Dish Network reached agreement with Hearst for carriage of Hearst’s TV stations in 25 markets, Dish said in a statement. Stations in markets including Albuquerque, Baltimore, Louisville, Ky., and Portland-Auburn, Maine, have been restored to Dish subscribers after a brief blackout from the Dish lineup. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, Dish said. The carriage agreement expired March 1, but Hearst granted Dish a series of extensions, Hearst station KSBW-TV (NBC) Salinas, Calif., said in a news release.

Time Warner Cable’s Hawaii operations need not carry Hawaii Catholic TV’s KUPU Waimanalo in any of TWC’s five systems in the Honolulu market other than the one on the island of Oahu, said the operator. The Honolulu designated market area covers all of the Hawaiian islands. “KUPU cannot deliver a good quality signal to four of those systems.” The station can’t reach the Big Island, Kauai and Maui with a good-quality signal, the operator said in a December filing in docket 13-277 opposing Hawaii Catholic’s must-carry FCC complaint (http://bit.ly/1ilRGRe). Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat, backed the complaint, in a new filing (CD April 8 p22). Time Warner Cable had no comment Tuesday.

Hawaii backs KUPU Waimanalo’s must-carry complaint against Time Warner Cable, wrote the state’s Democratic governor to the FCC. Gov. Neil Abercrombie said KUPU’s programming targets Catholics, who comprise about 27 percent of Hawaii’s population. “I support making KUPU available fairly on all islands to all Subscribers (especially those who have analog television receivers)” in accordance with FCC rules, he wrote in a letter posted Monday to docket 13-277 (http://bit.ly/Ot4Kw3). Hawaii Catholic TV complained that Oceanic Time Warner Cable wasn’t carrying KUPU throughout the Honolulu market, such as not carrying it in areas outside Oahu (http://bit.ly/Ot4Kw3). Time Warner Cable had no comment on Abercrombie’s letter. The company has opposed the must-carry request (http://bit.ly/1ilRGRe).

I.TV will deploy its tvtag TV watching social network by June across its users, building on its acquisition of GetGlue’s check-in service, CEO Brad Pelo told us. About 20 percent of GetGlue’s users have shifted to tvtag, with the remainder to follow within 90 days along with some cable operators and broadcasters, Pelo said. GetGlue had more than 75 broadcast and cable partners and 30 media companies integrated its application program interface. In starting tvtag in January, i.TV combined its free TV guide app with GetGlue’s technology for allowing viewers to check in to shows they're watching. I.TV claims 15 million monthly users. In buying GetGlue last fall, i.TV gained a roster of partnerships stretching from Fox to the Hallmark Channel and Hulu, as well as a base of 1.7 million active monthly users, those who “checked in” with the service at least once a month, Pelo said. It will largely focus on increasing partnerships where tvtag is deployed as a white label service, Pelo said. Among i.TV’s longstanding customers are AOL, which relaunched AOL.TV with it in 2011, and DirecTV. “We are agnostic as to the brand using tvtag,” Pelo said. “Partners generate most of the audience, and long term we see ourselves as a platform for social television and not a consumer brand.” Once a GetGlue user checks in to a TV show, “you are immediately presented with the tagline for the show” that’s created by about 50 i.TV employees and that users fill in with additional captions, comments and reactions, said Pelo. That has resulted in many consumers staying with a program for its entire length, Pelo said. The i.TV app also allows users to search with IMDb and Google and add to the tag line with their own notes or doodles. I.TV’s “curators” drive “the conversation” about a program, identifying key story points or plays, writing a description, grabbing a screen shot and posting the information, Pelo said. The postings may be for every play in a sporting event or every two minutes for a drama and two to five minutes for a reality show, Pelo said. “The idea is to unify a viewing audience so everything is real-time and you get a sense that everyone is watching what you are watching,” Pelo said. “The GetGlue users are the super fans [and] by introducing them to tvtag we can keep them in our social experience rather than throwing them out there to the Twittersphere. They can still tweet from within our experience, just now their tweets are more contextual.” The acquisition of GetGlue brought along its investors including Time Warner Investments and Union Square Ventures, and “we have plenty of capital now,” Pelo said.

The major problem facing Western Telecommunications Alliance members and other small video service providers is the very high and constantly increasing prices of video content, WTA said in an FCC filing in docket 10-71 (http://bit.ly/1dVzm5t). WTA is affected by both the price of retransmission consent for off-air network TV stations and the price of carriage rights for popular satellite sports, entertainment and news channels, it said. Most WTA members believe they pay much more, on a per-subscriber basis, “for retransmission consent and for satellite channels than larger, multi-system cable operators and direct broadcast satellite services,” it said. Because small rural companies need the video content more than the national content providers need their several hundred rural customers, WTA members find “that they have little choice but to accept the prices, terms and conditions offered on an effective ’take it or leave it’ basis by the content providers,” said the association. It backed the FCC’s action prohibiting joint retrans consent negotiations between competing top-four broadcasters (CD April 1 p11). WTA urged the FCC to consider other actions, like requiring the pricing and terms of retrans agreements and satellite channel agreements “to be transparent and available for review by other potential content purchasers,” it said. WTA met this week with staff from Commissioner Ajit Pai’s office.

Tribune Digital Ventures acquired TV by the Numbers, a ratings data analysis provider, said Tribune in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1j5l5lT). Tribune also relaunched its Zap2it website with a renewed focus on helping TV fans discover programs to watch across linear TV and streaming services, “and providing integrated advertising opportunities designed to reach that valuable audience,” it said. TV by the Numbers content will be used to power Zap2it and it will be licensed to third-party apps and services, Tribune said.

Sinclair urged the FCC to reject Buckeye Cablevision’s claim that Sinclair’s answer to Buckeye’s complaint on retransmission consent is untimely. Buckeye claimed that Sinclair’s answer was due at the FCC no later than March 10, Buckeye said (http://bit.ly/1gP19Ee). Buckeye ignores the fact that the proceeding is being treated as a special relief petition by the FCC and appeared in a Feb. 21 public notice, Sinclair said in a limited response filing in docket 14-33 (http://bit.ly/1h3JIkj). FCC rules say comments or oppositions are due within 20 days after the public notice date of filing such a petition, Sinclair said. The due date was March 13, “the very day that Sinclair submitted its Answer to Complaint,” it said.

A firm that closely tracks political ads upped its estimate by 8.3 percent to $2.6 billion for what it expects for spending on such ads on TV this year, while not changing expectations for digital. The TV figure could be as high as $2.8 billion, wrote Kantar Media Ad Intelligence Senior Vice President Elizabeth Wilner, who helps run its Campaign Media Analysis Group, in the Cook Report political-analysis publication Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1h3ogvX). Expect “more outside group advertisers than ever with control of the Senate again in the balance and the super PAC wave really hitting the big governors’ cycle for the first time,” meaning more advertisers not entitled to broadcasters’ lowest rates reserved for campaigns, she wrote. But Wilner said there likely will be “relatively few top-50” most expensive “media markets in play,” which “will repress ad spending.” Digital ads will account for about 7 percent of spending on political ads this year, with local cable at 15 percent, wrote Wilner. “Sources in the local cable industry are sticking with their earlier projection of $600 million to $800 million in local cable ad spending."

A divided FTC OK'd Nielsen’s divesting a cross-platform audience measurement service to comScore, which the first company agreed to in getting agency approval in September to buy Arbitron, said a commission news release Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/1mL5Geg). The vote approving the divestiture of LinkMeter and extending the time to complete it was opposed by Commissioner Joshua Wright, who dissented when the agency imposed such conditions on the approximately $1.3 billion Nielsen/Arbitron deal (CD Sept 24 p13). Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen was recused in the latest action, as she was also recused in the earlier settlement paving the way for the divestiture. The one response on the LinkMeter sale to comScore during the commission’s comment period (CD Jan 27 p12), was from Jonathon Yinger of CBSL. He was concerned about Nielsen/Arbitron making it harder for small broadcasters to get Arbitron’s basic ratings data. That concern was moot, said an FTC response to him (http://1.usa.gov/1fN7xrj). “At the time of the transaction Nielsen did not offer a competing radio ratings service and was not an alternative source for this data."

If Aereo wins at the U.S. Supreme Court, it will seek to expand horizontally to 50 or 60 cities, said CEO Chet Kanojia at the American Cable Association’s Washington D.C., Summit Wednesday. Aereo’s business model is designed to address “an imbalance in the marketplace” and challenge video incumbents by emphasizing consumer choice, Kanojia said. The broadcasters challenging Aereo in the high court exist in a “collusive, anticompetitive universe,” and their arguments incorrectly combine copyright with the rules on retransmission consent, Kanojia said. “They would like to conflate the idea of copyright royalties with retransmission consent,” he said. “Retrans has nothing to do with copyright.” Instead of being about copyright, the case before the high court is about “how long the wire is,” Kanojia said, referring to the legal question of whether broadcast TV viewed using a personalized miniature antenna is a public or private performance.