Issues about white area feed distribution of Liberman should be dealt with in a complaint based on that, instead of the broadcaster trying to inject the matter into its carriage complaint, Comcast said in an FCC docket 16-121 filing posted Monday. Citing Liberman's raising of white area feed matters (see 1705170005), Comcast said that's outside of Liberman's original complaint or what was presented in the record, and called it "gamesmanship." It said Liberman is instead trying to resurrect its bid for the same relief using "new unsubstantiated allegations and ... dubious facts." If the Media Bureau wants to address white area carriage matters, it should find that feed was treated as an adjunct to broadcast carriage in market negotiations and subject to the retransmission consent regime, where it could be subject of a separate complaint, the operator said. Liberman outside counsel Markham Erickson of Steptoe & Johnson said the Media Bureau "was wrong as a matter of law to hold that Liberman does not qualify as a 'video programming vendor' when it acts as a broadcaster, and we hope that the Bureau will reverse its earlier determination." Liberman noted that its EstrellaTV network reaches more markets in white areas than in broadcast markets and that Comcast is the only major MVPD that doesn't broadly distribute it, he said. "The sole reason for such disparate treatment, of course, is Comcast’s ownership of Telemundo and NBCUniverso."

Revived rumors of SiriusXM’s interest in acquiring Pandora sent the music-streaming company’s shares up 5.5 percent Thursday to close at $9.42, after the New York Post Wednesday reported that the Liberty Media-owned satellite broadcasting company is in “active discussions” about making a bid for Pandora. Struggling Pandora received $150 million in capital funding by private equity firm KKR earlier this month (see 1705090039), which some analysts said reduced the likelihood of a near-term sale. SiriusXM has exhibited “on-and-off interest” in Pandora, said the Post. Pandora launched its Premium on-demand service in March, and CEO Tim Westergren said on an earnings call last week about 500,000 users were participating in a Premium trial. The company announced last week it was seeking upcoming changes to its board to provide “additional expertise and leadership.” A Pandora spokeswoman told us the company doesn't comment on rumors or speculation.

Facebook is making more updates aimed at further reducing stories from sources that post click-bait headlines, wrote company engineers Arun Babu, Annie Liu and Jordan Zhang in a Wednesday blog post. They said Facebook is taking into account click-bait at the individual post level and at the domain and page levels, seeing whether headlines withhold information or exaggerate it, and testing the updates in different languages. The updates build on work begun last year. "Headlines that withhold information intentionally leave out crucial details or mislead people, forcing them to click to find out the answer,'" the three wrote. There are headlines with sensational language that exaggerate details, they added, such as: “WOW! Ginger tea is the secret to everlasting youth. You’ve GOT to see this!” The engineers said most users won't see any significant changes in their news feeds and publishers that use click-bait headlines should expect distribution to decrease.

A firmware update released Tuesday enables HDR10 streaming on Vizio SmartCast E-Series Ultra HD 4K TVs with HDR, giving consumers access to HDR content from Netflix, Vudu and FandangoNow, the company announced.

With about three weeks before EPA releases the final draft of its version 8.0 Energy Star TV specification, the agency is considering important changes, officials told a webinar. There could be further tightening of limits against disabling the energy-saving automatic brightness control (ABC) feature in preset picture modes if a TV is to qualify for Energy Star V8.0, EPA said Monday. EPA is considering whether to require ABC be enabled by default across all preset picture settings, Emmy Feldman, an associate at EPA consultant ICF International, told the webinar. EPA “heard from other manufacturers, and in response to draft one, that implementing ABC in every preset picture setting may not be appropriate,” Feldman said. Comments are due May 24 on the second draft. EPA sees V8.0 taking effect in March or April, said Verena Radulovic, Energy Star product manager-consumer electronics.

Nielsen plans to install close to 15,000 TV audience meters in about 7,000 homes in the 140 markets currently measured by local TV paper diaries, toward its goal of universal electronic television measurement in all 210 local TV markets, it said Tuesday. It said the electronic meters will help fill data gaps that come from using set-top data for audience measurement in local markets. It said the audience meters will be in recruited households that include those viewing through over-the-air broadcasts. In a statement, NAB said it "long believed that over-the-air TV station viewership has been undercounted by measurement companies as multicast ‘D2’ networks gain in popularity and TV antenna sales increase," and the Nielsen announcement "sends a positive signal about the renewed vitality of local and network broadcast television in an era of pay TV cord-cutting and cord-shaving.”

Global digital rights agency Merlin announced support Monday for MQA, enabling independent music labels to encode master recordings in MQA technology. The multiyear partnership is expected to boost the uptake and growth of MQA streaming, they said. MQA is currently available from streaming music service Tidal and is supported on the hardware side by Pioneer, Technics, Onkyo, Bluesound, NAD, Meridian, Mytek, Kripton, Brinkmann, Aurender, Cary Audio and MSB. Merlin acts on behalf of thousands of independent record labels and distributors in 50 countries. In addition, audio module and software company StreamUnlimited announced a partnership with MQA, saying the hi-res audio format offers music services, hardware companies and record labels "the opportunity to close the gap between the consumer listening experience and the recording studio." ​

Vizio developed a system of "tracking pixels and cookies" that enables "real-time" monitoring of TV "programming consumption specific to an individual television or other viewing device,” said a patent application published Thursday at the Patent and Trademark Office. “The ability to accurately determine in near real-time exactly what TV program or advertisement each and every TV viewer in the U.S. is watching at any moment has long been an unmet market need,” said the application, assigned to Vizio Inscape Technologies, and naming Zeev Neumeier, Michael Collette and Leo Hoarty as inventors. “One reason this has been such a challenge is because it would require being able to identify not just what channel has been tuned to, but specifically what content is being watched, since the media actually being consumed by the viewer can include not just the scheduled programming but also regionally or locally-inserted advertisements, content that has been time-shifted, or other entertainment products.” The invention envisions that information about media consumption “by such specific television sets or other viewing means may be returned to a commercial client of the system through a trusted third-party intermediary service,” it said. “In certain embodiments, encoded tokens may be used to manage the display of certain events as well as to enable robust auditing of each involved party's contractual performance.” Vizio reached an agreement with the FTC in February to pay $2.2 million to settle allegations it fashioned its Inscape viewer-tracking function in its smart TVs to spy on consumers' viewing habits without their knowledge and then sold the data to third parties (see 1702060042). Company representatives didn’t comment Monday on commercial plans to use the technology described in the new patent.

CEDIA CEO and Global President Vin Bruno resigned four months shy of his second anniversary to “focus on new opportunities” in residential and commercial technology, CEDIA said in a news release. Board President Dennis Erskine said the board will meet over the next two weeks to create a strategy and timeline for appointing a successor to Bruno, who had been with Crestron for more than seven years before taking over at CEDIA. Acting President/CEO Tabatha O’Connor, the group’s chief operating officer since 2015, said CEDIA is “in a much stronger position than it was 18 months ago” and is “looking forward to a new phase of success for our global community.” Bruno didn’t immediately respond. CEDIA sold its annual trade show in February (see 1702020055) to Emerald Expositions for an undisclosed sum. In a news briefing in December 2015, Bruno said CEDIA was in talks with Coldwell Banker to involve integrators in the sale of homes valued at over $1 million. Last May, the two organizations announced a home technology certificate program for Coldwell Banker Real Estate agents based on a curriculum taught by CEDIA representatives to help agents represent the value of home technology.

Redbox added 300 rental kiosks in Q1 as part of a goal to add 1,500 net kiosks this year, it said in an announcement. That will bring the total number of Redbox kiosks to some 41,500 nationwide, with more planned for 2018, it said. "Renting discs remains an important consumer offering for families on a budget, or any consumer who wants a better value for new release content,” said CEO Galen Smith.