Wednesday saw more voice-controlled speaker announcements with products capable of getting terrestrial and web-streamer players. Sonos plays Switzerland, announcing an entry-level speaker that will support Amazon Alexa voice control and then in 2018 Google Assistant. It can control Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, SiriusXM and TuneIn. Sonos' Apple AirPlay 2 will be available next year to play any sound from an iOS device -- including YouTube videos and Netflix movies. Google now has a Mini, and it launched a Google Home Max with machine learning and access to You Tube Music along with Spotify and other streaming music services, said Vice President Rishi Chandra.

Discovery Communications and Google will launch a 38-episode virtual reality series Nov. 3 exclusively on YouTube and DiscoveryVR.com and on the Discovery VR app, they announced Wednesday. Discovery TRVLR can be experienced in VR with the new Google Daydream View headset and with Google Cardboard, as well as through the web and on Android and iOS phones, they said. The series takes viewers beyond the TV screen “and drops them directly into the lives of fascinating locals in every corner of the globe across all seven continents,” using a “visceral 360-degree storytelling experience,” it said.

Oppositions are due Oct. 18 to an NCTA petition for partial reconsideration of FCC video description expansion order, with replies due Oct. 30, the Media Bureau said in a docket 11-43 public notice filed Wednesday.

Weekly on-demand audio streams set a record the week including Sept. 28, surpassing 8.3 billion, said a Tuesday Nielsen report. For the first nine months of 2017, on-demand audio streams exceeded 287 billion, a 59 percent jump over the comparable 2016 period. But music ownership declined for the period, with album sales falling 18.3 percent, digital album sales dropping 19.5 percent and digital track sales plummeting 23.1 percent. Physical album sales were off 17.3 percent, demonstrating consumer preference for streaming. Vinyl albums, though, bucked the trend, with sales rising 3.1 percent for the year, now making up 14 percent of all physical album purchases.

Roku announced Tuesday it closed its initial public offering of 18 million shares of Class A common stock (see 1709050067), including the full exercise by the underwriters of their option to buy 2.35 million additional shares at $14 each. Roku issued and sold 10.35 million shares of Class A common stock and the selling stockholders sold an additional 7.67 million shares, it said. Shares began trading under the ROKU symbol on the Nasdaq. Shares closed 11.7 percent lower Tuesday at $20.81.

Revenue from over-the-top TV and movies is expected to hit $83 billion by 2022, more than double the $37 billion in 2016, Digital TV Research said Monday. It said OTT revenue is expected to rise $9 billion this year. It said the U.S. is expected to be the dominant market for online video revenue, but its share will slip from 51 percent in 2016 to 40 percent by 2022. It said by 2022, OTT revenue will top $1 billion in 14 nations, up from seven nations this year. The researcher said subscription VOD has been the largest OTT revenue source since 2013, and it will account for half of OTT revenue by 2022.

CTA seeks flexible compliance schedules for consumer tech companies not “traditionally” regulated by the FCC but that may have become subject to commission accessibility rules because they're building new video and communications functionality into their products, it told FCC staff in Thursday meetings, said an ex parte notice posted Monday in docket 12-108. Compliance with the rules "should allow for a transition time in proportion with consumer technology product development cycles," CTA said. It backs “narrow waivers” the Media Bureau granted recently to Honda and Fiat Chrysler on user interface requirements for rear entertainment systems (see 1709050065), but automotive product development cycles are “much longer” than those of “traditionally regulated" consumer tech products like TVs and smartphones. The association “supports further appropriate flexibility in particularized situations, as automakers and their suppliers address in good faith the FCC’s accessibility rules.”

Consumers will be able to take more control over commercials they see when viewing over-the-top and connected TV content next year, Andre Swanston, CEO of advertising measurement and data management platform company Tru Optik, told us. He wants to bring the type of opt-out and privacy offerings that consumers have on mobile and desktop platforms to the living room TV, Swanston said. “There was really no standard across different applications, data providers or platforms in terms of opt-out and privacy across connected TV like there has been for some time for desktop and mobile.” Swanston called OTT ads “the wild, Wild West,” where it takes just “one bad actor, or actors, or issue, to ruin this amazing growth opportunity for the whole industry.” Swanston believes a “very small percentage” of consumers will opt out of all ad categories because that would lead to fewer targeted ones that are relevant to them. The company has an eye on set-top boxes from cable and satellite companies, though not for now.

​CTA is “shocked and saddened” by the mass shootings in Las Vegas that killed at least 58 and injured more than 500, said President Gary Shapiro in a Monday statement. As host city to CES, Las Vegas “is like a second home to the entire CES family,” Shapiro said. “We, like so many across the nation, are waiting to hear that our family and friends are safe. Our hearts and prayers are with the entire Las Vegas community." FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and commissioners also tweeted messages of grief and support Monday. “Shocked & deeply saddened by the terrible news out of #LasVegas,” tweeted Pai. “My thoughts & prayers are with the families & friends of those affected.”

Google's decision to end its "First Click Free" policy, which allowed users to get access to three free articles per day via search and Google News without subscribing to news publishers, was praised by News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson. "If the change is properly introduced, the impact will be profoundly positive for journalists everywhere and for the cause of informed societies," Thomson said. He said it will help fight fake news. Google Vice President-News Richard Gingras blogged Monday that a model of "Flexible Sampling" will replace First Click Free, giving publishers the option to determine how much free content, if any, they provide. From its own research and experimenting with The New York Times and Financial Times, Gingras said providing monthly rather than daily free content is a better approach, such as 10 articles per month. He said the company also is collaborating with publishers and is trying to simplify the purchase process to give users an easier way to subscribe to publishers' news.