RCN added seven dedicated 4K channels -- Insight TV, Travelxp 4K, The Country Network, NASA TV UHD, C4K360, NatureVision TV and UHD1 -- and special live events coverage, it said Tuesday. It boosted bandwidth speed with 1 Gbps internet and is offering whole-home Wi-Fi and voice remote via TiVo. RCN customers with 4K-enabled set-top boxes have access to more premier channels: Travelxp 4K, C4K360 and NatureVision TV via Vivicast Media. There's a required $7.95 monthly 4K technology fee, says the fine print.

Viacom has cut back the past couple of years on its licensing of content to subscription VOD services, amassing a big library with which to go direct to consumer with its $340 million Pluto TV acquisition (see 1901230029), Viacom CEO Bob Bakish said in a call Tuesday with analysts. He said Pluto will be "a key driver for transforming our company," and the deal should close in March. He said Pluto provides access to more than 12 million monthly users and is a marketing engine for Viacom's own SVOD products like Nick Hits. For Q1 ended Dec. 31, revenue of $3.09 billion was little changed from the year-ago quarter as operating income fell 16 percent to $602 million. Viacom expects single-digit percentage revenue growth the rest of the fiscal year.

The argument that the LEC test includes a facilities requirement because of a single parenthetical reference to facilities in applicable federal law "ignores basic rules of grammar and statutory interpretation," said Charter Communications in an FCC docket 18-283 posting Monday. It said the parenthetical structure and wording makes clear Congress was discussing MVPDs other than LECs or affiliates. It said it's "perfectly logical" for Congress to put facilities requirements only on MVPDs that aren't LEC affiliated, and the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable (MDTC) is ignoring the FCC's own interpretation of "channels" as meaning programming sources rather than the physical platform over which that programming gets delivered The operator said DirecTV Now is readily available to most of Massachusetts despite Worcester Community Cable Access (WCCA) arguments otherwise since more than 80 percent of the state's households subscribe to broadband. The company is seeking a declaration of effective competition in those states based on the availability of DirecTV Now (see 1809170020). WCCA emailed that the Charter petition is "bad for our community ... has a potential to be bad for public access centers like WCCA TV, bad for free speech, and bad for an open and participatory system of government in the long run." Hawaii and MDTC didn't comment.

As global pay-TV competition further intensifies, “deployment of next-generation content delivery solutions to provide the best user experience across different video platforms is crucial for the success of service providers,” said ABI Research Thursday. It forecasts video streaming services will top 585 million subscriptions worldwide in 2019. ABI sees 5G network deployments as a “catalyst” in mobile video consumption, “driving the requirement of efficient video delivery solutions,” it said. Ultra HD and augmented- and virtual-reality video applications “are also expected to drive the deployment of edge computing platforms for content delivery,” it said. Edge computing can greatly reduce latency by moving the data source closer to end users, it said.

Spotify has had a “steady increase” in paying members the past two quarters, reported Consumer Intelligence Research Partners Wednesday. Some 41 percent of Spotify listeners had a Premium subscription on Dec. 31, CIRP said, and 18 percent of advertising-supported listeners began a trial subscription during the quarter, up from 13 percent in Q3. In Q4, 72 percent of trial Premium members converted to a paid subscription and 13 percent of premium customers ended their subscription, reverting to an ad-supported account or discontinuing the service. Based on responses from 500 U.S. subjects who used the streaming music service October-December, CIRP estimated Spotify’s premium membership grew 2 million subscribers in Q4.

The success Netflix had with You, picked up from Lifetime, points to big challenges cable and broadcast networks will face over the next couple of years from the growing number of streaming services with little or no ads, TVRev analyst Alan Wolk blogged Wednesday. Those traditional networks also will struggle with that, "for many of them, viewers have no idea what they stand for, what type of programming they can expect to find there, and so they never even make it into the consideration set," he said. Small cable networks especially will be challenged to capture viewers' attention, he said. Those competitive pressures will mean the subscription VOD services will face a lot of churn as they run a lot of ads and promotions. Lifetime parent A+E didn't comment Thursday.

New York City public broadcaster WNET will launch the All Arts streaming platform and cable and broadcast channel Monday, it said Wednesday, with original programming, acquired programming and archival WNET content. It said All Arts in the New York City area will be part of the Comcast, Charter Communications, Altice's Cablevision and Verizon FioS lineups and available over the air; in the rest of the country, All Arts content will be available via web browser and an app for iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV.

Hulu is cutting its advertising-supported subscription VOD service from $7.99 a month to $5.99 while increasing its Live TV vMVPD service from $39.99 monthly to $44.99, it said Wednesday. It said its ad-free SVOD service will remain at $11.99 a month. It said the new pricing takes effect beginning Feb. 26 for new subscribers; existing ones will see the pricing in their billing cycles after that.

Google's YouTube TV is going nationwide with its rollout Wednesday to 95 additional markets and plans to fill remaining holes in its availability footprint "shortly," YouTube blogged.

Disney’s streaming and overseas business operations, newly broken out publicly into a “recast” Direct-to-Consumer and International (DCTI) financial-reporting “segment,” incurred a $738 million operating loss in the year ended Sept. 29, a $454 million increase from a year earlier, said an 8-K SEC filing Friday. Disney previously reported the results of its DCTI operations under three other business segments, it said. Disney blamed the higher DCTI loss on the consolidation of financial results from BAMTech, in which it upped its stake to 75 percent in September 2017 (see 1709200034), plus higher than expected losses from Hulu, of which it would become 60 percent owner at the closing of the Fox acquisition. DTCI revenue jumped 11 percent for the year to $3.4 billion, including $1.4 billion in affiliate fees, $1.3 billion in ad proceeds and the rest from subscription fees, it said. Acquiring majority control of BAMTech enabled Disney “to enter the DTC space quickly and effectively, as demonstrated by the success" of the ESPN Plus launch, said CEO Bob Iger. ESPN Plus topped a million subscribers in its first five months and “continues to grow as it expands its content mix, all of which bodes well” for the debut this year of the Disney Plus DTC service, he said. The “robust slate” of Disney Plus original content will include the first live-action Star Wars series, and other “high-profile projects” currently in production or development, he said. Disney will disclose “greater detail” at its April 11 Investor Day conference, he said, including a first look at the original content Disney’s TV and film studios are creating “exclusively for the new streaming service.”