Content companies oppose a proposal by RCN and the American Cable Association for conditions on court approval of AT&T's proposed buy of Time Warner. In docket 17-cv-02511-RJL Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, CBS, Disney, 21st Century Fox, Univision and Viacom filed a motion (in Pacer) to intervene or for leave to file an amici curiae brief in support of neither part. The content companies said they want to oppose the RCN/ACA proposal (see 1805150002) because of it requirement that rival MVPDs trying to arbitrate a dispute over access to New AT&T programming give New AT&T rates and terms agreements for content from other programmers. That proposed condition would give New AT&T access to the content companies' competitively sensitive agreements "despite the fact they are not at issue in and are unrelated to the harms complained of" by RCN and ACA, the content companies said. In a statement, ACA said there's no evidence similar commercial arbitration terms that DOJ and the FCC have used in the past have hurt programmers. "Just as the court rejected their earlier effort to deny access to this key information as evidence in the DOJ's case against AT&T/Time Warner, it should do so again here. Failure to do so would cut the heart out of the arbitration process by so limiting the information that it is discoverable that no party would utilize it. Neutering the arbitration process may serve the private interests of these programmers, but not the public interest." Judge Richard Leon expects a decision June 12 (see 1804300020).

Pandora sealed its AdsWizz purchase (see 1803210027), the acquirer said Tuesday, for $66.3 million in cash and 9.9 million shares of Pandora common stock. An additional $5 million in cash is payable for completion of milestone provisions, it said. AdsWizz will operate as a stand-alone subsidiary, led by AdsWizz CEO Alexis van de Wyer. She said the company will continue to provide its platform to “our publisher partners everywhere” and be "accessible to all.” Reporting on Pandora’s Q1 earnings earlier this month -- after a drop-off in ad revenue from $223 million in Q1 2017 to $215 million this year -- CEO Roger Lynch underscored the streaming music company’s focus on its ad-supported business. He said the company is looking to grab a “significant” portion of the $28 billion global radio advertising market, seeing an opportunity to steal ad dollars from terrestrial radio.

Sharing C-band spectrum with mobile wireless services isn't feasible due to likely harmful interference with the public radio satellite system's low-power downlinks, and alternatives to satellite delivery such as fiber or terrestrial alternatives are cost prohibitive and don't reach some of the country, NPR told aides to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, said a docket 17-183 filing posted Friday. The public radio programmer raised concerns before at the FCC about plans for clearing part of the C-band (see 1805040019). A separate filing Friday recapped a meeting SES CEO Steve Collar and Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler had with Commissioner Mike O'Rielly on their C-band clearing plan. The companies urged the FCC to back the idea.

The Federal Election Commission should allow online platforms flexibility in disclosing the financing origin of political advertisements, Internet Association CEO Michael Beckerman told the agency Tuesday. The FEC is considering two proposals for reforming online political ad disclosure rules. Groups like Common Cause argued for the stricter proposal requiring paid-for-by disclaimers (see 1805250032). IA supports a proposal that would link political ad information on separate pages, preserving flexibility and innovation, regardless of the device, Beckerman said. Adaptive disclaimers “allow for innovation and experimentation in the advertising, while also giving transparency and clarity to consumers,” Beckerman said. Civil rights groups -- including Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Color of Change and National Hispanic Media Coalition -- said the commission should apply the stronger, “full disclosure requirements” that currently apply to radio and TV ads, and adaptive disclaimers should be allowed only “as a last resort.” Public Knowledge Policy Counsel Allie Bohm sided with Common Cause, saying the first proposal "provides voters with clearer information about the election ads they see online."

Forcing analog-only cable systems to comply with the audible crawl rule would have forced financially marginal systems out of business, American Cable Association President Matt Polka said Tuesday, applauding Friday's FCC Media Bureau order granting an ACA-sought waiver for such analog systems. The bureau said analog-only systems that eventually transition to digital technology will have the ability to pass through a secondary audio stream with audible emergency information and will be obliged to do so by the audible crawl rule, and those that remain analog-only will have longer business lives due to the permanent waiver. The order extended for five more years the existing waiver given to TV broadcasters requiring they aurally describe visual but non-textual emergency information; that waiver had been sought by NAB, the American Foundation for the Blind and American Council of the Blind (see 1803230067). The bureau said the waiver, now running to May 26, 2023, recognizes that the broadcast industry doesn't have a good option for ensuring good descriptions of images and dynamic video conveying visual emergency information over existing broadcast systems.

El Centro, California, can't show Charter Communications' actions weren't consistent with the terms of service the city accepted as a cable subscriber, the MVPD said in a docket 18-cv-00785-AJB-PCL reply (in Pacer) in support of its motion to dismiss El Centro's complaint alleging violations of the California False Claims Act (see 1805170002). The reply, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Diego, said El Centro also can't dispute it kept accepting Charter video service while knowing two Northwest Broadcasting local stations were blacked out, so it can allege a false claim or material representation. Charter also said its terms of service don't promise a particular channel lineup, reserving the discretion to modify channel lineups. The city's outside counsel didn't comment Thursday.

The FTC said it moved to block a "Florida-based scheme" from targeting small businesses with deceptive robocalls claiming to be from Google. The agency May 7 filed a complaint, approved 2-0, against Pointbreak Media and related parties in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, which issued a temporary restraining order May 8, said a release Wednesday. Defendants allegedly deceived "small business owners by falsely claiming to represent Google, falsely threatening businesses with removal from Google search results, and falsely promising first-place or first-page placement in Google search results," said the release. "Defendants have no relationship with Google, and yet they barrage consumers with robocalls threatening that Google will label their business 'permanently closed' unless they 'press one' to speak with a 'Google specialist.' Telemarketers tell those who respond that, for a purported one-time fee ranging from $300 to $700, they can 'claim and verify' their Google listing and have unique 'keywords' so their business will appear prominently when people search." Meanwhile, Google is acting against Pointbreak Media and two other groups suspected of fraud-related scams, blogged Google Product Lead-Small and Midsize Business Market Development Bryan Solar Wednesday. Such alleged impostors target businesses by claiming to improve a firm’s Google Search rankings or charging for free Google services. The company is moving against Kydia, Pointbreak Media and Supreme Marketing Group. The web platform also announced new techniques for identifying scam efforts, a tool for reporting scammers and educational resources.

The Digital Advertising Alliance’s new self-regulation program for online political advertising will let users view an advertiser’s name, contact information, political expenditure records and individual contacts, DAA said Tuesday. The program is similar to recent action from Facebook (see 1805080054). “The PoliticalAd icon will give voters instant, easy access to information about the digital political ads they see, directly from the ads themselves,” DAA Executive Director Lou Mastria said.

Looming commercialization of consumer 8K displays is stirring cinematographer debate, David Stump, director-photography for the American Society of Cinematographers, told a Display Week conference in Los Angeles Monday. Resolution in 8K “exceeds the human visual acuity and therefore is trying to solve a problem, at least in some display cases, that doesn’t exist,” said Stump, whose credits include X-Men. “I’m working with a company who are building a 16K camera and who are specifically tailoring that 16K camera to a giant LED display system that is pixel for pixel the same resolution as the camera itself.” For Hollywood, “there comes a tradeoff in economics,” said Stump. “Is the amount of storage required to shoot a 4K or even an 8K project justified in the face of where it will be displayed and at what size it will be displayed? How many screen heights away from the screen do we sit on average to actually view content?”

NCTA arguments that allowing broadcasters to satisfy their carriage election notice requirements via putting those notices in online public files would be a huge burden on cable operators is "simply false," NAB said in an FCC docket 17-317 filing Tuesday. MVPDs can easily identify the broadcasters in their markets and access those broadcasters' public files, NAB said, saying stations face big burdens when making elections. It said the correct mailing addresses for cable systems can be tough to find. The association said NCTA's election proposal ignores two big broadcaster burdens: having to independently research or pay for designated market area data, and the risk a cable system in a DMA doesn't receive the election notice. The stations' group said its proposal would have "limited impact" on MVPDs, relieving them of the burden of having to sort through at times multiple certified letters. NAB said it's far easier for MVPDs to search broadcasters by DMA, using the FCC's website or TVNewsCheck's online database. NCTA didn't comment.