The Media Bureau granted waivers of secondary audio stream rules requested by American Cable Association and NAB, it said in an order Tuesday. As requested by ACA, hybrid cable systems that can’t pass through the secondary stream will be allowed to provide free set-top boxes that can do so to visually impaired customers. As ACA requested, customers seeking the boxes must verify that they are visually impaired, and cable carriers have to provide a box for every applicable TV in a customer’s home, the bureau said. The bureau also extended the compliance deadline for analog-only systems to June 12, 2018, the order said and granted NAB’s request for a six-month limited waiver of the audible crawl rule -- until Nov. 26 -- to allow more time for the necessary technology for transcribing emergency crawls to be adopted by broadcasters. An NAB-requested waiver of a requirement for visual but nontext-based information -- such as radar maps and other moving graphics -- to be included in the video description stream was granted with an 18-month time limit, the order said. A broadcaster requested waiver of including school closing information in secondary audio stream emergency description was also granted, the order said.(see 1505190057).

Cox Communications asked the FCC Media Bureau to change the market of WMDE Dover, Delaware, to exclude the cable operator's systems in Fairfax County, Virginia. Those two areas are "in demonstrably distinct television markets, which are separated not only by vast distances and substantial geographic barriers, but also by significant economic and political boundaries," said the operator in a petition posted Wednesday in docket 12-1. "No market nexus exists between WMDE and the Cox Communities." Cox said WMDE is owned by Western Pacific Broadcast, where an executive had no comment Thursday. Western Pacific won one of the last TV station auctions, for WMDE, and got FCC approval to move it from Seaford to Dover (see 1302140060 and 1405020044). Cox noted that after that change, which moved the station to the Philadelphia market from a much smaller market, WMDE got Nielsen to move its designated market area to Washington. But the operator said Nielsen didn't reassign WMDE's city of license, Seaford, which remains in the Philadelphia DMA despite the broadcaster's "DMA-shopping activities."

Comcast customers can use Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Sticks to access HBO and Showtime TV Everywhere apps, Comcast said in a blog post. Subscribers can download the network’s app, and watch the TVE content after signing in with Xfinity credentials, Comcast said. “We now authenticate more than 90 networks across 18 devices and those numbers will continue to grow as new technologies and platforms emerge.”

Pandora’s acquisition of Next Big Sound will give it “a powerful analytics tool used by tens of thousands of music makers, labels and marketers looking for data and insights about artists and their fans,” Pandora said in a Tuesday announcement. Terms weren’t disclosed. “The combination of Pandora’s listening data and Next Big Sound’s analytical capabilities will create a vital source of data,” said Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews. Next Big Sound’s offering will be “enhanced through the addition of Pandora’s data on music preferences, patterns and trends,” Pandora said. “The acquisition will also benefit brands that advertise with Pandora by delivering access to insights that can help them identify artists to partner with and measure the reach and impact they achieve through those partnerships.”

The American Cable Association and NAB reached agreement on an extension of the HD carriage exemption to which neither organization would object, they said in an FCC filing posted Friday in docket 98-120. The current exemption is set to expire June 12, and while ACA has requested an extension, NAB has argued that granting one would be outside FCC authority. Neither association would object to an FCC order that would make small cable systems that don't offer HD programming exempt from the HD carriage requirement, and redefine small cable systems as those having an activated channel capacity of 552 MHz or less or serving 1,500 or fewer subscribers and not affiliated with a cable operator serving more than 2 percent of all multichannel video programming distributor subscribers, they said. The current exemption defines small as systems having less than 2,500 subscribers and not affiliated with a cable operator serving more than 10 percent of all MVPD subscribers. Cable systems ineligible for the new exemption after June 12 would have until Dec. 12, 2016, to come into compliance, and after then, any system using the exemption that starts offering HD programming would no longer be eligible and would be required to notify all broadcasters in its market, said ACA and NAB.

Both sides in a dispute over how much Pandora should pay a performing rights organization said the PRO won. Judge Louis Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was said to have awarded Broadcast Music Inc. a royalty rate of 2.5 percent of Pandora's annual revenue, up from the current rate of 1.75 percent. Pandora vowed an appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also in New York. "After a nearly two-year legal battle over the value of the BMI repertoire to the Pandora digital music service, the Rate Court ruled resoundingly in BMI’s favor and concluded that our proposed rate of 2.5 percent of revenue was 'reasonable, and indeed at the low end of the range of fees of recent licenses,'" BMI said in a Thursday news release. "The decision also establishes that existing marketplace agreements can be taken into account when determining rates, a key factor for us, and the industry. This is an important step forward in valuing music in the digital age." The ruling in docket 1:13-cv-04037-LLS on BMI v. Pandora wasn't available on the court's online filing service. It may be released this week, a court official said. Earlier this month, the 2nd Circuit ruled for Pandora on a case involving American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, upholding a 1.85 percent rate in March 2014 for the company to pay from its annual revenue for ASCAP works (see 1505060072). The benchmarks cited by Stanton "don't provide an appropriate competitive foundation for a market rate," Pandora Government Affairs Director Dave Grimaldi said Friday. "We anticipated a range of potential outcomes in this case and remain confident in our ability to grow and thrive. Pending the outcome of the appeal, this ruling could increase our content costs as a percent of revenue by up to 80 basis points." ASCAP cheered Stanton's decision, though it wasn't a direct party to it. Stanton's decision "cited market benchmarks ASCAP has long argued are relevant in rate court proceedings," an ASCAP spokeswoman noted Friday. "This decision is welcome news for music creators, but make no mistake, Pandora will stop at nothing in their ongoing effort to shortchange songwriters. ASCAP and the music community must continue to fight for the urgent reforms needed to enable all songwriters, composers and music publishers to obtain fair compensation for the use of our music.”

Account-sharing, a “lingering challenge" for the over-the-top category, will be a panel topic at Parks Associates Connections conference, Tuesday-Thursday, in San Francisco. Some 57 percent of U.S. broadband households access an OTT video subscription, Parks said in a Friday news release, citing Q3 2014 data, but 8 percent are using a subscription OTT video account held by someone outside of their home. Six percent of viewers are exclusively using shared accounts to access subscription OTT video content, the industry researcher said. That equates to 11 percent of all households that are relying exclusively on shared accounts when using subscription OTT services, Parks said. Eleven percent of Netflix subscribers, 10 percent of Hulu Plus subscribers and 5 percent of those using Amazon Prime Instant Video are using an account paid for by someone else, Parks said. It said that account sharing is highest among younger households, where 22 percent of those 18-24 years old who use an OTT service used one paid for by someone outside of their household. "OTT video accounts for a disproportionate amount of content consumed when compared to expenditure,” Research Director Brett Sappington said. More than a third of video consumed per week is OTT, but it's only 9 percent of the household video budget, Sappington said. "Account sharing is part of the larger problem in monetizing the strong consumer demand for OTT content.” While the all-you-can-eat subscription model is “very popular,” several OTT services are experimenting with models that blend advertising, subscription and transactional options, Sappington said. "Pay TV providers will have to quickly move up the OTT learning curve, which is very different from the traditional pay TV environment."

With smartphones the third-most-owned consumer electronics product in the U.S., ownership of digital content is poised to surpass traditional content within the next few years, a CEA study said Monday. “A strong consumer appetite for mobile connected devices is causing some very interesting changes in the CE ownership landscape,” said Steve Koenig, CEA senior director-market research. Smartphones are owned by 72 percent of U.S. households -- an increase of 8 percentage points over 2014, he said. Tablets are in more than half of U.S. households and showed the largest increase in ownership growth over 2014, rising 9 percentage points, Koenig said. Laptops experienced the second-largest gain in household penetration, residing in 67 percent of households, he said. Basic cellphones saw the steepest category drop, to under 50 percent penetration, and fell out of the top 10 list for owned tech products, he said. Household penetration of digital media streaming devices rose 5 percentage points to 29 percent ownership and in-vehicle communication devices rose 4 percent to 34 percent ownership, CEA said. Digital content ownership grew 10 percentage points to 63 percent ownership, it said.

A small cable operator said it's trying to resolve Gray Television's retransmission consent complaint alleging the operator carried WVLT-TV Knoxville without the broadcaster's permission. Spirit Broadband retransmitted without Gray's consent the station's signal on its cable systems serving the Knoxville market since Jan. 1, the station owner said in a retrans complaint posted Friday in docket 12-1. Spirit, with about 100 video customers, isn't carrying WVLT and hopes to work out a settlement with the station, Vince King, its president, said in an interview Monday. "We’re trying to work it out now that [the complaint will] be withdrawn," he said of Gray's retrans complaint against Spirit. A lawyer for Gray had no immediate comment. Citing a retrans case involving TV Max, Gray said the base forfeiture would be $952,500, covering the 127 days as of Thursday that WVLT was carried without Gray's permission on Spirit, with a fine of $7,500 daily. A 2014 commission order levied a $2.25 million fine in the TV Max matter (see 1407090047).

Up to 90 percent of consumers are open to “cutting the cord” and canceling pay-TV subscriptions in favor of over-the-top (OTT) services under the right circumstances, Limelight said Wednesday in a study. Flexibility of on-demand viewing and cost are the main drivers of the shift to OTT services, Limelight said. Millennials -- consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 -- appear to be “leading this change,” with Limelight finding that they watch on average four to seven hours of online video per week -- almost twice that of all other age groups. Personal computers are still the top choice for consuming online video, but younger viewers are 10 percent more likely to watch online video on a smartphone than other age groups, Limelight said.