Matt Daneman

Despite fears the Supreme Court could make sweeping changes in its 2015 session to class-action litigation law, the session that ended in June was "the term that wasn't" since the rulings ultimately didn't have significant impact on developing such law one way or the other, Ellen Meriwether, an antitrust partner at Cafferty Clobes, told us. One of those cases, Spokeo vs. Robins, has been cited repeatedly in telco and media class-action litigation in recent months (see 1607060016, 1606090024 and 1601290008), particularly by defendant companies claiming plaintiffs have no standing.

Hulu's live-streaming service set to debut next year will be among a number of "virtual MVPDs" that will launch over the coming 12 months, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said Wednesday. Several Time Warner Turner channels will be part of that live-streaming service, including TNT, TBS, CNN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, truTV, Boomerang and Turner Classic Movies, Time Warner said in a news release Wednesday, noting it bought 10 percent of Hulu. Financial terms weren't released, and other owners remain Comcast, Disney and 21st Century Fox. In a conference call announcing Time Warner's Q2 results, Bewkes said growth in live-streaming multichannel video programming distributors "will be great both for consumers and our … brands.” The company is making a variety of subscription VOD investments, including rolling out HBO Now to the Nordic region and Latin America and planning other rollouts later this year and an upcoming art house SVOD offering from Turner, Bewkes said. The Hulu investment "fits our strategy like a glove" by further increasing Time Warner exposure to the growing over-the-top market, he said. Bewkes said the Hulu deal did not include content license obligations and when it comes to licensing content to other SVODs or traditional MVPDs, "We'll do that on a stand-alone, arm's length basis." For the quarter, Time Warner sales fell 5 percent from the year-ago period to $7 billion, driven mostly by declines in lower videogame, home entertainment and TV licensing revenue due to particularly high sales in the comparable quarter a year ago, the company said in a news release. Time Warner had net income of $952 million, down from $971 million. Its stock closed Wednesday at $77.83, up 2.7 percent.

The FCC might have opted not to change the rules for retransmission consent negotiations, but it could be signaling more willingness to intercede when those talks are going awry, some cable industry officials and allies tell us, pointing to Sinclair’s $9.49 million settlement (see 1607290067) last week over an array of good-faith negotiating and licensing rule violations. But other multichannel video programming distributor allies -- plus broadcasters -- see that idea as wishful thinking. The agency has broad statutory authority to investigate and impose penalties, but the question of whether the Sinclair consent decree is a turn in FCC enforcement policy remains to be seen, one lawyer who represents cable interests told us.

Iridium received an FCC green light for its Next constellation, with the International Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology Monday approving the company's 2013 application to modify its nongeostationary mobile satellite service license to allow the new constellation. In the order issued Monday, the FCC said the new constellation will operate in the same orbital parameters and transmit on the same frequency bands, and will be equipped to track ships and aircraft through an automatic dependent surveillance broadcast receiver and a receiver for maritime automatic identification system messages. Inmarsat, SES and ViaSat voiced concern about Iridium sharing the 29.25-29.3 GHz band with co-primary geostationary fixed satellite service operations, but the FCC said sharing demonstrations weren't necessary since Next will operate with the same feeder-link stations authorized for its current satellites. The Committee on Radio Astronomy Frequencies and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory objected to the protection levels and coordination plan Iridium submitted for its use of 1617.775-1626.5 MHz, but Iridium came up "with good proposal and a good way forward," one FCC official told us Tuesday. The company now plans to shift traffic from satellites in view of radio astronomy service sites to adjacent satellites -- which should protect radio astronomy observations from interference, the FCC said in its order. Iridium said last month the first Next launch will be Sept. 19, with the entire constellation to be in orbit by the end of 2017 (see 1607280006).

The effects of Ligado's proposed LTE network on aviation GPS receivers should be tested before any FCC action on the company's plan, said multiple aviation and aeronautics industry parties, according to an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 11-109. The Federal Aviation Administration and Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) should study and test possible effects on receivers used by fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, they said in the filing laying out their multipart set of concerns with and recommendations for license modifications and the NPRM.

Users of CBS' twin subscription VOD services, CBS All Access and Showtime OTT, have each reached about 1 million subscribers, "well ahead of where we thought we would be this early in the game," CEO Leslie Moonves said. With the company's goal of 8 million SVOD subs by 2020, "we are confident that this will be easily achieved," Moonves said during the company's Q2 earnings call Thursday. The company is expecting "a significant bump" in All Access subscribers through its Star Trek: Discovery series to premier in January, as well as other original programming, and it's growing subscriptions for its stand-alone streaming Showtime service by staggering the launch dates of original series, he said. CBS expects another bump when a Twin Peaks sequel launches there next year, he said.

Looking to assuage concerns from the weather community about how its LTE network plans could affect weather data transmissions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Ligado hopes to have an alternative content delivery network (CDN) in operation this fall, Chief Legal Officer Valerie Green told us. After discussions with the weather community during an American Meteorological Society (AMS) meeting last week in Alabama, the company hopes in the same time frame to put together an advisory committee of weather world representatives from the private sector, academia and elsewhere that would help Ligado understand issues raised by its proposal and that NOAA-provided services are protected, she said.

Comcast doesn't plan to use its X1 platform as a route to competing nationwide in the over-the-top (OTT) marketplace, CEO Brian Roberts said during the company's Q2 earnings call Wednesday. "We just fundamentally believe for now that our end market, end footprint strategy, is where we add the most value to consumers," Roberts said. While its broadband and business services operations rely on having a network, Roberts said, "OTT economics are unproven to us, and out of footprint it's not clear that that's the right strategy for us. We're happy with the strategy we have."

SiriusXM has deployed several demonstration cars to road test its SXM17 platform, which will incorporate two-way cellular connectivity into the company's traditional satellite radio and let it offer nonlinear content, CEO Jim Meyer said Tuesday during the company's Q2 2016 earnings call. The SXM17 platform it's developing with a number of automakers (see 1604280042) "breaks down the big barrier we live with today as a one-way broadcaster" and will let it offer customized playlists and on-demand content, Meyer said. He wouldn't discuss a time frame for SXM17 deployment, saying the company will announce details about timing over the next year.

Multichannel video programming distributors are signing affiliation agreements with subscription VOD services at an increasing clip, with some seeing such arrangements between the erstwhile distribution rivals becoming the norm. After Comcast and Netflix's announcement earlier this month of a deal to integrate SVOD into the X1 platform (see 1607050061), more such deals undoubtedly will be announced in the next year or so, and longer term, there will be MVPDs likely signing up multiple SVODs, Brian Shepherd, president-global broadband, cable and satellite business at CSG, told us. Such arrangements may remain out of the hands of mom-and-pop cable operators because of the technology demands, but they have become increasingly common among mid-sized and big MVPDs, said Leichtman Group President/Principal Analyst Bruce Leichtman.