The number of RDK licensees rose 40 percent to 140, in the year since the last Cable Show, said the licensor of technology for cable systems and makers of consumer electronics supplying operators. Most technology development for an operating-like system and software package has been for set-top boxes and gateway devices, and this and next year more operators in Europe and North America are expected to have actual deployments, said the joint venture of Comcast, Liberty Global and Time Warner Cable in a news release Tuesday. “To support deployments in Europe and other parts of the world, the RDK code stack currently includes some of the initial, underlying elements needed to support DVB.” RDK has been used by operators to improve their products as they seek to better compete with high-tech and Internet companies (CD March 3 p4).

Time Warner Cable video subscribers will have access to Fan TV in Q2. Fan TV allows viewers to access TWC content with on-demand streaming services, allowing all choices to be seen on one screen, the companies said in a news release Tuesday. The first wave of streaming services available on Fan TV will include Redbox Instant by Verizon, Crackle, Target Ticket and the Rhapsody music streaming service, they said. More streaming services will be added over time, they said.

Charter Communications began providing International Media Distribution’s TV Japan in standard and high definition for $14.99 monthly on the operator’s cable systems in eight states, said the programmer in a news release Tuesday.

Netflix opposes the Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger because it fears the Internet “faces a long term threat from the largest ISPs driving up profits for themselves and costs for everyone else,” said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Chief Financial Officer David Wells in a Q1 letter to shareholders Monday (http://bit.ly/RG48Ww). If the merger is approved, “the combined company’s footprint will pass over 60 percent of U.S. broadband households, after the proposed divestiture, with most of those homes having Comcast as the only option for truly high-speed broadband,” meaning speeds exceeding 10 Mbps, the letter said. “As DSL fades in favor of cable Internet, Comcast could control high-speed broadband to the majority of American homes. Comcast is already dominant enough to be able to capture unprecedented fees from transit providers and services such as Netflix. The combined company would possess even more anticompetitive leverage to charge arbitrary interconnection tolls for access to their customers. For this reason, Netflix opposes this merger."

The FCC should extend the deadline for comments on its rulemaking proposing eliminating the network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules, NAB said in a motion for extension of time filed Thursday (http://bit.ly/1ix8NTR). NAB wants the comment deadline, currently May 12, extended by 45 days to June 26, with the reply comment deadline moved to July 24. NAB “anticipates that it will need to retain expert economists or other analysts” to “conduct necessary research and analysis” to comment on the proceeding, necessitating the extra time, it said.

The proposed Comcast/TWC deal would result in a “media mega-corporation” with “far too much power and control in the marketplace and in the workplace,” said the Writers Guild of America-East (WGAE) in comments filed in docket 14-57 (http://bit.ly/1kF8iba). “It would not be in the public interest and should not be approved,” said the WGAE. Because the company that results from the merger will be “vertically and horizontally integrated” it will “tilt the playing field” against content producers, the filing said. Although Comcast has presented the deal as a way to allow it to compete with challengers such as Apple and Google, the deal would mean that Comcast “would own and control the pipelines into 30 percent of American households,” said the WGAE. The “mega-tech companies” Comcast cites as competitors all rely on Comcast to deliver their products, WGAE said. After the deal, the competing companies will all be “fighting for a share of a vast market which they can only access via the pipeline controlled by one of the combatants, Comcast/NBCU/TWC,” said the filing. The deal will also make it difficult for the Comcast employees WGAE represents, the filing said. NBCUniversal has been able to use its size and power to block ballots in a June 2013 National Labor Relations Board election from being counted, WGAE said. “If this is how Comcast/NBCU treats its own employees now, imagine what it can put its customers through, and imagine how much worse this will be when it expands to gargantuan size through merger and consolidation,” the filing said.

Game Show Network will be allowed to gather evidence to show whether Cablevision would have received a financial benefit from carrying the network on a more widely available tier, ruled FCC Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel in an order filed Thursday (http://bit.ly/1nemHxF). GSN had argued that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Comcast v. FCC program carriage decision had established a new standard for similar cases, while Cablevision had argued that GSN doesn’t need additional discovery. GSN “must have full opportunity to discover evidence relevant to meeting its burden” of proof, said the order. GSN’s argument that the Comcast decision created a new test for program carriage cases is the same argument Tennis Channel is using in its ongoing push to have the FCC take up its program carriage case against Comcast again (CD March 12 p24). That case is the same one at the heart of Comcast, and Tennis Channel is also asking for permission to gather evidence to meet the D.C. Circuit’s standard. GSN and Tennis Channel are both represented by Covington Burling attorney Stephen Weiswasser.

The FCC should update program access rules so they provide protections to the buying group National Cable Television Cooperative, the American Cable Association told aides to Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Mike O'Rielly in meetings last week, according to an ex parte filing Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1kz0FDg). Though Congress intended that program access rules apply to buying groups used by multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), the rules don’t apply to NCTC, ACA said. NCTC is the buying group “through which nearly all MVPDs that currently use a buying group license most of their national cable programming,” said ACA. “In practice,” the rules don’t apply to NCTC because the FCC definition of a buying group requires such organizations to agree to be liable for members’ deals with content companies, which NCTC doesn’t do, ACA has said. The commission should “update the relevant rules so program access protections account for and extend to the longstanding business model of the NCTC -- a business model that has near universal acceptance among programmers,” ACA said.

DirecTV urged the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology to use OET’s new TVStudy software to update the predictive model used for determining distant signal eligibility for satellite video subscribers, who are located outside a satellite TV company’s designated market area, and are eligible to receive signals from that company. The new software appears likely to improve the individual location Longley Rice (ILLR) model that predicts eligibility for distant network signals, it said in an ex parte filing in docket 10-152 (http://bit.ly/1n90lxw). OET claimed that the new software provides several improvements, including newer population data, better terrain data and more precise geographical coordinates, DirecTV said.

The proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger would harm low-income customers, The Greenlining Institute said Monday in a press release. TWC has taken steps to offer LifeLine to VoIP customers in California and has expressed a willingness to come under California Public Utilities Commission telephone regulations, but Comcast has not, said Energy and Telecommunications Policy Director Stephanie Chen in the release. “This raises a lot of red flags, starting with the possibility that Time Warner Cable customers could have LifeLine service but then lose it if Comcast takes over,” Chen said. “We hear plenty of talk about how this merger will cut costs, but nothing meaningful about how -- or if -- those savings will be passed on to customers,” she said.