two podcast companies (see 1902060010) reinforces what Sonos CEO Patrick Spence calls the “sonic internet,” he told analysts Wednesday. He cited a “huge explosion” in customers’ podcast listening hours, crediting part of that to podcasts and adding Audible to the platform last year. After the company's fiscal Q1 results for the holiday quarter and projections for this quarter, Sonos shares Thursday closed down 12 percent at $10.92.

Charter Communications and California broadcaster Tara Broadcasting are at odds in federal court over whether the California Supreme Court should decide standing issues under the California Unruh Civil Rights Act. In a docket 18-56518 filing Monday (in Pacer) with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Charter said Tara's motion to certify questions to the California court is premature since merits briefing hasn't begun and misrepresents the "many reasons" a U.S. district court dismissed Tara's claims of racial discrimination in Charter not electing to carry Tara's low-power TV station on its Palm Springs channel lineup. It said California law is clear plaintiffs lack Unruh Act standing if they haven't personally experienced discrimination, and Tara's own allegation is that Palm Springs Latino and senior citizen residents are the ones being discriminated against by not getting Tara content aimed at them. Tara's motion (in Pacer) said the question of whether it has standing exclusively involves California discrimination law and needs to be referred to that state's Supreme Court for resolution. It said the lower court created a conflict in California law on when statistical evidence can be used to establish intentional discrimination under Unruh.

Amazon landed on “best of” lists Monday after it revealed its sense of humor in an Alexa Super Bowl ad. The tech giant spoofed its voice control application "fails" in a commercial called “Not everything makes the cut.” After it conveyed the true message that there are now Alexa-controlled microwave ovens, Amazon winked, showing voice control gone wrong: an actor requests a podcast from an electric toothbrush only to have the sound muffled inside the mouth; actor Harrison Ford is outplayed in a scene where his dog orders a palette of dog food by barking, repeatedly, at Alexa; a voice-activated hot tub scene recreates an event resembling the over-the-top audio and water experience of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas; and astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly are shown powering the Earth’s electrical grids off and on from the International Space Station using voice commands, an episode referred to as “the incident.”

TDS and Nexstar settled their retransmission consent dispute that caused a blackout of Nexstar stations on TDS (see 1901160042), the MVPD said Friday. TDS CEO Jim Butman called the terms "reasonable."

Comments are due April 1, replies May 1, on the state of the video description market, as the FCC prepares its report to Congress about such availability, a Media Bureau public notice said Monday. The report is due Oct. 8, and the last one was delivered to Congress in 2014, it said.

The argument that the LEC test includes a facilities requirement because of a single parenthetical reference to facilities in applicable federal law "ignores basic rules of grammar and statutory interpretation," said Charter Communications in an FCC docket 18-283 posting Monday. It said the parenthetical structure and wording makes clear Congress was discussing MVPDs other than LECs or affiliates. It said it's "perfectly logical" for Congress to put facilities requirements only on MVPDs that aren't LEC affiliated, and the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable (MDTC) is ignoring the FCC's own interpretation of "channels" as meaning programming sources rather than the physical platform over which that programming gets delivered The operator said DirecTV Now is readily available to most of Massachusetts despite Worcester Community Cable Access (WCCA) arguments otherwise since more than 80 percent of the state's households subscribe to broadband. The company is seeking a declaration of effective competition in those states based on the availability of DirecTV Now (see 1809170020). WCCA emailed that the Charter petition is "bad for our community ... has a potential to be bad for public access centers like WCCA TV, bad for free speech, and bad for an open and participatory system of government in the long run." Hawaii and MDTC didn't comment.

SiriusXM completed its $3.5 billion all-stock Pandora buyout, making it “the world's largest audio entertainment company,” it said Friday, as expected (see 1901300019). The combined company “now reaches more than 100 million people” across all its audio offerings, said CEO Jim Meyer. “That is a powerful platform for consumers, content creators and advertisers.”

Google said YouTube Music is available on all Sonos speakers, letting YouTube Music Premium or YouTube Premium subscribers play songs, albums, playlists and artist radio stations along with YouTube’s standard catalog of remixes, live performances and covers. We weren’t able to pull up YouTube through our Sonos app, and a search on the Sonos community site showed a question asking about YouTube from five months ago. A post dated “12 days ago” from a Sonos customer said: “I just discovered the Sonostube app. It plays youtube on your Sonos system.” We didn’t find an app under YouTube or Sonostube, but a Sonos spokesperson emailed us that software updates are being issued “on a rolling basis.” On whether the elevated coziness with another Google streaming service hinted at an impending release of an update for Google Assistant voice control -- expected last year -- she said: “we’ll share more as soon as we can!”

Spotify has had a “steady increase” in paying members the past two quarters, reported Consumer Intelligence Research Partners Wednesday. Some 41 percent of Spotify listeners had a Premium subscription on Dec. 31, CIRP said, and 18 percent of advertising-supported listeners began a trial subscription during the quarter, up from 13 percent in Q3. In Q4, 72 percent of trial Premium members converted to a paid subscription and 13 percent of premium customers ended their subscription, reverting to an ad-supported account or discontinuing the service. Based on responses from 500 U.S. subjects who used the streaming music service October-December, CIRP estimated Spotify’s premium membership grew 2 million subscribers in Q4.