Disney and Comcast agreed to accelerate the time frame by which Comcast can exercise its right to sell its third of Hulu, with that process starting Sept. 30, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said Wednesday at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. Hulu is "way more valuable" today than a few years ago when values of $27.5 billion were bandied about, he said. Asked about Charter Communications' carriage fight with Disney and Charter's proposed linear/streaming hybrid video model (see 2309010013), Roberts said both those companies are trying to deal with a changing video marketplace "and you're going to see some tension." Mobile is a product strategy today for Comcast and becoming a network strategy, he said. He said if the company's testing in Philadelphia of its ability to offload some of its mobile traffic onto its own spectrum is successful, it can look at expanding that effort to other markets.

A collection of broadcast affiliate station groups pushing for the FCC to reclassify streaming services (sometimes called virtual MVPDs) as falling under the FCC retransmission consent regime said Thursday they're merely trying to update the rules (see 2308090065). The Coalition for Local News is “asking for the FCC to use its existing authority to align the rules with the modern-day market,” said a blog post on the coalition’s website. The post appears to be a response to posts from a group of networks and streaming services, including Fox, Paramount, ABC, NBC and YouTube, formed to oppose the reclassification of virtual MVPDs. "Don’t turn back the clock,” said a post from the Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition. “Cable and satellite regulations were enacted decades ago in a pre-internet era with much less competition and higher prices. The policy justifications underlying their adoption do not apply to the online video services of today and are a solution in search of a problem.” Reclassifying streamers as MVPDs and subjecting them to retransmission consent requirements is “hardly an unbearable regulatory burden,” said the Coalition for Local News post. “It would simply take a well-established framework and update it for the modern marketplace.” Policymakers “must stand up for viewers & say no to big station groups asking Congress for unwarranted leverage over streaming providers’ offerings,” the Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition tweeted on X, formerly Twitter, earlier this week.

Clearly Android "will achieve complete dominance" over RDK globally in the video device operating system landscape, with Huawei's HarmonyOS confined to China, Rethink Research said Wednesday. It said competition from Huawei has been "thoroughly beaten down" by sanctions, and RDK's hopes of entering the European set-top marketplace fell apart when Vodafone opted to go with Android TV. Rethink also said to expect a continual decline of connected TV devices as their functions are replaced by smart TVs that directly integrate their features.

Nearly two months into the blackout of 159 Nexstar stations on DirecTV's direct broadcast satellite and streaming lineup (see 2307030032), the two continue to blame one another as the cause. In a filing this week, DirecTV called Nexstar's arguments about nearly identical news releases issued by Nexstar sidecars Mission and White Knight "fairly implausible." It also cast doubt on Nexstar claims the sidecars' retransmission consent information couldn't get to anyone at Nexstar involved in retrans negotiations. Nextar emailed us Thursday that DirecTV is continuing "its campaign to thwart fair marketplace negotiations and instead use the impasse it created to pursue its broader regulatory agenda [of] undermine[ing] local broadcasters like Nexstar." It said DirecTV's arguments "are baseless and self-serving, and its abusive filings should be ignored."

The FCC should refresh the record on reclassifying streamers as MVPDs, said One Ministries in a letter to the FCC posted in docket 14-261 Monday. “To truly preserve viewer choice entails granting must-carry rights to independent TV stations on any streaming service that carries another local TV station in the same TV market,” said One Ministries. One Ministries endorsed a recent Writers Guild of America West report that condemns large streaming companies such as Disney, Netflix and Amazon as “gatekeepers” and asked lawmakers and agencies to block streaming consolidation, investigate anti-competitive issues, and increase regulation for streamers: “It is unfair for vMVPDs to both control streaming services and major networks and content and to purposely exclude independent TV stations.”

The nation's largest pay-TV providers lost more than 1.7 million net video subscribers in Q2 2023, about the same loss as in Q2 the year before, Leichtman Research Group said Tuesday. Those pay-TV providers combined have about 71.9 million subs, it said. The largest virtual MVPD services have about 13.4 million subs, it said. For the quarter, the largest cable providers had a net loss of about 925,000 video subscribers, down from about 950,000 subscribers lost in 2Q 2022. Leichtman said other traditional pay-TV services had a net loss of about 690,000 subs, vs. a loss of about 710,000 the same quarter a year earlier. The top virtual MVPD services had an estimated net loss of about 115,000 subs, compared to a loss of 65,000 in Q2 2022. Leichtman said top pay-TV providers had a net loss of about 5.4 million subs overall over the past year, compared to a net loss of about 4.2 million in the 12 months prior.

Streaming commanded a record 38.7% of TV usage in July, with Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and YouTube all hitting all-time highs, Nielsen said Tuesday. Broadcast viewing was 20%, a new low, it said. Year-over-year broadcast usage was down 5.4%, it said. Cable viewing, at 29.6% of TV in July, was down 12.5% year over year, it said.

NBCUniversal and EverPass Media, a platform for distributing live sports and entertainment to commercial businesses, signed a multiyear agreement giving EverPass rights to distribute Peacock's exclusive sports content to bars, restaurants and other commercial establishments, they said Friday.

Numerous full-power TV stations in the San Francisco area are excluded from carriage on newer virtual MVPDs, and without must-carry rights they're at a huge disadvantage as viewers migrate from traditional MVPDs, One Ministries President Keith Leitch said Friday in docket 14-261, recapping a meeting he and Total Living Network CEO Debra Fraser had with an aide to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks. As long as virtual MVPD operators have a vested interest in promoting affiliated content, smaller independent TV stations -- like One Ministries' KQSL Fort Bragg, California -- inevitably "will be left out" of vMVPD carriage, he said.

The FCC should refresh the record on reclassifying streaming services as MVPDs “in light of many significant developments in the market for vMVPD services and other video marketplace developments,” said NAB in a call Monday with an aide to Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, according to an ex parte filing in docket 14-261. House Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rogers, R-Wash., and Communications Subcommittee Chair Bob Latta, R-Ohio, wrote a letter Monday to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel arguing the matter is outside FCC authority and should be left to Congress (see 2308090065).