The FCC should rely on companies’ voluntary efforts to caption video clips on the Internet rather than requiring it through regulation, said NCTA staffers in a meeting last week with staff from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, the Media Bureau and the Office of General Counsel, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1l13kBy). “We urge the Commission to proceed cautiously to avoid consumer harms that could flow from unnecessary and burdensome regulation,” said the filing. If the FCC does adopt captioning rules for clips delivered via IP, they should apply only to clips from video aired by a video programming owner and available on that same VPO’s website or app, that last longer than 15 seconds and that use the same audio and video as the captioned original, NCTA said. “VPOs may have little control over where clips of their television programming ultimately reside online and therefore cannot be held responsible for compliance with any online captioning obligation beyond clips within their immediate control aired by a video programming owner,” said NCTA. Requiring captioning for other clips would “require expenditure of significant resources and could result in programmers posting less video content online,” NCTA said. The association also said Congress did not give the FCC authority to regulate video clips on the Internet, the filing said.

Streaming TV service Aereo now supports Google’s Chromecast, Aereo said Thursday (http://bit.ly/1hE8Boh). Aereo customers who use Android devices can use the Aero app to stream content on phones and tablets and transfer it to a home TV, Aereo said. Aereo is available in Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Miami, New York and San Antonio.

Pandora welcomes the chance to participate in the Department of Justice’s review (http://1.usa.gov/1l5Yck4) of consent decrees for performance rights organizations (PROs), said Dave Grimaldi, Pandora spokesman, by email. DOJ is accepting comments on the review through Aug. 6. Some songwriters’ advocates believe Pandora’s favorable outcomes in rate disputes with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers could have prompted DOJ’s review (CD June 5 p9). Consent decrees for PROs “provide important protections for both songwriters and music users,” Grimaldi said Wednesday. “The consent decrees provide a mechanism to establish a reasonable royalty rate when songwriters and music users cannot agree on one,” he said. “Any review of the consent decrees must take into account the careful balance of how to best serve songwriters while also fostering competition and innovation to the benefit of consumers.” NAB, which didn’t comment, will file comments to DOJ, said a spokesman.

The Burst platform now enables media companies to crowdsource user-generated mobile video and deliver content directly into live TV systems. The technology allows users to do so without requiring consumers to download an app, Burst said in a blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1kxTBXX). It said the company partnered with New England Sports Network to enable the network “to showcase fan videos during live Boston Red Sox telecasts within minutes of fan submissions."

Authenticated online TV Everywhere (TVE) consumption grew 246 percent in the 52 weeks ended March 31 over that period a year earlier, with 1.3 billion online TV authentications and 151 billion online video starts, Adobe said Wednesday in a report. IOS apps were the top access point for TV Everywhere consumption, with a 43 percent market share, surpassing browsers’ 36 percent market share. Browsers had a 47 percent market share for TVE a year ago, Adobe said. Game consoles and over-the-top devices now hold a 6 percent TVE market share, a 539 percent increase from 2013. Adobe said it based its survey on data collected from 1,300 media and entertainment websites, along with TV Everywhere content from 95 U.S. TV channels and 160 TVE sites and apps (http://bit.ly/1kxsdJQ).

Global consumer and advertising spending for entertainment and media content is set to rise about 28 percent to $2.3 trillion by 2018, from 2013, said PricewaterhouseCoopers Wednesday in a report. PwC said the U.S. remains the largest entertainment and media market, with spending in the U.S. to rise to $724 billion by 2018, from $573 billion in 2013. Digital entertainment and media spending is expected to grow at a 12.2 percent compound annual growth rate between 2013 and 2018 and will be 65 percent of all entertainment and media spending by 2018, PwC said (http://bit.ly/1p6NkmZ).

The FCC issued an order Wednesday implementing procedural updates to the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act’s method for calculating the loudness of commercials (http://bit.ly/1mbhxgv). The changes, as expected (CD May 30 p16), are based on updates to the Advanced Television Systems Committee’s recommended practices, which updated the algorithm used to calculate loudness to account for broadcasts that had long periods of relative quiet to compensate for brief increases in volume, the order said. “It is our hope that these changes will result in a modest decrease in the perceived loudness of certain commercials,” the FCC said. Stations and pay TV providers will have to adhere to the new standards starting June 4, 2015, but are allowed to begin doing so early, the order said.

Pay-TV service outages occur across the country at a remarkably higher rate due to bad weather or lousy service, rather than as a result of retransmission consent disputes, TVfreedom.org said. The pay-TV industry’s “claims of innocence” in such disputes “are belied by their desire to push broadcast TV content behind the ‘pay-wall’ on every platform, including the Internet,” a spokesman said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1j7Ml6h). The industry seeks to control access to all TV content, drive up prices for cable and satellite TV subscribers and “diminish the ability of broadcasters to serve as a viable market force in delivering popular programs to consumers on a variety of competitive digital platforms,” he said. Last year, 19 disputes resulted in disruptions to pay-TV viewers’ access to local broadcast news and programming, he said. The vast majority of those cases “were settled quickly after being blocked by pay-TV systems,” he said.

Disney/ABC Television Group made Disney Junior en Espanol available on Watch Disney Junior. It’s the first time the network made an entire block of programming available in Spanish on mobile devices, Disney said Monday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1h09Du0). This summer the network plans to launch a Spanish-language “appisode,” Sofia the First. Watch Disney Junior is part of the company’s Watch services, “which make it possible for fans to watch popular shows anytime, anywhere on demand via desktops, connected TVs, smartphones and tablets,” it said.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai touted the FCC’s rejection of an attempt by Media Action Center to shut down two Wisconsin radio stations as a First Amendment victory and the end of the Zapple doctrine. The cancellation of the FCC’s critical information needs studies also is a victory for the First Amendment, he said. Americans made clear that “the government has no place in the newsroom,” and that the American people, not the FCC, should decide what information is important, he said in an opinion article on the RedState blog (http://bit.ly/1iAzpAq). Media Action Center made a complaint based on the Zapple doctrine, against two Wisconsin radio stations, accusing them of giving more airtime to Republican supporters of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker than they did to his opponents (CD May 12 p14). That doctrine required stations to provide similar airtime to supporters and opponents of a political candidate. In rejecting the request, the commission “finally confirmed that the Zapple Doctrine is indeed dead,” Pai said. If the 1987 marketplace was diverse enough that the Fairness Doctrine was no longer justified, “there is no way that the Zapple Doctrine could survive in today’s marketplace -- a marketplace in which countless viewpoints are only a tweet or blog post away,” he said. Policies like the Fairness and Zapple doctrines suppress public debate, he said. The way outlets cover stories is driven by consumers and “shouldn’t be second-guessed by a majority of FCC Commissioners or a minuscule but vocal minority trying to cast heckler’s vetoes,” Pai said. The end of the Zapple doctrine presents an important lesson that “there will always be someone eager to manipulate the levers of government to serve a political end,” he said.