The FCC Disability Advisory Committee meets Oct. 16, said a public notice Tuesday. The meeting will include reports and recommendations on accelerating integration of real-time text by public safety answering points, the challenges of supporting compatibility of RTT with refreshable Braille displays, IP captioned telephone service quality metrics, and activities of the Video Programming Subcommittee, the PN said.

Video streaming makes up 55 percent of on-demand music streaming time, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry reported Tuesday. Paid audio streaming was 23 percent and free audio streaming 22 percent over the past six months, said IFPI. The music industry’s “value gap” remains the biggest threat facing the music world today, said CEO Frances Moore. Upload services are used heavily by music consumers but don’t return fair value to those investing in and creating the music, said Moore. Wide availability of unlicensed music remains a challenge, with 40 percent of consumers saying they access unlicensed music, said the report. Copyright infringement is “growing and evolving,” led by stream ripping, IFPI said. The percentage of music listeners who engage in licensed audio streaming rose to 45 percent, from 37 percent in September 2016, IFPI said, and on average, consumers listened to music in four different licensed ways. For teens, 33 percent paid for their own music subscription (compared with 63 percent of paid audio streamers aged 16-64), and 36 percent were part of a family plan (vs. 22 percent of 16-64-year-olds). Of the 87 percent of music consumers listening on to the go, 68 percent listen to broadcast radio and 35 percent listen to internet radio. U.S. smartphone music listening reached 63 percent vs. the 54 percent in the first six months of 2016, highest among 16-24-year-olds at 84 percent and lowest among 55-64-year-olds at 30 percent.

Any AT&T divestiture of its DTV Latin America assets could be challenging, New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin emailed investors Monday. He said reports AT&T may be trying to sell Sky Brasil are likely tied to getting Brazilian regulatory OK for AT&T/Time Warner. Chaplin said while Telefonica Brasil is a likely buyer, it perhaps won't pay the reported $5 billion asking price. Chaplin said that while Telefonica, Millicom and John Malone-affiliated Lilac might want some of the other assets, such deals "will be more challenging" for regulatory and balance sheet reasons. He said AT&T would likely want to keep its 41 percent stake in Sky Mexico as it looks to sell its Sky Brasil and Panamericana direct broadcast satellite assets. AT&T in a statement said it expects buying TW to close before year's end and it's discussing "appropriate conditions" with Brazilian regulators and expects "to resolve any concerns with remedies similar to those we have agreed to in other jurisdictions. And we continue" to work with DOJ.

The FCC Media Bureau gave extra time to MVPDs to file Form 396-C Equal Employment Opportunity program annual reports. A public notice Thursday cited technical difficulties in preparing for the filing, extending the deadline from Sept. 30 to Oct. 16. It said filers -- particularly those in hurricane-hit areas -- can request an further extension.

After testing, the parties in Ellington Broadcasting’s must-carry complaint against Cable One agreed WPRQ-LD Clarksdale, Mississippi, doesn’t provide a good quality signal to Cable One’s headend, and Ellington’s complaint involving that station will be denied, the FCC Media Bureau said in an order Tuesday. The parties also agreed the testing showed Ellington’s station WHCQ-LD Cleveland, Mississippi, satisfies carriage rules, and the complaint involving that station will be granted, the order said. The bureau had provisionally granted WPRQ’s carriage complaint, but gave Cable One 20 days to gather more evidence (see 1707240069).

Disney’s plans to launch two direct-to-consumer (DTC) video services in the next two years under the ESPN and Disney brands (see 1709080027 and 1709080030) “will further exacerbate the growing divide between media companies that have strong intellectual property and a deep library of content and those that don't,” S&P Global Ratings said in a Friday report. “Disney's announcement is an important step in the continued evolution of the U.S. television industry," S&P said. “Disney has been a staunch defender of the pay TV video bundle.” But with launch of an “enhanced” ESPN-branded livestreaming service, “the company appears to be hedging against an acceleration in pay TV subscriber declines and positioning itself to upgrade the service to a stand-alone DTC service in the future,” it said. “Since sports is the glue that holds the pay TV bundle together, any significant change in Disney's sports strategy could affect the video bundle's long-term prospects.”

The UHD Alliance will “soft-launch” for consumers ExperienceUHD.com this month as part of a broadened outreach to educate the public, Mike Fidler, new alliance president, told us at IFA. The alliance also will maintain its existing membership website. The new site will “hot-link” to each member manufacturer’s products that are certified by the alliance as Ultra HD Premium-compliant, he said. Streamed content from Amazon or Netflix won’t be on the site yet, he said. “We’re working with both our Netflix and Amazon partners as a way to identify maybe using the Ultra HD Premium logo” on their content, as both are founding alliance members, he said. Company representatives didn’t comment Monday. Tackling Ultra HD “interoperability” challenges will be an alliance priority under a new working group chaired by Sony Pictures Entertainment Chief Technology Officer Don Eklund, Fidler said. Of the 40,000 conversation threads studied, about 25 percent expressed some form of dissatisfaction with the Ultra HD experience, Fidler said. Part of the alliance’s “effort” on interoperability will be to “work across industry groups,” including the Blu-ray Disc Association, CTA, the Digital Entertainment Group and SMPTE, “to try to be sure we have a comprehensive approach,” Fidler said. The alliance estimates that consumer awareness of 4K technology is 70 percent or above, he said. “But HDR is below 50 percent.”

SiriusXM sees no “competitive issues” to block regulatory approval of paying $480 million for 19 percent of Pandora (see 1706090005), Chief Financial Officer David Frear told a Bank of America Merrill Lynch investor conference Friday. “I can't imagine why DOJ would step in the way.” Once the deal closes, under which SiriusXM will land three seats on the Pandora board, including chairman, “there are interesting strategic things that the two companies can do together,” Frear said: Most of the estimated 100 million cars on the road “are connected, and so we could engage them to the extent that there are people in those vehicles using the Pandora app and we could use that as a cross-marketing opportunity, right?”

Disney decided to pull its Marvel and Lucasfilm studios' films from Netflix, CEO Bob Iger told an investor conference Thursday. This is so a coming Disney product, which will include other titles his company previously said it will no longer let the video streamer distribute after 2019 (see 1708090029), “will have the entire output of the studio” for the direct-to-consumer service, Iger said. Netflix emailed us Friday that "as with Disney films, US Netflix members will have access to Marvel and Star Wars films on the service through the end of 2019 and 2020 in many cases. This includes all new films shown theatrically through the end of 2018. We continue to do business with" Disney "on many fronts, including our ongoing relationship with Marvel TV." The two studios will produce four-five original films exclusively for the new service, “primarily live action,” plus four-five original TV series and three-four TV movies, all “Disney-branded,” Iger said. The Disney direct-to-consumer service will “launch big,” Iger said. It will launch internationally, and it’s “possible that some markets will launch the service earlier than we'll launch in the United States because of windowing opportunities that we have on the motion picture side that we don't have here,” he said. The ESPN-branded livestreaming app will launch in the spring with 10,000 “live sporting events” in the first year “that are not currently on ESPN's linear channels,” including Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer and “a lot of college sports that we own the rights to,” the CEO said. “Over time,” Iger envisions the ESPN livestreaming app as becoming a “sports marketplace platform” that will emulate iTunes for its consumer-friendly utility: “You'll be able to pick and choose, over time, what it is you want. It won't necessarily be a one-size-fits-all.”

Roku launched an advertising-supported free movie channel, the Roku Channel, on its streaming platform, it said Wednesday. Roku Channel requires no subscriptions or log-ins and the company said it will have about half the ads per programming hour as traditional, ad-supported linear TV. It said content will come from such studios as Lionsgate, MGM, Sony, Warner Brothers, American Classics, Fandor, FilmRise, Nosey and Vidmark, with others to be added.