Younger viewers increasingly opting for global online subscription VOD services like Netflix for their TV content over regional broadcasters could put national identity "at risk as the young are continually exposed to different cultural values than their home," said nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon in a blog post Wednesday. The BBC's iPlayer is facing slowing growth and losing ground to Netflix, and BBC made its BBC 3 channel online only in a bid to try to gain younger viewers, who increasingly are online, he said. Denmark's largest broadcaster, TV2, has seen linear TV consumption plummet while online TV viewing there has growing rapidly since 2014, though it has seen some success with its TV2 Play over-the-top service, the analyst said.

Netflix dumped its five-star ratings system in favor of a Pandora-like thumbs-up and thumbs-down system, said a Wednesday blog post. “Using thumbs helps us learn even more about your unique tastes so we can do a better job suggesting stories,” said Director-Product Innovation Cameron Johnson. When Netflix tested replacing stars with thumbs ratings, it had a 200 percent increase in ratings accuracy, Johnson said. Star ratings next to titles are being replaced with a personalized percentage match score to indicate Netflix’s prediction of titles a viewer might enjoy, Johnson said. The value is based “solely on our algorithms analyzing your individual viewing habits and behavior -- it is not a measure of overall popularity across the service,” he said.

Google, criticized for placing advertising next to objectionable content on YouTube (see 1703240004), brought in comScore to provide independent brand safety reporting of ad campaigns on the video-sharing website, said comScore in a Wednesday news release. "Monitoring online content for brand safety is a complex challenge, particularly in an environment that has the vast scale and growth of YouTube," said Dan Hess, comScore executive vice president-products. The company's technology will constantly monitor "patterns within text content to identify the brand safety of a given ad context," the release said.

Blackouts are on pace to reach record levels this year, the American TV Alliance said in a news release Tuesday. ATVA said the 142 so far in 2017 surpass the 2016 total of 104. Also pointing to rising broadcast retransmission fees, ATVA said "broadcasters have gone nuclear in 2017," backing unspecified congressional and FCC action. ATVA said along with the ongoing Hearst/Dish Network carriage disruption (see 1703270060), carriage of SLJ Broadcasting signals on DirecTV have been disrupted in three markets. NAB in a statement said it "supports the conclusion by the FCC last year that no new rules are warranted in free-market retrans negotiations. Rather than attempt to orchestrate a government bailout by playing games during negotiations, the pay-TV behemoths behind ATVA should focus instead on reaching agreements that benefit themselves, local broadcasters and most importantly, consumers.”

The National Advertising Division (NAD) is recommending Comcast end advertisements implying DirecTV satellite service is prone to weather disruptions. In a news release Tuesday, the investigative unit of the ad industry’s self-regulation system said the ads -- challenged by DirecTV -- are unsupported and in the future Comcast should "avoid any language or imagery of an absolute nature or the implication that service interruption in severe weather is typical." NAD said Comcast agreed to comply. The cable operator said it discontinued the ad campaign and still can use its tag line “Comcast delivers reliable TV -- rain or shine.”

A consortium including Facebook and Mozilla is launching a $14 million fund to support a global initiative to advance news literacy and enhance trust in journalism, said the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism in a Monday news release. CUNY will run the News Integrity Initiative as an independent project, which will fund applied research and projects and host meetings with experts. Other founding members of the consortium are AppNexus, Betaworks, the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund, Democracy Fund, Ford Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Tow Foundation. “As part of the Facebook Journalism Project, we want to give people the tools necessary to be discerning about the information they see online,” said Campbell Brown, Facebook head-news partnerships. “Improving news literacy is a global concern, and this diverse group assembled by CUNY brings together experts from around the world to work toward building more informed communities.”

Philippine media company ABS-CBN received a default judgment in federal court against one online video pirate site and is pursuing legal claims against others. U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of Los Angeles granted a motion for default judgment against the John Does doing business as Cinepinoy.tf in its claim for trademark infringement, unfair competition and copyright infringement. The Thursday order (in Pacer) said the defendants haven't appeared in the action that was filed in October. In the default judgment, the court granted a permanent injunction against the defendants, plus awarded $760,000 in statutory damages, $18,800 in attorney fees and $400 in costs. Cinepinoy didn't comment Monday. Earlier in March, U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ABS-CBN filed a motion (in Pacer) for final default judgment against John Does behind FMovies.to on the company's suit making similar allegations of trademark and copyright infringement related to unauthorized streaming of ABS-CBN video content. In its motion, ABS-CBN said it was still awaiting response to its October complaint against FMovies.to. Also earlier in March, ABS-CBN received a preliminary injunction (in Pacer) from U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas of Fort Lauderdale against Filstreambox and the people behind it from distributing ABS-CBN copyrighted content or using ABS-CBN trademarks. Filstreambox didn't comment Monday. ABS-CBN also has a complaint (in Pacer) brought in February before Dimitrouleas against KissAsian.com, which it alleged was also a pirate site. KissAsian didn't comment Monday.

Panasonic North America created a new subsidiary to serve “the needs of the sports and entertainment industries,” it announced. Headquartered in Newark, New Jersey, Panasonic Media Entertainment “will develop and sell proprietary technological solutions that incorporate high-performance projectors, large screen LED display systems, broadcast-related equipment, professional audio systems, and energy-saving lighting equipment,” Panasonic said Friday. The subsidiary's president, Masaharu Nakayama, previously headed Panasonic System Communications of North America.

To counter attacks against news and a growing distrust of the press, the Radio Television Digital News Association is launching a task force to support journalists and educate the public, said the group in a Friday news release. "If the public comes to believe the news media are the 'enemy of the people,' one of our country's most fundamental rights could be lost," said Voice of the First Amendment Task Force co-chair Sheryl Worsley. "Freedom of the press helps ensure a check on government and helps America stay free." Task force members will meet with radio and TV stations at the NAB convention in April to begin to develop a strategic plan to protect and promote journalism.

Kaleidescape has “confirmation” from the DVD Copy Control Association that the company was “incorrectly identified” in a DOJ Antitrust Division notice as having withdrawn from the Content Scramble System (CSS) licensing group (see 1703270055), Kaleidescape CEO Cheena Srinivasan emailed us Wednesday. DVD CCA representatives “regret the error,” Srinivasan told us. “They have informed me that if anyone wishes to know more about our DVD CCA status, that they’d be glad to confirm that we’re a current licensee of the [CSS] technology.” DVD CCA confirms that Kaleidescape remains a member of the group, spokesman Greg Larsen emailed us Thursday. The notice mistakenly listing Kaleidescape’s membership as having lapsed was the result of “nothing more than an unintentional clerical error on the part of DVD CCA,” Larsen said. “We are looking to see if there is a way to file an amended notice.” DVD CCA “is certainly not happy about this filing mistake and regrets any error for which it is responsible,” he said. Kaleidescape was one of six companies to recently withdraw from DVD CCA, according to the notice published in Monday’s Federal Register. DOJ and the FTC require the change-of-membership notifications to extend DVD CCA members antitrust protections under the 1993 National Cooperative Research and Production Act, the notice said. That the notice listed Kaleidescape as having withdrawn from DVD CCA was noteworthy in light of the company's settlement nearly three years ago of the decade-long breach of license complaint brought by DVD CCA over Kaleidescape’s movie servers that import CSS-protected DVDs.