Neither the current definition of "video service" under Illinois state law nor the modified language taking effect in 2024 entitles East St. Louis to franchise fees from streaming services, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday (docket 22-2905) in the city's appeal of dismissal of its suit against numerous streamers (see 2209230059). The 2024 language "makes pellucid what most readers of the older definition would have understood: content streamed over the Internet is outside the scope of this regulatory system," the three-judge panel said, upholding the dismissal by U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Beatty. The panel also rejected the streamer defendant-appellees use the public right of way for communication, ruling if "phone calls over landline cables, electricity over wires, and gas routed through pipes are not trespasses on the City’s land -- and they are not -- neither are the electrons that carry movies and other videos." And it rejected city arguments about a municipal law barring resale of cable TV services, saying over-the-top streamers don't do that. Deciding were 7th Circuit Judges Frank Easterbrook, David Hamilton and Doris Pryor. Oral argument was in September (see 2309120039).

The FCC should issue an NPRM on proposals to require content companies to report on the diversity of their vendors to the commission, several diversity and public interest groups, Fuse and Allen Media Group told Media Bureau Chief Holly Saurer and Media Bureau staff, according to an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 22-209. The FCC “should collect and report data that allows the public to understand if programming offered by a video distributor is reflective of the nation’s diversity,” said the filing from Public Knowledge, the United Church of Christ Media Justice Office, the National Urban League, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and others. Advocates for the content vendor diversity report said it would apply only to media companies that have some affiliation with FCC regulatees, so entities such as Disney and Google would have to report data while companies like Netflix wouldn't (see 2207260003). Arguments that the U.S. Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine would prevent the FCC from collecting and publishing such data are incorrect, the filing said. Under the new -- and still developing -- major questions doctrine, SCOTUS ruled that even in matters that might be under a federal agency’s purview, only Congress can decide expansive or high dollar matters (see 2302080064). “Congress explicitly authorized the FCC back in 1984 to adopt rules to require MVPDs to 'analyze the results of [their] efforts to recruit, hire, promote, and use the services of minorities and women,'” said the ex parte filing. The “explicit Congressional directive” puts the proposed CVDR “far outside the Major Questions Doctrine,” the filing said.

The Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division recommended Comcast drop various 10G advertising claims. NAD said Comcast indicated it planned to appeal a recommendation the cabler drop or modify its 10G claims that were challenged by T-Mobile. Separately, NAD said Comcast was appealing a similar recommendation responding to a Verizon challenge of Comcast ads. In both cases, NAD said, Comcast's use of "10G" could lead consumers to believe its entire network is delivering 10 Gbps speeds.

Scripps has signed cable and direct broadcast satellite carriage agreements covering about 75% of its subscriber households, it said Wednesday. It said the renewals also expand the number of its stations getting distribution fees.

A National Advertising Review Board panel agreed with Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division recommendation that Google should drop its advertising claim that its YouTube TV service is "$600 less than cable." Charter Communications challenged the ad claim, NARB said. It said Google indicated it disagreed with NARB's determination but would modify or end the ad claim.

The FCC should take filings from shareholder lawsuits and other court cases against Fox into account in the hearing proceeding on WTXF-TV Philadelphia (see Ref:2307060065]) and require they be entered as evidence, said two filings from the Media and Democracy Project (MAD) and its supporters posted Tuesday in docket 23-293. Documents from four shareholder lawsuits filed against Fox in the Delaware Court of Chancery and sealed filings from the cases brought by voting machine companies Smartmatic and Dominion “can shed important light on Fox’s behavior immediately after the 2020 presidential election,” said a motion for production of documents from MAD. “By requiring Fox to produce these documents and allowing MAD to review them and supplement its petition, the Commission will have a more complete record,” the filing said. Former FCC Commissioner Ervin Duggan and Weekly Standard founder William Kristol -- both backers of MAD’s petition to deny -- submitted the complaints from the shareholder lawsuits as evidence, in a separate letter. The lawsuits argue shareholders were damaged by Fox’s amplification of the false stories about the 2020 election because those actions led to a $787 million settlement with Dominion. The complaints “reflect that FOX shareholders are as troubled as we are by the same core issue that should trouble the Commission, and that should lead the Commission to designate a hearing,” said the letter from Kristol and Duggan. Conduct that would compel FCC action if it came from a broadcaster shouldn’t be ignored just because it was undertaken by a “sister cable channel” owned by the same entity, “just as an adulterer’s dalliances cannot be disregarded because they occurred at the paramour’s residence rather than in the marital bed,” said Kristol and Duggan. Fox responded to the MAD filings by citing a letter of support for WTXF from former Undersecretary of the Army Patrick Murphy, also a former Democratic member of Congress. "I have known Fox 29 leadership since my first run for US Congress in 2005 and they have always been fair, balanced, and genuinely give a platform to inspire others to make a positive difference locally and nationally," said the letter. "Fox 29 Philadelphia has done great work in our community, providing balanced coverage of public policy issues, including telling stories of military veterans, who are 42% people of color in my generation of Post 9/11 veterans."

Warner Bros. Discovery might be interested in moving Max to the basic cable bundle much the way Disney has with Disney+ in its agreement with Charter Communications (see 2309110034), LightShed Partners' Rich Greenfield wrote investors Friday. That would increase the revenue Max generates from MVPDs and virtual MVPDs, though there are likely smaller networks WBD would sacrifice in the bundle in exchange, he said. Numerous legacy programmers will likely follow Disney’s lead of pushing direct-to-consumer streaming services into the legacy multichannel bundle, he said.

NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt repeated his call for the FCC to refresh the record on reclassifying streamers as MVPDs in an NAB-members-only virtual town hall Thursday, said an NAB release on the event: “What we’re asking the FCC to do is to reopen a proceeding that has been dormant for the last nine years that takes a look at whether those rules of the road that apply to the cable and satellite services ought to be extended to virtual MVPDs.” “It turns out we didn’t need new or old regulations to allow the streaming market to develop and thrive,” said a spokesperson for the Streaming Innovation Alliance in an email Wednesday. The SIA is an advocacy group formed by streamers such as Disney and Netflix to oppose applying retransmission consent rules to VMPVDs. The rise of streaming companies “is a great news story about innovation and consumer technology,” the spokesperson said. In the townhall, LeGeyt also urged local broadcasters to talk to their lawmakers in support of items such as requiring AM in cars and preventing radio performance royalties. “Certainly we can be making the policy arguments as a trade association here in Washington but our members need to tell the story of how this is impacting their service,” LeGeyt said.

The recent formation of streamer advocacy group Streamer Innovation Alliance (see 2309260050) “appears to be another act from big tech to claim modernized regulations will harm consumers -- just like they argued before when they led the charge to destroy local newspapers by monopolizing ad dollars,” said a Coalition for Local News spokesperson in a statement. The Coalition for Local News was formed by broadcasters that own top-four network affiliate stations to push for streaming services to be reclassified as MVPDs. “Streamers have rapidly become a dominant player in the video marketplace, and the resources they have devoted to launch [SIA] shows that,” the coalition said. The current media marketplace is “tilted in favor of big tech and the national networks,” and the rules governing streamers should be revisited “so that local news can thrive in the streaming era,” said the coalition. SIA didn’t comment.

Large streaming services including Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock and Disney formed an advocacy group, with former FCC acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn and former House Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., as senior advisers, said a release Tuesday from the new Streaming Innovation Alliance. SIA also includes Max, TelevisaUnivision, VaultAccess and the For Us By Us Network. The Motion Picture Association “played a leading role” in organizing the group, the release said. The creation of the SIA appears to be a response to a push from broadcasters to reclassify streaming services as MVPDs that would fall under the FCC’s retransmission consent regime; network affiliate groups spun up their own advocacy entity, the Coalition for Local News, earlier this summer. Networks and YouTube also started an advocacy group focused on the matter (see 2308310064). “The rise of innovative, new video streaming services is an American success story we should celebrate and encourage, not smother with obsolete and ill-fitting rules and regulations designed for completely different technology, products, and business models,” said Upton in the release. “Streaming services have opened up a new era of progress for program diversity that is bringing relevant stories and options to historically underserved communities at a record pace while opening doors for production jobs to people of color that have been shut for decades,” said Clyburn in the release. “Any policy that drags down streaming would turn back the clock on this vital progress as well.” As a first step, broadcasters pushed the FCC to refresh the record in docket 14-261, the proceeding in which reclassification was considered in 2014. Clyburn was an FCC commissioner then and voted in favor of an NPRM seeking comment on reclassifying over-the-top services as MVPDs, which she called “prescient.” “Our goals should be to define ‘multichannel video programming distributor’ as broadly as possible to accommodate a new set of choices and offerings for consumers,” Clyburn wrote then. “We also want to ensure that nascent, internet-based services are not given competitive advantages over established MVPDs, who have well-defined obligations under the law.” SIA released a poll Tuesday, conducted by FGS Global, finding most voters surveyed viewed streaming services favorably and expressed concern that new regulations “could require streaming services to collect more data or deter them from offering sensitive programming,” the release said. NAB and the Coalition for Local News didn’t comment.