The European Commission began a European regulators’ group for audiovisual media services. The high-level panel of representatives of national independent regulatory bodies will advise the EC on how to implement the EU audiovisual media services directive in a converged media age, said the commission Monday. As content becomes increasingly distributed and viewed across borders and created, distributed and viewed online, it raises regulatory challenges which make it more critical that national authorities work together and with the EC and EU countries, it said. The group meets for the first time March 4, it said.

The FCC seeks comment for its 16th Video Competition Report, the commission said in a notice of inquiry Friday (http://fcc.us/LiLtvH). The latest version of the annual congressionally mandated report will use the same framework and collect much of the same information as the two previous reports. The 15th report was released in July (CD July 12 p12). The report will “describe the providers of delivered video programming in each group, summarize their business models and competitive strategies, and present selected operating and financial statistics,” the NOI said. The report will also examine “the creators and aggregators of video programming and their distribution strategies,” and compare video competition in rural and urban areas, the NOI said. Comments are due March 21, replies April 21.

The FCC should continue its stay of the benchmark that requires Comcast/NBCU to offer its content to online video distributors (OVDs) at a rate comparable to other similar industry contracts, said Viacom, Disney and Time Warner Cable in a joint ex parte filing Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1dR2WC6). The condition is part of the order approving the Comcast/NBCUniversal merger, and continuing its stay of the order and taking up a pending application for review that challenges it are in the public interest, said the joint filing. However, Comcast has argued that fulfilling this condition requires that OVDs share their contract information with Comcast, which Viacom, Disney and TWC oppose. “Allowing C-NBCU agents to amass a body of information about competitors and about the OVD programming marketplace would benefit C-NBCU and run counter to sound competitive policy,” said the joint filing. Comcast also hasn’t demonstrated any need for the stay to be lifted, the companies said. One of the reasons behind the company’s objections is that the condition allows Comcast to get information about OVD deals before negotiations with an OVD have begun, whereas an earlier version of the condition reserved that power until after other forms of negotiation had failed. However, under a similar rule, the companies said they would still object to being compelled to reveal “overbroad or inappropriate” information.

TiVo’s acquisition of cloud-based services supplier Digitalsmiths potentially gives the DVR developer access to some tier one pay-TV operators that had eluded it, said an analyst. TiVo will pay $135 million cash for Digitalsmiths, with a customer roster including seven large U.S. pay-TV providers, including DirecTV, Dish Network and Time Warner Cable, said Stephens Inc.’s Tim Quillin. Time Warner Cable agreed to build Digitalsmiths’ Seamless Discovery video recommendations technology into its user interface. The Seamless technology allows users to find and view content across TVs, smartphones, tablets and PCs. The purchase will strengthen TiVo’s hand as it moves to expand into cloud services and moves core set-top DVR functionality such as search and recommendation to the cloud, Quillin said. TiVo also demonstrated network DVRs with a TiVo Cloud service at CES earlier this month. It has been deployed in Swedish cable operator Com Hem’s cloud-based service. The buy of Digitalsmiths will enable TiVo to deploy cloud-based services with operators either independently or with the TiVo interface, TiVo said. Digitalsmiths made its mark with VideoSense tech that enabled searching video by actor, line of dialog, location, genre or product. Digitalsmiths unveiled Seamless Discovery at the 2011 CES as a means for making programming recommendations to users based on viewing habits and directing them to where the content could be found, whether it was VOD, broadcast or cable. Digitalsmiths, which has 61 employees, including 49 in Durham, N.C., will remain based in that state and CEO Ben Weinberger and Chief Operating Officer Matt Perry will continue with the company, TiVo said. Privately held Digitalsmiths has annual sales of about $10 million, Quillin said. Digitalsmiths’ cloud-based service handled 90 million transactions in July, increasing to 150 million by December, Digitalsmiths said. “Digitalsmiths contributes expertise, data opportunities, and approaches that complement and extend TiVo’s extensive work in advanced television to customers seeking search, recommendations, and portability,” said TiVo CEO Tom Rogers in a statement.

Correction: The cable operator Visible World has partnered with is Cablevision (CD Jan 28 p6).

No ruling will be issued in FilmOn X’s case in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals until the Supreme Court issues a decision in its Aereo case, said a 9th Circuit order Monday. FilmOn’s appeal of a preliminary injunction granted against its streaming TV service in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles had already been through oral arguments in August -- the parties in the case were waiting for the 9th Circuit to issue a decision. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on the Aereo matter, a broadcaster appeal of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision not to issue an injunction against Aereo, in the summer, say industry observers. The order putting the 9th Circuit case on hold was issued by the 9th Circuit panel without any requests to do so from the parties in the case, according to online records. FilmOn’s appeal of a nearly nationwide injunction from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit -- barring it from streaming copyrighted material anywhere outside the jurisdiction of the 2nd Circuit -- was also put on hold to wait for the Supreme Court (CD Jan 27 p10). Hearst’s case against Aereo in U.S. District Court in Boston has already been stayed pending a high court ruling at the joint request of both sides, and a similar joint request has been filed in Hearst’s appeal of a preliminary injunction ruling in Aereo’s favor in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A hearing on a similar possible stay of the case brought by broadcasters against Aereo in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City is set for Friday.

Cox Communications urged the FCC to adopt rules that give cable operators and broadcasters a commission-sanctioned “fair path” to the resolution of retransmission consent disputes, said the cable operator in a letter filed in docket 10-71 (http://bit.ly/1aFG0eO). Cox advocated a voluntary, non-binding mediation framework that would allow the negotiating parties to make their cases before an “impartial and experienced industry mediator who can help bring the two sides together.” Cox’s framework would provide transparency and limited public disclosure of each side’s rate demands, “providing a discipline to bargaining that is often absent today,” Cox said.

All companies that produce full-length broadcast programs should be required to provide closed captioning for both IP-delivered video clips and full-length programs, said Public Citizen in a comment filed with the FCC in docket 11-154 Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1nevhea). The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act “was intended to cover IP-delivered video clips,” said the filing, citing a letter from Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Mark Pryor, D-Ark., that states “affirmatively” that congressional intent was to caption clips. “Any other standard” would go against the principles of the CVAA, the filing said. “The widespread lack of captioning on IP-delivered video programming disadvantages and marginalizes deaf and hard of hearing people."

The framing of the question the Supreme Court will consider in the Aereo case may favor broadcasters, said Fletcher Heald’s CommLaw Blog (http://bit.ly/1gkwi3Q). Though broadcasters originally brought the cert petition to the court, Aereo also asked the court to take the case. However, the court’s announcement of the question it will consider in the case is nearly identical to the one asked by broadcasters in their request for cert. The high court is considering “whether a company ‘publicly performs’ a copyrighted television program when it retransmits a broadcast of that program to thousands of paid subscribers over the Internet,” according to the Supreme Court website. Aereo had asked the court to instead consider whether Aereo is performing publicly “under Sections 101 and 106 of the Copyright Act, by supplying remote equipment that allows a consumer to tune an individual, remotely located antenna to a publicly accessible, over-the-air broadcast television signal, use a remote digital video recorder to make a personal recording from that signal, and then watch that recording.” It is not unusual for opposing parties to offer different questions, but the high court’s using the broadcaster version “suggests at least an initial willingness on the Court’s part to see things the way the broadcasters see them,” said the blog post. “Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t,” said the blog. “But the parties’ lawyers presumably think it’s significant: they did, after all, bother to advance their respective versions."

The FTC is seeking public comment on Nielsen’s application to sell its LinkMeter audience measuring service to comScore, the commission said in a news release Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1dBNkm6). The divesture is part of a proposed settlement with the FTC over Nielsen’s buy of Arbitron, the focus of an FTC complaint over decreased competition in the cross-platform audience rating business. “The elimination of future competition between Nielsen and Arbitron in this market would increase the likelihood that Nielsen would exercise market power and likely cause advertisers, ad agencies, and programmers to pay more for national syndicated cross-platform audience measurement services,” said the FTC. The proposed settlement order requires Nielsen to sell and license assets connected with Arbitron’s cross-platform audience measurement business -- like LinkMeter -- for at least eight years, to an FTC-approved buyer, and Nielsen has asked the FTC to approve comScore as that buyer, the FTC said. “Nielsen and comScore have agreed to terms and other requirements in compliance with the terms set forth in the FTC Decision and Order,” said Nielsen in its own release. The agreement is intended to preserve “the competitive landscape” by allowing the continuation of a project to measure media consumption in TV, radio, PCs and mobile devices that was originally announced in 2012 as a joint effort of ESPN, comScore and Arbitron, said Nielsen.