YouTube pulled more than 8 million videos in Q4, most being spam or adult content, the company blogged Monday. It said 6.7 million videos were first flagged for review by its software, and 76 percent of those were removed before receiving a single view. It said machine learning flagging -- introduced in June -- is catching problematic video earlier. It said at the start of 2017, 8 percent of the videos flagged and removed for violent extremism were taken down with fewer than 10 views, but now more than half of those removed for extremism get that viewership. It's introducing a Reporting History dashboard that lets users see the status of videos they flagged for the Alphabet/Google affiliated company to review.

With AT&T about to launch its sports-less streaming skinny bundle offering AT&T Watch (see 1804190027), expect to see other virtual MVPDs going after genre fans and niche interests, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Sunday. He said it's likely MVPDs with a more general approach also will create small channel bundles and service tiers that target specific viewer groups, getting consumers closer to their holy grail of personalized virtual MVPD service.

The forthcoming AT&T Watch streaming skinny bundle service (see 1804190027) doesn't go far enough in allowing consumer choice, the Parents TV Council said Friday. It called the sports-less service "much ado about nothing" from MVPDs and said consumers instead need the ability to individually choose networks they want to buy. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson's U.S. v. AT&T and Time Warner testimony about AT&T Watch Thursday shows MVPDs "could unbundle if they wanted to," PTC said. AT&T didn't comment. PTC previously said AT&T should allow a la carte DirecTV video service to get DOJ approval to buy TW.

DirecTV's combination with Time Warner is the chief source of anticompetitive harm that would come out of New AT&T, DOJ said in a docket 17-2511 opposition (in Pacer) filed Thursday in response to DirecTV's seeking to be dismissed as a defendant from Justice's antitrust lawsuit (see 1804170031). DOJ told U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia it wouldn't have sued if not for AT&T's DirecTV ownership, and the subsidiary is a proper defendant since the court might grant relief against DirecTV to ensure continued competition in the pay-TV universe. The department said it's common for non-acquiring entities like DirecTV to be defendants in Clayton Act Section 7 cases.

Word of mouth and media “still rule” among U.S. consumers eager to learn about the latest tech products before they buy, a Matters Communications survey found. The company canvassed 1,000 consumers last month and found 71 percent learn about new tech products through friends and family. Among the available media channels that consumers prefer to use to find out about new tech products, TV is tops at 38 percent, followed by tech news sites like CNET (36 percent), social media (26 percent) and mainstream lifestyle magazines and sites like GQ and BuzzFeed (14 percent). Once consumers become aware of a product, “online reviews steer most purchasing decisions,” the survey found. Eighty-eight percent said product reviews are the most important factor in deciding to purchase, while 56 percent said they read reviews on their mobile devices while in-store to buy a product.

Amazon's Fire TV platform was the apparent winner, Roku TV the loser, in Wednesday's announcement that Amazon will partner with Best Buy in an exclusive multiyear arrangement to sell Insignia- and Toshiba-branded Fire TV Edition smart TVs. The companies said Fire TV Edition smart TVs, with Alexa voice control, will be available exclusively via the retailer. The newly designed smart TVs might appeal to cord cutters. “Connect any HD antenna and instantly use Alexa to search for and watch broadcast TV,” they said, along with streaming content from Netflix, Prime Video, HBO, PlayStation Vue and Hulu, among others.

Netflix’s “partnering strategy” is on an “an evolving trajectory across all the markets that we serve in,” said Chief Product Officer Greg Peters Monday on the company’s quarterly earnings interview webcast. The “new wave” of partnerships Netflix started with MVPDs, ISPs and mobile operators is beginning to bear fruit, he said. “Based on what we've seen with these new bundle models,” through Comcast and others (see 1804130004), “we've seen the economics of those, if you take in the retention, the acquisition characteristics to be very, very beneficial,” he said. “We love the fact that we can work with these partners to access whole new groups of consumers, make it easy for them to find out about Netflix, to sign up and have a great way to access the service and watch more and more.” It’s “easier” than ever to “create a television network called an app,” said CEO Reed Hastings. “Think of all apps on your phone” as having “some form of video, or most apps will,” he said. All of that “mobile phone energy will spread to the television with operating systems like Roku’s,” he said. Netflix wants to be “one of the apps that nearly everybody has on their home screen, whether that's on the phone or on the television,” he said. Looking at the mobile phone “ecosystem, it's very rich, and we see television getting close to that,” he said. Despite all its recent successes, including easily beating forecasts on Q1 net subscriber additions (see 1804160065), Netflix's biggest challenge is that it still accounts for only "a fraction of the hours of viewing of YouTube," said Hastings. "We're a fraction of the hours of viewing of linear TV. We've got some great momentum, and we're very excited about that, but we have a long way to go in terms of earning all of the viewing that we want to." Netflix shares closed 9.2 percent higher Tuesday at $336.06.

The increased interest by the FAANG companies -- Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google -- in content will drive up the value of the content, but they need to act to secure that content to avoid it being widely available via pirate sources, blogged Irdeto Senior Vice President-Global Sales Bengt Jonsson Monday. Failure to secure content will burst its bubble, reducing its value, Jonsson said.

Amazon listed 10 attributes every Alexa skill should have: (1) do one thing; (2) use a memorable invocation name and utterances; (3) focus on intents rather than commands; (4) simplify choices; (5) pass the "one-breath" test; (6) include a variety of responses; (7) handle the unexpected gracefully; (8) use analytics to make enhancements; (9) provide contextual help; (10) do beta testing. Broadcasters are devising skills, the NAB Show heard last week (see 1804090052).

EPA finalized its “standard operating procedure” for revising or establishing Energy Star product specifications (see 1711080025), like those for TVs, “to increase transparency and facilitate more consistent opportunity for stakeholder input,” said a Friday cover letter. The procedure spurns CTA calls for EPA to reduce the role of third-party certifications in product testing. The agency also turned down CTA and others' requests it use the Federal Register for future communications; instead EPA will use its own website, which added a “dedicated web page” that will be “updated in real time, any time” an Energy Star product document is released for comment. CTA didn't respond Friday.