Netflix Remains No. 1, But Faces Increasing OTT Competition

A comScore study conducted in December 2016 revealed that streaming services have exploded, with a total of 11 reaching one million or more homes in any given month. Put another way, of the 49 million U.S. households connected to Wi-Fi, at least 53 percent use at least one OTT service. Netflix still dominates, found in 75 percent of these Wi-Fi homes, but the real news is that it’s got stronger competition than ever before. YouTube now reaches 53 percent of homes, Amazon is in 33 percent and Hulu is at 17 percent. Continue reading Netflix Remains No. 1, But Faces Increasing OTT Competition

Judge: FilmOn Entitled to Compulsory License of Programming

Less than a year after the Supreme Court shut down Aereo for delivering OTA TV signals to Internet subscribers, a U.S. District Court in California granted FilmOn, an Internet video streaming site, a compulsory license to retransmit TV station programming online. The difference between the two cases, says the judge, was that the Supreme Court did not address whether Aereo was entitled to a compulsory license, but rather found that it violated copyright laws. Fox Broadcasting has said it will appeal the ruling favoring FilmOn. Continue reading Judge: FilmOn Entitled to Compulsory License of Programming

Advisory Committee Releases Report on Closed Captioning of Internet Video

  • The Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee (VPAAC) released its report to the FCC last week on the closed captioning of IP-video programming (a PDF of the report is available from the Broadcast Law Blog).
  • VPAAC (co-chaired by Vince Roberts, chairman of the board for ETC@USC) submitted the report as required by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act passed in October.
  • ETCentric member Brad Collar points out this will require closed captions be included in Internet distributed programming (the Accessibility Act requested rules requiring that once a program has aired on television with closed captions, any subsequent online distribution must also include closed captions).
  • The VPAAC report proposes a compliance schedule based on the date of the FCC’s revised rules: programming that has been prerecorded and unedited for Internet distribution (within six months), live and near-live programming (within 12 months), and programming that has been prerecorded and substantially edited for Internet distribution (within 18 months).
  • The report also includes recommendations for performance objectives, technical requirements and capabilities related to online closed captioning.