The FCC should refresh the record in docket 14-261 on whether streaming services should be treated as MVPDs (see 2306230062), said the National Association of Black-Owned Broadcasters and the Multicultural Media Telecom and Internet Council in a call Thursday with an aide to Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, according to an ex parte filing posted Monday. “The regulatory treatment of vMVPDs has implications for broadcast ownership diversity both in terms of new entry and retention of existing owners,” said the filing. “If local stations are unable to control carriage of their signals on vMVPD platforms or cannot be accessed on such platforms, prospective minority owners will be deterred from entering the ranks of television station ownership.” The “continued viability of free over-the-air television is critical to minority viewers and their communities,” the filing said.

Nexstar started negotiating a retransmission consent renewal in bad faith when it terminated consent to retransmit its signal June 30 and refused multiple requests for a one-week extension while negotiations continued, Hawaiian Telecom Services said Thursday in a docket 12-1 complaint. Nextstar demonstrated bad-faith negotiating by not honoring the terms and conditions of the expired retrans consent agreement while negotiations were ongoing and there was no impasse, HTS said, asking the agency to declare Nexstar is acting in bad faith and unspecified FCC relief. Nexstar didn't comment.

Nexstar and DirecTV are blaming each other for a blackout over the weekend of 159 Nexstar stations on DirecTV's direct broadcast satellite and streaming lineup. Nexstar said Sunday that DirecTV rejected extending the now-expired distribution agreement between the two to Oct. 31 as they negotiate. It said it offered "the same fair market rates it offered to other distribution partners with whom it completed successful negotiations in the past year." DirecTV said Nexstar was demanding "more than double the previous fees for the same content."

"Everybody in the industry knows" Nexstar broadcast sidecars Mission and White Knight gave de facto control of their licenses to Nexstar, which operates their stations in every meaningful way, DirecTV said Friday in an informal FCC complaint that raises similar issues as its pending antitrust complaint before the U.S. District Court for Southern New York (see 2303150041). DirecTV said its control of the stations means Nexstar can hike retransmission consent prices, "evade the Commission’s local ownership rules, and exceed Congress’s national ownership cap." In its complaint, DirecTV asks the FCC to declare the existence of de facto control "and to take whatever remedial and disciplinary measures it deems appropriate." Nexstar didn't comment.

Dozens of free, ad-supported NBCUniversal streaming channels are coming to Amazon Freevee and Xumo Play in a deal signed with the streaming services, NBCU said Thursday.

Comments are due July 31, replies Aug. 29, in the FCC's "all-in" cable and direct broadcast satellite TV pricing NPRM adopted this month (see 2306200042), per a notice for Friday's Federal Register. The docket is 23-203.

The Paramount+ Premium plan now includes Showtime content, with the price going from $9.99 a month to $11.99, Paramount Global emailed subscribers Tuesday. The streaming service package's name is changing to Paramount+ with Showtime, it said. The price will be effective on or after July 27, it said.

Combined global revenue from subscription VOD, ad-supported VOD and free, ad-supported TV (FAST) is expected to hit $312 billion annually by 2028, up from less than $200 billion today, Rethink Technology Research said Wednesday. SVOD and AVOD will dominate as FAST "remain[s] an $11.4 billion minnow" in 2028, although lines between each service becoming increasingly blurry, Rethink said. YouTube "will become ever more dominant in the lives of web users outside of China, and increasingly recognized as a source of legitimately ‘premium’ video."

Releasing new motion pictures to streaming didn’t reduce streaming churn or attract new streaming subscribers, and Warner Bros. Discovery has backed out of that approach, CEO David Zaslav said Thursday at a MoffettNathanson conference. He said a big focus of the past year, since the companies combined, was dealing with two unsuccessful areas -- HBO Max and motion pictures, both of which were operating in the red. HBO Max has turned profitable overall and will be profitable in the U.S. this year, ahead of schedule, as the company has stopped overspending on streaming content, he said. Its motion pictures “are making that turn now,” he said. Time Warner and Warner Bros. had been run as independent businesses, and work combining them is still underway, he said: “We are not there yet.” He said overall streaming service pricing “is irrational,” with people paying far less than they used to for cable subscriptions when they had access to less content. “That will all work out,” he said. He said consolidation of streaming services is likely, with now-rival services jointly marketing their products. "If we don't do it to ourselves," services like Amazon, Apple and Roku "will do it to us," he said.

Media and content consultancy Horowitz Research was bought by consulting firm M/A/R/C Research, Horowitz said Tuesday.