Legacy media companies continue to wrongly focus on eliminating streaming platform financial losses and shoring up balance sheets rather than growing robust and profitable long-term streaming businesses, research firm LightShed blogged Tuesday. It said Peacock "continues to be a horrible use of capital by Comcast." Instead, it should be shut, merged into Starz or made into a digital version of the NBC network, LightShed said. In addition, Disney should drop plans for allowing ESPN to go directly to consumers and shift key ESPN+ content to a combined Disney+/Hulu platform, it said. This would be a better use of Disney's streaming investment and management resources. Likewise, Paramount+ is unlikely to recoup billions already spent, so Paramount Global should unwind its integration with Showtime, move exclusive sports content back to linear TV, license high-profile originals and close overseas launches, it added. Moreover, Warner Bros. Discovery should undo the Discovery+/HBO integration, rebrand Max to HBO, abandon global plans for Max and focus on licensing HBO content internationally. It recommended keeping Discovery+ as a niche streaming service.

Expect next year to bring AI-powered tools that will help streaming providers obtain useful data insights through "simple, natural language interactions," NPAW blogged Tuesday. In addition, the software as a service company expects AI will help provide a more personalized user experience as well as improve language-related services. For example, AI tools could improve the accuracy and speed of subtitling and dubbing languages and dialects, including in real time, NPAW said. After several strikes reduced the amount of content produced in 2023, NPAW expects media will reduce content output in 2024. Instead, media will pursue "a renewed focus on building a sustainable business rather than simply delivering new user growth."

The FCC Public Safety Bureau granted GCI Cable’s request for a temporary waiver of the requirement -- enacted in September 2022 -- that emergency alert system participants update their equipment to be able to prioritize alerts delivered by common alerting protocol by Tuesday, said an order in that day’s Daily Digest. Alerts delivered via the internet-based CAP can provide richer text information and are more accessible than those delivered via the legacy EAS system. GCI said it discovered that several of its EAS encoders are unable to process the required software update and that supply chain issues have delayed delivery of new encoders. “We conclude there is good cause to provide an extension of time until March 11, 2024, to accommodate the anticipated hardware delivery and installation estimated by GCI,” the bureau order said. Paramount Global requested a similar 30-day extension of the deadline for three of its 29 stations for similar reasons, a petition for temporary waiver posted Tuesday in docket 15-94 said. “The Paramount Global Licensees are fully committed to the expeditious installation and operation of their new EAS equipment well within the 30-day period requested.”

DirecTV and Tegna are blaming one another for a blackout of 66 Tegna stations in 52 metro regions by DirecTV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse channel lineups. It started Thursday night with the expiration of their retransmission consent agreement. Backing DirecTV, American TV Alliance said in a statement Friday that the blackout "represents more of the same tired old tactics from TEGNA’s well-worn playbook that come entirely at the expense of American consumers. The FCC and Congress must take a stand and protect consumers." DirecTV said it has offered a la carte pricing where Tegna would set prices for its stations' subscribers but that Tegna is "demanding double-digit annual rate increases that would make it the most expensive broadcaster nationwide." Tegna said that "despite months of effort, DIRECTV has refused to reach a fair, market-based agreement. We urge DIRECTV to continue to negotiate with us until a deal is reached that restores our stations to their customers."

MSNBC should "pay for their illegal political activity," Donald Trump posted late Tuesday evening on Truth Social. The former president said the cable network "uses FREE government approved airwaves, and yet it is nothing but a 24 hour hit job on Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party for purposes of ELECTION INTERFERENCE." He said Brian Roberts, CEO of parent Comcast, "is a slimeball who has been able to get away with these constant attacks for years." The network "is the world’s biggest political contribution to the Radical Left Democrats who, by the way, are destroying our Country," Trump said, urging "Our so-called 'government' [to] come down hard on [the network]." MSNBC didn't comment. Cable networks such as MSNBC do not use public airwaves.

Tegna is warning DirecTV and U-Verse subscribers about a possible blackout of local Tegna stations if there's no new retransmission consent agreement. "We hope that DIRECTV is willing to negotiate a market-based deal before the November 30 deadline and doesn’t take away DIRECTV and AT&T U-Verse customers’ local news, weather, sports and network programs," the broadcaster said in a statement sent to us Tuesday. DirecTV emailed that Tegna "has once again made a private negotiation public in the hopes of creating unnecessary and premature concern among some of our customers to extract higher rates for local broadcast stations." DirecTV said it "will ... do our utmost to shield them from unwarranted price hikes as we work with TEGNA to renew its stations without any interruption.” Tegna owns and operates 68 stations in 54 metropolitan regions.

Paramount Global probably isn't headed to the auction block, even though the company adopted handsome golden parachutes for top executives recently, LightShed Partners' Rich Greenfield wrote Tuesday in an investors note. It would likely be doing more aggressive cost-cutting if it were prepping for a sale, he wrote. In addition, it likely would have sold Showtime already instead of using the network to bolster its Paramount+ streaming service, he added. Greenfield says a major question is who would want to acquire Paramount Global. "We do not believe any tech platform (Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft or Netflix) wants to buy a collection of declining broadcast/cable networks that are tied to the fading multichannel video bundle," Greenfield wrote, adding tech platforms are probably more focused on acquiring sports rights when existing deals expire and licensing what they want instead. Legacy media companies also don't seem to be likely buyers, and Paramount Global isn't acting as if it's interested in selling component parts such as its studio or linear TV assets, he said. Instead, the company is more likely moving toward bigger cost-cutting, scaled-back ambitions for Paramount+ and additional licensing of catalog and original programming to third parties, he said. The company told the SEC last week it adopted a change in control severance plan for executives.

This year has seen the biggest jump in virtual MVPD subscriber numbers since 2020, but it still wasn't enough to offset the huge decline in traditional pay-TV subscriber numbers, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon blogged Monday. Today, 59 million homes -- 45.2% of U.S. households -- have a traditional pay-TV subscription, compared with 88% 10 years ago, he wrote. VMVPDs YouTube TV and Hulu+ Live are the fifth and sixth largest multichannel video providers in the U.S., respectively, and YouTube TV is likely to overtake Dish Network in Q4, he said.

Stakeholders and FCC commissioners “cannot engage in effective policy assessment of the linear video marketplace without transparent and complete access to timely information,” said Commissioner Nathan Simington in a letter agreeing with U.S. Senators calling for the FCC to refresh the agency’s record on classifying linear streaming services as MVPDs. “We have no facts officially before us! And we really should. There’s an easy way to do it: refresh the record,” said the Commissioner’s letter. Simington said he’s not convinced the FCC has the authority to reclassify streamers as MVPDs and described his position on whether the agency can do so as “less strong” than the one laid out by FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel when she was a commissioner in 2014, when she said the agency did have such authority. Rosenworcel told Congress in March that she doesn't currently believe the agency’s powers extend to reclassifying streaming services. Simington said that he isn’t convinced that the FCC can discount language tying the definition of MVPD to spectrum and physical facilities but that he hasn’t prejudged the matter. Support for a record refresh shouldn’t be treated as meaning more “than a bona fide desire to learn more about a domain so as to more effectively and prudentially craft policy,” he said. Simington also called on Congress to “rethink the Commission’s role in the media marketplace.” If the FCC “were controlled by the enemies of localism who seek to destroy it, its recent actions in the media marketplace would be indistinguishable from those it recently has taken,” he said. The FCC should not be allowed to “feng shui the deck chairs on the legacy media Titanic,” Simington said. “Our hearts may go on, but our local news will go dark.”

YouTube will soon require video creators to disclose that they have created realistic-looking synthetic or altered content, such as by using AI tools, Jennifer Flannery O'Connor and Emily Moxley, product management vice presidents, blogged Tuesday. They wrote that when creators upload content, the hosting service will have options for them to indicate whether it contains realistic altered or synthetic material. "This could be an AI-generated video that realistically depicts an event that never happened, or content showing someone saying or doing something they didn't actually do," they wrote. Viewers will be informed by labels on the description panel or on the video player itself, according to the blog post. In addition, YouTube will make it possible to request the removal of AI-generated or other synthetic or altered content that simulates an identifiable individual, using its privacy request process.