Matt Daneman

The FCC and other parties that Standard General and founder Soohyung Kim accuse of participating in a racist conspiracy to torpedo the company's $8.6 billion purchase of Tegna (see 2404250059) are urging dismissal of Standard's suit. Multiple defendants argued in motions to dismiss Monday that Standard's suit before the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia is in the wrong court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in April denied a Standard/Tegna petition for writ of mandamus aimed at pushing the FCC to move on review and approval of the deal (see 2304210058).

Disney's demand for a "clean slate" provision and a covenant not to sue in its retransmission consent negotiations should be declared bad-faith negotiating, DirecTV told the FCC in a complaint filed Sunday. DirecTV also indicated another complaint, about Disney's bundling demands, could follow.

Faced with increasingly reduced cable franchise fees, local franchise authorities (LFA) must focus on getting broadband providers to enter franchise agreements with them for use of local rights of way (ROW), speakers said Wednesday during NATOA's annual local government conference. But the broadband franchising path must go through statehouses and the FCC, with changes to LFAs' authority needed at the federal and state levels, they noted. In addition, speakers mentioned LFAs' consumer protection role as they addressed the audience of mostly local government officials.

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- While some states hope to have enough broadband equity, access and deployment money to also tackle adoption and affordability issues, not just infrastructure, BEAD project costs may dash those hopes, according to Nokia's Lori Adams. Separately Tuesday at NATOA’s annual local government conference, Joanne Hovis, CTC Technology & Energy president, predicted growing concerns when it becomes clear Western states lack enough BEAD money to reach 100% of locations with adequate infrastructure. Speakers also discussed issues local governments face with small cell deployment permitting.

Broadcasters, multichannel video programming distributors and pay-TV industry experts see retransmission consent fees increasingly facing price pressure. In recent earnings calls, some local broadcast chains said they are seeing slowdowns due to cord-cutting among MVPD subscribers.

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Federal lawmakers from both parties back reforming the Universal Service Fund (USF), but whether that happens likely will depend on the November elections, speakers said Monday at NATOA’s annual local government conference. Localities will increasingly face broadband-only providers wanting right of way (ROW) access, and those cable competitors raise questions of whether they too should pay franchise fees, said localities lawyer Brian Grogan of Moss & Barnett.

DirecTV is using the Venu sports streaming joint venture as a model to push for linear skinny programming bundles in other genres. Programmers and multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) have "an ocean of opportunity" for creating content packages around genres from entertainment to children's programming, akin to Venu's sports focus, Chief Content Officer Rob Thun told us Wednesday. "If they believe any of their own projections [for Venu], why wouldn't they embark upon this?"

FuboTV will likely succeed in proving that the planned ESPN/Warner Bros. Discovery/Fox Sports streaming joint venture will violate federal antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Friday as she granted plaintiff Fubo a preliminary injunction to block it. The sports streaming JV, Venu, has raised anticompetitive concerns on the part of some federal lawmakers (see 2404170067).

Streaming services increasingly are cracking down on password sharing as they see the success that Netflix has had with its initiative, industry analysts tell us. Executives at streamers tell Wall Street the effort will help drive revenue growth.

Don’t expect major daylight between a Kamala Harris administration and the Joe Biden White House on major communications policy issues, industry and policy experts predicted. Much focus and effort would center on defending the FCC's net neutrality and digital discrimination orders in the current federal circuit court challenges, as well as pursuing net neutrality rules, they said. Less clear would be the nature of the relationship between Harris' White House and Big Tech. The Harris campaign didn't comment. Deregulation and undoing net neutrality are considered high on the to-do list for the administration of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump if he's elected (see 2407110034).