Requiring that programming be available to online video distributors (OVDs) means consumers will pay more, Madison Square Garden Holdings said in an FCC ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 14-261 on a meeting between Adam Levine, senior vice president-legal and business affairs, and Media Bureau and Office of Strategic Planning staff. Much of the programming MSG licenses doesn't come with rights for online distribution because sometimes the rightsholders distribute through other outlets such as Hulu, Netflix or YouTube, or directly to customers through their own platforms, MSG said. The cost of such rights, when they're available, can be prohibitive, and those higher programming costs "will be passed through ... eventually to consumers," MSG said. "Even for programming that MSG produces and owns, acquiring online distribution rights for all elements of such programming can be very difficult." Changing the definition of multichannel video programming distributor to include some forms of OVDs "would not vest online distribution rights in MSG" since those rights agreements generally provide for distributing through specific forms of media and not some blanket rights agreement to MVPDs in general, MSG said: "There is no record of any market failure that would justify any changes to the MVPD definition," and such a change "would substantially and unnecessarily harm the handful of programmers subject to the rules."

HBO Go, as a part of StarHub's new online streaming service StarHub Go, is now available in Singapore, Time Warner said in a news release Wednesday.

The top three broadband providers on the Netflix U.S. ISP Speed Index in July maintained their respective positions from the June rankings, with Cox in first at an average streaming speed of 3.62 Mbps, followed by Cablevision Optimum and Verizon FiOS, the video streaming service said in a Monday blog post. Charter jumped two spots and is now in fourth place, bumping Comcast down to No. 5. Suddenlink dropped two spots to seventh, while Time Warner Cable climbed one position to No. 8. Frontier, Windstream, CenturyLink, Verizon DSL and Clearwire rounded out the bottom half of the list of major ISPs. Bell Canada Fiber Optic took the top spot on the July Canadian index with an average speed of 3.73 Mbps. MTS Fiber Optic finished in the second spot for the month in Canada and Bell Aliant Fiber Optic finished third.

Turner Broadcasting is accelerating its VOD offerings, for the first time offering multiple upcoming episodes of a series online. The programmer said Thursday it would make multiple episodes of the drama Public Morals available through set-top video on demand, the Watch TNT mobile app and online at www.tntdrama.com/watchtnt one day after the Aug. 25 series premiere. Episodes of some truTV and TNT series also will be available on demand starting this week, Turner said.

Netflix introduced a maternity and paternity leave policy letting employees take "unlimited" paid time off during the first year after the birth or adoption of a child, the company said in a blog post Tuesday. It said Netflix will allow new parents to return part time or full time during that year, or return and then leave as needed, while the company continues to "keep paying them normally." Each "employee gets to figure out what's best for them and their family, and then works with their managers for coverage during their absences," wrote Chief Talent Officer Tawni Cranz.

Roku nipped $10 off the price of a Roku 2 streaming media player through Saturday, it told customers in an email Wednesday. Sale price is $59 with free shipping, the company said. Roku also announced Wednesday that Australian telecom operator Telstra will use Roku’s platform to deliver its new streaming service and player, Telstra TV, to consumers via the Roku Powered program. Telstra’s TV streaming service will launch later this year in Australia and bundle the provider’s BigPond movie service with Netflix, Presto, Stan and various catch-up TV channels. Telstra is the fourth operator after Sky UK, Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia to join the Roku Powered licensing program.

The European Commission should “investigate tactics reportedly used by Apple to drive out ‘freemium’ (commercial sponsored) streaming music and unfairly dominate the streaming music business,” Consumer Watchdog said in a letter to European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, a news release said. Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court and Privacy Project Director John Simpson sent a similar letter to the FTC and Justice Department last week (see 1507220066) and asked the agencies to investigate the company for possible antitrust violations. “Apple is utilizing its market power in much the way the company did in setting e-book prices,” the letters said.

NCTA, citing results of an Arris consumer research study (see 1507220035), wants an increase in unlicensed spectrum. The research, an NCTA blog post said Friday, showed consumers "love watching TV on whichever device they have handy via whatever broadband access point is near," and more spectrum is needed to keep up with consumer demand for easier content access and more ubiquitous Wi-Fi. The cable industry has the technical ability capable of handling its data streaming needs well into the future, it said in the blog post, but lacks the allotted spectrum to do so.

There was a delay in notifying Pandora customers to changes in its privacy policy that were effective June 30 (see 1507220018), a spokesman told us Friday. Pandora hadn't updated the policy since December 2013 and there was no requirement that customers be notified before changes took place, he said. The company intended to notify users the day before or the day the changes took place, but due to the high number of Pandora users, emails alerting them to the changes were phased in over the course of a couple of weeks, he said.

Netflix's TV app is getting its first major upgrade in two years with new functionality, it said Wednesday in a blog post. Video playback is being linked with content selection so when a viewer selects a title, it will start or resume playing while briefly superimposing information about the program on the screen. That new feature began rollout Wednesday and is expected to be worldwide in days, the company said.