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.

Fox and News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is stepping down from the boards of both companies, said a Fox news release Thursday. After the mid-November shareholder meetings for both companies, his son Lachlan Murdoch will move from co-chairman of News Corp. to sole chairman and continue as executive chairman and CEO of Fox. Murdoch will become chairman emeritus of both companies. Murdoch was CEO of 21st Century Fox from its beginning as News Corporation in 1979 until 2015, and then chairman until it combined with Disney in 2019, when Fox was launched as a stand-alone company. “I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change,” Murdoch reportedly told employees in a memo about the move. Rupert Murdoch’s direct oversight of Fox, its stations and its programming is a key point in the Media and Democracy Project’s petition to block the license renewal of Fox-owned station WTXF-TV Philadelphia (see 2307060065). “This announcement has zero impact on the FCC filings regarding the Fox broadcast licenses” given “that the Trust he controls has a controlling stock interest in Fox, the fact that his Son remains Chair and CEO, and the fact that the same cadre of executives who knowingly and repeatedly presented false news remains,” Fox opponent Preston Padden emailed.

Max will add a Bleacher Report Sports Add-On programming tier starting Oct. 5 that will include live sports, Warner Bros. Discovery said Tuesday. It said the tier will be offered free to all Max packages through Feb. 29, and then will cost $9.99 monthly. It said the sports package will be the first streaming offering of the company's premium live sports content.

The next semiannual disclosures by U.S.-based foreign media outlets are due Oct. 12, the Media Bureau said in Tuesday's Daily Digest. The agency will send a report to Congress by Nov. 9 that summarizes the submissions, per the public notice.

Dish Network and Hearst are blaming one another for a blackout that started Friday of 37 Hearst channels in 27 markets that had been carried by Dish. Dish said Friday that Hearst "is demanding tens of millions of dollars in rate increases that would affect customers, while it devalues its product by making programming available elsewhere, even as viewership declines." According to Hearst, all its stations' websites carry a message saying that while the station chain has "made significant investments to deliver top tier programming ... DISH is seeking the right to carry our stations at below market rates, which is neither fair nor reasonable."