Unless something stems the cord-cutting tide, traditional pay-TV penetration will fall below 50% before year end, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Monday. In 2022, 51.6% of occupied homes were traditional pay-TV homes, down from 57.7% in 2021, he said. Traditional pay-TV penetration peaked in 2013 at 88.3%, he said. Virtual MVPDs are helping some homes maintain access to a big bundle of programming, but vMVPD gains are small compared with traditional MVPD losses, he said.

The largest pay-TV providers in the U.S., with about 92% of the marketplace, lost about 5.9 million net video subscribers last year, vs. a loss of 4.7 million in 2021, Leichtman Research Group said Friday. The biggest cable providers lost about 3.5 million, compared with a loss of about 2.7 million the previous year, LRG said. Other pay-TV services lost about 2.7 million subscribers, slightly less than the 2.9 million loss in 2021, it said. The one growth area was virtual MVPDs, with publicly reporting ones saying they added 370,000 last year, though that was down from the 885,000 in sub gains in 2021, it said. The top pay-TV providers ended 2022 with about 70.2 million subs, LRG said.

YouTube's 2023 priorities include offering more monetization routes for content creators, such as by expanding its subscriptions business, investing in shopping and continually improving its paid digital goods offerings, CEO Neal Mohan blogged Wednesday. He said YouTube is expanding access to the ability to add language tracks to videos and also testing it in livestreams and Shorts. YouTube also will allow viewers to remix clips into Shorts and add features allowing easier recomposition of gaming content into Shorts, Mohan said. He also said YouTube TV will add a feature letting viewers watch multiple NFL Sunday Ticket games simultaneously.

Nexstar's NewsNation cable news network launched a connected TV app on streaming platforms including Amazon Fire, Roku, Apple TV and Android TV, it said Tuesday. It said the free app allows over-the-top views clips and highlights of NewsNation content.

Saying it wants to return to DirecTV "on a fair and equitable basis," Newsmax told us Thursday it's "currently not planning FCC or legal action" about being dropped by the MVPD last month (see 2301250042).

The Communications Equity and Diversity Council’s Tuesday media ownership diversity symposium will open with remarks from FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, says an agenda in Friday’s Daily Digest (see 2301240038). The event will also have panels on access to capital, grooming new diverse owners and on the difficulties of the media marketplace. Along with Starks, speakers at the event include Beasley Media CEO and CEDC member Caroline Beasley, Urban One CEO Alfred Liggins and NAB Chief Diversity Officer Michelle Duke.

Nexstar proposed “outrageous” terms and refused to negotiate on retransmission consent for Mission Broadcasting’s WPIX New York, Comcast said in a heavily redacted reply filing posted Monday in the FCC’s good faith complaint proceeding, docket 22-443 (see 2301180034). Nexstar’s arguments that because it withdrew the terms and the parties reached an agreement there was no violation don’t hold water, Comcast said. “That was too late. Defendants had already violated the good faith rules,” said the filing. Though the details of Nexstar’s terms are almost completely redacted, the filing appears to say Nexstar’s terms included provisions involving other Nexstar stations and the now-settled breach of contract lawsuit between the companies (see [Ref:2212130029). “This further demonstrates the gamesmanship that the 'sidecar' model has afforded Nexstar and Mission, resulting in collusive and outrageous negotiation tactics,” the filing says. “Defendants’ take-it-or-leave-it position resulted in a negotiating framework for WPIX that Comcast contends -- and the Commission should find -- is unlawful.”

The FCC Media Bureau further extended filing deadlines for documents to be uploaded to broadcast, cable and satellite online public inspection files (OPIF) due to “ongoing technical issues adversely affecting the responsiveness of the OPIF and Licensing Management System,” said a public notice Friday. The Jan. 1 due date for documents was extended to Feb. 28, including for children’s programming reports and license renewals, the PN said. The bureau extended the deadlines earlier this month due to a problem described as “intermittent operation.” Attorneys told us documents uploaded to public files would vanish or be listed as not having been uploaded. An upgrade was supposed to address the problem, the FCC said then (see 2301090050). The agency didn’t comment on whether this is the same technical issue.

Expect streaming services to up their investments in the rights to sports events, NPAW blogged Thursday. It said the streaming industry shift to incorporating a bigger advertising business model will accelerate, with hybrid models combining a premium ad-free tier with a cheaper or free ad-supported tier becoming more ubiquitous. It predicted more embracing of a multiple content delivery network strategy and work on better streaming analytics and intelligence tools.

DirecTV's dropping of Newsmax this week (see 301250042) is getting conservative criticism. A Donald Trump Jr. tweet Wednesday urged a boycott of DirecTV majority owner AT&T. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., tweeted that dropping Newsmax "is a mistake" and said Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, "is working to reverse this." Rep Mary Miller, R-Ill., tweeted "AT&T and DirecTV are engaging in partisan politics by banning Newsmax for challenging the Biden Administration & broadcasting President Trump's rallies. This is the totalitarian Left in action!" National Religious Broadcasters CEO Troy Miller said Thursday that DirecTV said economics rather than ideology drove its decision, but "the question of why low-rated, left-leaning networks like MSNBC and CNN receive retransmission fees and remain on the platform needs to be answered. DirecTV serves a sizeable subscriber base that skews conservative and religious. This viewership deserves access to diverse programming, including options aligned with their points of view." DirecTV said Thursday it's adding conservative commentary network The First. Newsmax in a statement called it "a pathetic attempt to deal with millions of angry viewers. You can’t replace a Cadillac with a Honda."