About three-quarters of Americans think online search, social media and e-commerce platforms wield too much power, fearing it’s a “major or moderate” threat to competition, a Consumer Reports survey found. CR canvassed 3,200 adults online July 7-22, finding 52% think paid placement of search results is “fair only if it is disclosed.” Nearly a quarter think it's unfair regardless. Nearly half of Americans have trouble differentiating a paid ad from an “objective search result,” said CR. Fifty-eight percent aren't “confident that they are getting objective and unbiased search results when using an online platform to shop or search for information,” it said. Nearly eight in 10 worry that big tech mergers and acquisitions can “undermine competition and limit consumer choice,” it said. Six of 10 “support more government regulation” to curb the growing power of large online platforms that may be harming consumers, said CR. The Internet Association didn't comment.

With set-top box deployment declining, Dolby’s penetration of Atmos and Vision should increase as MVPDs redesign offerings to fight churn and improve user experience, Colliers' Steven Frankel wrote investors Friday. Atmos and Vision shifted from either/or adoption decisions by hardware OEMs to a package of technologies delivering a premium experience, Frankel noted, citing Dolby Chief Financial Officer Lewis Chew. The technology company “continues to raise the bar” for audio and video technology with Dolby Vision IQ (see 2001080037) in some 2020 TVs, he said. Upcoming Xbox Series X and S game consoles support Atmos and Vision across all game play, vs. the previous Microsoft console, which only supported Dolby technologies in the Netflix app. Apple’s iOS 14 brings Atmos to AirPod Pro earphones “and could spur Atmos adoption by other wireless headphone makers,” said Frankel. Dolby.io is a “potential game changer,” said the analyst, moving Dolby's technology from hardware to software, allowing access through applications programming interfaces and shifting the revenue model “from per-device to per-use.” Chew referenced early traction with SoundCloud, telehealth and distance learning, said Frankel.

The return of live sports may temporarily reduce pressure on the cord-cutting cycle of fewer subscribers resulting in higher prices, but another wave of cord cutting "more damaging than the first," may be coming, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote investors Wednesday. As people leave traditional pay TV for direct-to-consumer alternatives, the best content follows them, thus helping accelerate cord cutting, he said. The current rate of cord-cutting is 7.7%-8.3% a year, up from 5.4% last year, meaning the traditional pay-TV bushiness could disappear in 12 years, he said. Cord cutting is exploding, but some dropping of cable subscriptions may only be temporary due to the pandemic, CCG Consulting President Doug Dawson blogged Wednesday. Sports "will eventually come back to TV," and sports fans will re-up their subscriptions, he said. As the economy picks up, people also will find it easier to justify the monthly cable subscription, he said. The pandemic's shutdown of creation of new programming content also is hurting subscriptions for now, he said.

Amid shelter-in-place mandates, the largest U.S. pay-TV providers lost about 1.2 million net video subscribers, with Q2 the sixth consecutive quarter of one million-plus net losses. That compares with a net loss of about 2.1 million in Q1 and 1.3 million in the year-ago quarter, said a Wednesday Leichtman Research Group report. Comcast lost 478,000 video subscribers and Cox 50,000; Charter bucked the trend with 94,000 net adds. DirecTV shed 846,000 subs and Dish 40,000. Cable lost half a million video subscribers vs. 455,000 in Q2 2019; top telco providers lost 157,000 vs. 95,000 in Q2 2019, led by Verizon Fios with 80,000 cancellations. Among vMVPD services, Hulu+ Live TV added 100,000 net subscribers while Sling TV and AT&T Now dropped 56,000 and 68,000 subs, it said. Though the pay-TV industry continues to lose subscribers “rapidly,” the wide disparity among top providers in Q2 shows "the significance of individual corporate strategies,” said Bruce Leichtman.

Net new broadband subscriptions “blew away” expectations, with stay-at-home orders resulting in the best June quarter results in 15 years, Pivotal Research Group's Jeff Wlodarczak wrote investors Friday. Subs jumped 350% year on year, all from cable, to 1.45 million, with broadband occupied household penetration finishing June at 83.7%. Despite stay-at-home effects, telco net data subscriber losses widened by 30% to 200,000, said PRG. Some 20 million copper-based telco subs are “ripe for cable to steal,” with 35%-50% increases in normalized data usage and data-only homes consuming more than 400 gigabytes of data monthly. Wlodarczak sees “plenty of ability for cable to take price as they move to 10+gig bi-directional capital efficiently which will only benefit from bundling with relatively cheap wireless services.” Pay TV delivered another “ugly” result, losing an estimated 2 million subscribers, said the analyst. The 10% drop was better than forecast and an improvement from the record 2.4 million losses in Q1, likely due to the shutdown and government stimulus payments, he said. VMVPDs shed 1.6 million subscribers, flat with Q2 2019. That pricing model gives consumers “fewer channels at roughly the same price without the quality of service,” said Wlodarczak. Dish Network bled 340,000 subs when it tried to normalize prices, and Google will likely face losses after its 30% hike to $65 for YouTube TV, he said. Cable had a 10% uptick in subscriber losses to 860,000, better than Pivotal’s forecast of minus 1.2 million. Satellite TV lost 900,000; telcos lost 190,000. Wlodarczak attributed accelerating overall pay-TV losses to the increasingly high cost of traditional pay TV, increased commercial loads, “cheap entertainment alternatives,” password sharing and lack of live sports.

Consumer intentions to buy new TV sets declined sharply in July from June, according to preliminary Conference Board data released Tuesday. Nielsen canvassed 5,000 U.S. homes through July 17, finding 10.6% planned to buy a new TV in the next six months, down from 12.6% in June, 11% in May and 12.4% in July 2019. Consumer confidence declined in July, especially in regions experiencing a spike in COVID-19 cases, said the board: “Consumers have grown less optimistic about the short-term outlook for the economy and labor market and remain subdued about their financial prospects. Such uncertainty about the short-term future does not bode well for the recovery, nor for consumer spending.”

Esports ad and sponsorship spending this year will top $1.5 billion, up 41% from 2017, Comscore reported Monday. Some 65% of U.S. households own a device for gaming; game content touches 80% of the digital population. Some 38 million U.S. households own a gaming console. In 2020, there were 210 million unique visitors in the overall gaming category.

Wall Street's recent bearishness toward cable companies may reflect concerns a Joe Biden presidency would mean Communications Act Title II reclassification of broadband service, legislation on net neutrality or even overt price regulation, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote investors Tuesday. He said reclassification by a Democratic FCC would likely be shot down by the Supreme Court long before price regulation could happen. Regulatory attention on Big Tech, and away from cable, seems to point to a regulatory outlook for cable that's "less scary" than it has been for years, even under a Democratic administration, he said.

Consumers’ online video viewing hours almost doubled from 3.6 hours per week in 2017 to nearly seven hours weekly in 2020, Parks Associates reported Wednesday. Pay-TV adoption in that period fell from 75% to 62%, it said. Some 74% of U.S. broadband households subscribe to at least one streaming service, nearly half to two or more, said contributing analyst Kenneth Wacks. Though set-top box adoption has fallen off along with pay-TV declines, he said, the set-top still could have a role, serving as aggregator for the different services coming into homes “and present them in a personalized and attractive [user interface] for an improved consumer experience.”

Consumer intentions to buy new TV sets increased sharply in June from May, according to preliminary Conference Board data released Tuesday. Nielsen canvassed 5,000 U.S. homes through June 18, finding that 12.3% planned to buy a new TV in the next six months, said the board. That was up from 11% in May but down slightly from 12.5% in June 2019, it said. Consumer confidence “partially rebounded” in June but stayed “well below pre-pandemic levels,” said the board. “The re-opening of the economy and relative improvement in unemployment claims helped improve consumers’ assessment of current conditions.”