Charter Communications ended 2020 with 19,000 more video customers than it had a year earlier, and it expects to do better in its video trends this year than the MVPD industry overall, CEO Tom Rutledge said during an analyst call Friday as the company announced Q4 results. Rutledge said the growth was driven in part by its broadband connectivity growth. He said industry growth will continue to decline "at a moderate pace," while Charter "won't have quite the internet growth … we had in 2020." Charter ended 2020 with 15.6 million residential video subscribers. It also ended the year with 27 million residential broadband subs, up 2.1 million year over year; 9.2 million residential voice subs, down 228,000; and 2.3 million residential mobile subscriptions, up 1.2 million. Rutledge said this year should have a return to pre-pandemic trends in internet subscriber additions, plus a full recovery of the advertising business as the economy also fully rebounds. He said that during Q4, Charter's minimum broadband speed offering of 200 Mbps went from being available in about 60% of its footprint to 75%. Rutledge said the 210 citizens broadband radio service priority access licenses that Charter bought for $465 million will be used on targeted 5G small cells. He said that over the next four to five years, up to a third of Charter's traffic might end up on the CBRS spectrum. The stock closed down 7.2% at $607.56.

Forty-three percent of U.S. broadband households with traditional pay TV are likely to switch to a virtual MVPD in the next 12 months, reported Parks Associates Thursday, reversing a trend of slowing growth. Before the pandemic affected streaming video consumption, vMVPD subscriber growth was “waning, with some vMVPDs posting continued losses,” said analyst Paul Erickson. Though COVID-19 drove growth “and in some cases recovery in the category, recent increases in vMVPD pricing make it uncertain how consumers will respond long term,” he said. The absence of live sports and performances challenged vMVPDs, but services like Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV successfully pushed advantages in pricing, content and platform flexibility, Parks said. Though traditional pay-TV operators have either deployed over-the-top services, or plan to, Parks expects vMVPDs to continue to grow “dramatically,” and gradually become “the dominant offering in the pay-TV landscape,” said Erickson. Some 17% of vMVPD subscribers switched from traditional pay TV within the past 12 months, said the analyst. VMVPDs should “remain conscious of consumer price sensitivity while keeping a strict adherence to a consumer-centric experience,” Erickson said.

Average video services per person grew 35% in Q4 over the year-ago quarter, to 6.7, among broadband-only subscribers, reported TiVo Wednesday. As the pandemic continues, “shifting consumer patterns in the video service landscape are proving to be more than mere anomalies,” the company found in 4,526 responses to a survey done for TiVo by a third-party company. “People are adjusting to a new normal.” Subscription hopping is prevalent during the pandemic, TiVo said, with 25% saying they added at least one new video subscription during the COVID-19 period; 15% canceled at least one. TVs are “overwhelmingly” the preferred screen for viewing subscription VOD (71%), ad-supported VOD (54%), virtual MVPD (58%) and network apps (43%). Smartphones came in second, followed by PCs and tablets. Respondents preferred watching streaming content via media players such as Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV and Chromecast (46%) compared with smart TVs (28%), set-top boxes or digital video recorders (13%), game console apps (6%) and Blu-ray player apps (1%).

That the “secular shift” toward streaming video adoption “accelerated heavily” in 2020 amid COVID-19 spurred S&P to upgrade Netflix to BB+ from BB, said the ratings service Tuesday. Consumers “spent more time at home and consumed increasing amounts of in-home entertainment,” said S&P. “All streaming services benefitted from this trend, but Netflix, the leader in the sector, saw an unprecedented shift.” The company ended 2020 with 203.7 million subscribers, compared with S&P’s guidance of 195 million. Netflix had 8.51 million global net subscriber additions in Q4, beating its Oct. 20 forecast by nearly 42% (see 2101190066). S&P doesn’t expect Netflix to “revert” back to pre-2020 “metrics” because the pandemic “accelerated the adoption of streaming video services globally,” it said. “This should mitigate the impact of increasing competition as many new streaming services launched over the past year” or so, including Disney+, HBO Max and Peacock, it said. The analysis didn’t factor in the possible impact of Netflix price increases being phased in over the next 30 days. Netflix emailed subscribers in recent days that it will raise the premium tier by $2 to $17.99 monthly and the standard plan by $1 to $13.99. The increases take effect in late February.

Streaming accounts for a quarter of all TV viewed in the U.S., Resonate reported. Eight million Americans have boosted their streaming viewership during the pandemic, 41% watch through a streaming service, it said Monday, predicting a $9 billion over-the-top video ad spend in 2021. Connecting with streaming viewers is “vital” to business growth, but it’s a “nuanced” audience that’s different from traditional cable TV subscribers, said Resonate. OTT viewers are 141% more likely to watch TV through a streaming device; 52% are female; 24% are 25-34 years old; 24% have annual income of $25,000-$50,000; 33% spend 20-40 hours online per week; and 79% have some college education. The most-watched streaming networks are Netflix (76%), Amazon Prime Video (59%), Disney+ (46%) and Hulu (41%). Some 47% watch via the Roku platform. Half have cable TV; 39% have cut the cord. About 23% have rented three or more streamed movies in the past 90 days; 79% watch TV from 7-10 p.m.; 43% often binge-watch; a third are online on their phone while watching TV; 26% watch TV only on-demand; and 6% are likely to try a new subscription in the next 90 days.

Co-CEO Reed Hastings denied Netflix is “underachieving” as it watched Disney+ exceed 86 million subscribers in the first year after its November 2019 launch, compared with roughly 40 million for Netflix in the same period. “It's super impressive what Disney has done,” he said on Tuesday night’s Q4 discussion. Disney’s success shows that consumers are “willing to pay more for more content because they're hungry for great stories,” said Hastings. The Disney+ track record “gets us fired up about increasing our membership, increasing our content budget,” he said. “It’s going to be great for the world that Disney and Netflix are competing show by show, movie by movie, and we're really fired up about catching them in family animation, maybe eventually passing them.” Netflix has “never had any issue with movies being in theaters,” said co-CEO and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. “Our biggest issue has been that you had to commit to this very long window of exclusivity to get access to any theaters.” Sarandos would love to give consumers the choice between seeing movies in theaters or at home, “which is becoming the norm” during the pandemic. Hastings predicts that consumers will return to theaters in “significant numbers” beginning in 2021's second half. He’s carefully watching WarnerMedia’s strategy of debuting its 2021 film slate simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max to see if it sets a “path” for future distribution trends, he said. Netflix beat its forecast on net subscriber adds (see 2101190066). “This is one of the more uniquely challenging times, not just for life,” but also for trying to forecast “the growth trajectory of the business,” said Chief Financial Officer Spencer Neumann. “There's just so much uncertainty.” COVID-19 has “accelerated that big shift from linear to streaming entertainment,” he said. The stock was up 17% to $589.60 at 2:15 p.m. EST Wednesday.

Charter Communications dropped its quest to have the FCC sunset two conditions put on the Time Warner Cable/Bright House Networks transaction (see 2006180050), the Wireline Bureau said in a public notice Tuesday. That means the data caps and settlement-free interconnection conditions will remain until May 18, 2023, it said. Charter told us that with some conditions vacated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (see 2008140040) and the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on subscribers, "we want to offer them the assurance that they will continue to benefit from unlimited access to broadband and the accompanying financial certainty it provides during these trying times" and thus withdrew the petition. Incompas said the withdrawal "is good news for consumers and open internet advocates. Pressure from Congress, consumer groups and small business leaders helped walk back the cable giant, but it’s a clear sign for why we need strong interconnection and open internet policy on the books to prevent these attempts to raise prices and inflate consumers’ bills.”

Chinese laser projector supplier Fengmi joined the UHD Alliance, and Charter Communications, Technicolor, Cedex and Westinghouse Electronics withdrew, the association told DOJ and the FTC in simultaneous “written notifications” Dec. 10, said Wednesday’s Federal Register. The change-of-membership notifications are required to extend UHDA members antitrust protections under the 1993 National Cooperative Research and Production Act, said Suzanne Morris, chief-premerger and division statistics in DOJ’s Antitrust Division.

Cox Communications said it plans to appeal the verdict and award in music labels' copyright infringement suit. "This lawsuit is a travesty, and the ruling remains unwarranted, unjust and beyond excessive," it emailed us Wednesday after U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady of Alexandria, Virginia, rejected its challenge of 2019's $1billion jury verdict amount (see 2002030066). In an order Tuesday (docket 18-cv-00950, in Pacer), O'Grady said Cox was arguing some of the 10,017 music works allegedly pirated by Cox broadband subscribers were derivative of others and thus ineligible for statutory damage awards, but "the number of derivative works in play in this case was a question for the jury" and Cox should have presented to the jury the evidence it presented to the court in its post-trial brief. "We absolutely should not be held liable for bad actions that others may have taken using Cox’s High-Speed Internet service," Cox told us. "We’re prepared to fight as long as necessary to correct this decision."

FuboTV is an “interesting opportunity, but we’re not banking on it yet,” Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter wrote investors Tuesday after the streaming media service announced a second planned acquisition in sports wagering. FuboTV is buying sportsbook technology company Vigtory. The sports-focused TV service plans to complete the deal this quarter and make inroads in the sports betting business by year-end. Before integrating wagering, fuboTV plans to launch a stand-alone, free-to-play app from Balto Sports, which it bought in December, that will eventually be integrated into its platform. “We expect the introduction of sports wagering to drive engagement in sporting events, new subscriber growth, and the company’s monetization capabilities,” Pachter said, noting sports betting adds another layer of customer monetization beyond premium subscription plans and valuable advertising inventory. “For new and existing subscribers looking to wager, fuboTV’s platform will be a compelling choice as the company currently maintains over 6.3 million billing relationships with former, existing, and trial subscribers.” It has an active subscriber base of 455,000 as of Q3, he noted. “Leveraging these billing relationships means eliminating the dreaded pain for many customers of ‘pulling out the wallet,'" he said,