Wall Street is bullish on Altice USA's pending spinoff from parent Altice NV. Altice apparently listened to shareholders with the announcement of Altice USA's spinoff from parent Altice NV, given the "dismal" stock performance of the two last year, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker wrote investors Monday. And MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett emailed investors that Altice USA "suffered" from its connection to the European parent with its heavy debt load and aggressive cost reductions. Altice USA shares closed Tuesday at $23.11, up 9.6 percent. Altice announced the spinoff Monday and said the two will have separate management teams after the transaction, with Altice founder Patrick Drahi retaining control of both companies and acting as chairman of Altice USA. Altice said the separation will let the two companies focus on different market dynamics, strategies and regulatory regimes. It said Altice USA's business strategy will be a focus on revenue growth, its Altice One set-top box and full-scale deployment of its fiber-to-the-home buildout. It said the separation is expected to close by Q2, after Altice NV shareholder and regulatory approvals.

The average video viewer is watching 4.4 hours a day, plus spending another 28 minutes searching for content to watch, TiVo said Tuesday. Its online survey of 8,500 pay-TV and over-the-top subscribers in the U.S., U.K, France, Germany, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia also found about 90 percent of households are paying for traditional pay-TV service, while 60 percent also subscribe to an OTT service. In the U.S., more than 75 percent of video consumption still takes place on TVs, while in Latin America 50 percent of viewing takes place on some other digital device, it said.

Viacom will buy influence marketing company Whosay in a bid to deepen its advertising, marketing and digital content capabilities, it said Monday. Terms of the deal weren't made public. It said Whosay capabilities range from crafting campaign strategy to casting to producing content and analyzing data and performance. Whosay CEO Steve Ellis blogged the Viacom deal follows a two-year partnership in which it did more than 50 campaigns for various Viacom brands including MTV and BET.

Comcast and Liberman Broadcasting agreed to suspend any statute of limitations applicable to any claims that Liberman might bring against Comcast while its petition of Media Bureau dismissal of a program carriage complaint against Comcast is pending (see 1609260049), the two said in a tolling agreement posted Monday in docket 16-121. They said under the accord, Comcast won't bring any statute of limitations defense and Liberman won't file any additional complaint before the FCC or bureau enters a decision on the petition.

Cable operators have smart speaker opportunities and could offer voice-enabled devices in TV bundles, Kenneth Harper, Nuance vice president-emerging solutions, told us Friday. A smart speaker that integrates with a TV is different from what Echo and Google Home do today, he said. Industry needs to identify sought-after skills and services and map skills to match, said Harper. He gave the example of a consumer wanting to cancel an order based on a fraudulent credit card report without having to speak precise syntax. The smart home has to evolve to natural language, he added. And he sought more interoperability for voice-enabled smart homes.

Liberty Interactive and GCI shareholders are likely to approve Liberty's takeover of the cable ISP at shareholder meetings Feb. 2, FBN Securities analyst Robert Routh emailed investors Thursday. The FCC (see 1711090005) and Regulatory Commission of Alaska (see here) already have approved.

"Overhyped" at the coming CES are artificial intelligence everywhere, connected cars and virtual currencies, but immersive story telling, social virtual reality and machine learning for security excite CableLabs CEO Phil McKinney, he said. "We've been talking about AI for quite some time" with "lots of claims ... but it's just not there" yet, he said in a video on 2018 tech innovation predictions. "We've had the promise of connected cars for decades, and we're still waiting for them." Cryptocurrencies, which he has talked about since 2010, has seen little progress other than the "overhyped" value, McKinney said Wednesday. Of areas where he sees the network as "the common thread," he said movies and games can make it feel "like you're part of the story" and "not sitting back as a voyeur." And "we've been talking about VR now for a number of years," but social uses take it to the "next level," McKinney said. Monitoring networks and learning from attack patterns can avoid breaches and take "security to an entirely new level," he said.

Having closed Thursday on its $1.4 billion MetroCast acquisition, Atlantic Broadband is considering additional mergers and acquisitions. "We have an appetitive for more" once the MetroCast integration is complete, President Dave Isenberg told us Thursday. He said Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is a co-investor in the MetroCast deal, with the idea of future acquisitions. "They see this as a platform for growth," Isenberg said, saying opportunities range from cable operators to regional fiber networks perhaps contiguous to Atlantic Broadband service areas. The MetroCast deal was announced in July (see 1707100040). Atlantic owner Cogeco Communications said it now operates in 11 states. It said MetroCast will keep its existing brand and will offer a variety of enhanced services under the Atlantic Broadband brand starting in the spring. Isenberg said Atlantic will use the same strategy with the rest of MetroCast that it employed with its 2015 takeover of MetroCast operations in Connecticut (see 1508210008): a variety of new products and services aimed both at residential customers, like gigabit Internet speeds and Atlantic's TiVo-based video platform, and at enterprise customers, such as hosted private branch exchange services. He said Atlantic continues to see broadband growth, and doesn't anticipate incoming 5G services providing significant competition to its wireline services in the near future since the company largely focuses on suburban and rural territories. It "will be an incredibly long time" before a wireless solution replicates terrestrial service, he said. Programmers increasingly are open to skinnier cable bundles, though there's not consensus among programmers, Isenberg said. "We're not at an inflection point, but the trend is clear," he said. He said video remains profitable and an Atlantic priority, and the Connecticut territory went from losing video customers at faster than industry averages to adding customers profitably.

TV increasingly is "a grand, global game played out over broadband and delivered via apps," and Disney's planned buy of Fox means serious competition for Netflix, which until now has been easily surpassing competitors, The Diffusion Group's Joel Espelien blogged Tuesday. He said Disney's focus on controlling interest in Hulu -- while eschewing Fox's broadcast and cable network assets -- show that broadcast and cable nets are no longer "the crown jewels of the global TV ecosystem." Espelien said Netflix and Amazon Prime showed subscription VOD can do well overseas, and Hulu plausibly could garner 100 million-plus global subscribers through leveraging Disney content. He said New Disney's movie studio arm could "absolutely dominate" the blockbusters market that drives global premium video viewing, positioning it to overwhelm Netflix and its original content strategy.

Cable operators filing FCC Form 1240 can raise the non-external portion of their rates by a factor of 2.09 percent for Q3 to account for inflation, a Media Bureau public notice said in Wednesday's Daily Digest.