• Disney Warns Verizon FiOS Customers About Potential Blackout

  'Tis the season for cable carriage fights, with December 31 a common expiration date for major deals, and the latest battle is brewing between Disney and Verizon FiOS. The media company as started airing ads aimed at the 4.5 million subscribers of FiOS.

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• TV Blackouts Will Only Get Worse

  Signal disruptions, or blackouts, spiked in the U.S. last year. They involved 29 TV stations… and more than 200 markets were affected, according to the American Television Alliance, a group that lobbies for cable and satellite providers. And that’s just for broadcast signals. It doesn’t capture situations like the recent removal of HBO and Cinemax, two premium cable networks, from Dish Network Corp.’s lineup, including from its Sling TV streaming app.

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• Small cable companies want DOJ to reinvestigate Comcast's merger with NBC

  Comcast, the nation’s second-biggest cable TV provider, poses “a much greater threat to competition” than AT&T’s recent merger with Time Warner — and the Justice Department should open a formal investigation, according to a collection of small and independent cable companies. For years, a number of government restrictions attached to the deal had limited Comcast’s ability to harm consumers, the letter by the American Cable Association said. But those restrictions expired over the summer, the group said, opening the door to questionable business tactics such as withholding NBC’s television programming from competing cable providers.

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• Cable rivals call for Justice Department to investigate Comcast

  The American Cable Association, or ACA, which represents small to mid-sized cable systems across the U.S., sent a letter to the Justice Department on Monday asking it to scrutinize Comcast's business practices

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• American TV Alliance Warns of Blackouts

  Football always seems to bring out the retrans fireworks, so much so that the American TV Alliance (made up largely of MVPDs) sent out a missive warning consumers of a potential #blackoutblitz timed to football kickoffs and MLB post-season play.

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• Comcast Beats Q1 Forecasts as NBCUniversal Revenue Boosted by Super Bowl, Olympics

  NBCU’s $9.5 billion in Q1 2018 revenue reflected 21% growth in the cable networks group and a 58% increase from broadcast TV… thanks to an 18% increase in retransmission revenue.

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