Hollywood Reporter

As the US government gets set to fight AT&T's proposed acquisition of Time Warner in a DC federal court, the Department of Justice March 9 submitted a trial brief that sharpens its theories on why the $85 billion merger deserves to be blocked.

The Walt Disney Co is apparently punishing the Los Angeles Times for a negative story about Disneyland, a reporter said in a series of tweets Nov 3 that were supported by a written statement from the newspaper. "The Los Angeles Times has been 'put on pause' by Disney, barring its reporters and critics from seeing its movies," tweeted Glenn Whipp, who writes columns about film and television for the newspaper.

President Donald Trump's view on the $85.4 billion merger has been quite un-Republican-like, and he wants to keep his campaign promise, which would mean intervening (and stifling CNN nemesis Jeff Zucker). President Trump says he is determined to keep his campaign promises. It is a mantra in the West Wing. All campaign promises have to be turned into executive orders, legislation or regulatory action. That’s the agenda. There’s an actual checklist on which staffers tick off each promise. One of those promises — falling somewhere behind extreme vetting, repealing and replacing Obamacare (well, um, cough, blame someone else for that), tax reform, immigration bans, military expansion, budget cutting, a Mexican border wall and making NATO allies pay up — is to block the planned merger of AT&T and Time Warner.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a seismic victory in favor of streaming company FilmOn, handing significant relief to broadcasters like CBS, Fox, NBC and ABC who were aghast by a federal judge's decision in July 2015 that streamers could be deemed to be a "cable system" eligible for a compulsory license under the Copyright Act.

The battle took place after the US Supreme Court determined in June 2014 that another streamer, Aereo, had publicly performed the copyrighted work of broadcasters. The high court, though, left some room for further litigation upon Justice Stephen Breyer's opinion that compared unlicensed Aereo to licensed cable systems. After this decision, which ultimately brought down Aereo, FilmOn argued that it was entitled to perform copyrighted works without consent of copyright holders by taking advantage of Section 111 of the Copyright Act, which was enacted by Congress in the 1970s thanks to a perception of the burdensome nature of requiring cable systems to negotiate with every copyright owner over the retransmission of channels on public airwaves. In a huge surprise, US District Court judge George Wu then agreed with FilmOn, writing that "courts consistently reject the argument that technological changes affect the balance of rights as between broadcasters and retransmitters in the wake of technological innovation."

Now a three panel led by Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain overturned Judge Wu by holding that a service that captures copyrighted works broadcast over the air, and then retransmits them to paying subscribers over the Internet without the consent of copyright holders, is not a "cable system" eligible for a compulsory license.

Netflix is spending $6 billion a year on content, choking basic cable and brusquely rattling the relationship business of the town as fears of a Google- or Apple-sized dominance send a chill down the entertainment industry's spine. The backlash is real but muted — mostly because few are willing to risk the wrath of a company that is spending $6 billion a year on programming and scored 54 Emmy nominations in 2016. But some executives, producers and agents who rely on deals with the streaming giant nonetheless increasingly view Netflix as an existential threat.

[Commentary] And now begins the Fox News chief's war against the Murdochs. It was James Murdoch’s cold calculation that ended the hand-wringing debate: Whither Fox News and its $1.2 billion in annual profits without Roger Ailes, no small concern of his older brother Lachlan and their father, Rupert? "Ailes is 76 and unhealthy, so how much longer could he last anyway?" the younger Murdoch is said to have asked, and to have argued: Since they would lose Ailes soon enough anyway, why not turn lemons into lemonade and get credit for kicking him out for being a sexist pig?

With Ailes nearly as much a subject in Cleveland at the Republican convention among political professionals as Trump himself (the rumor of Ailes replacing Paul Manafort as campaign manager is an active one, with a further rumor putting Trump in favor of this and his children against it), the negotiation continues. It has been reportedly slowed not just by Ailes’ war-like posture, but because Rupert Murdoch is in the middle of it, full of angst and ambivalence and regret, changing the terms of the negotiation on an hourly basis. In real ways, Roger's end is his.

[Michael Wolff is the author of a biography of Rupert Murdoch]

Although NBC’s Fourth of July weekend special Miley Cyrus: Bangerz Tour only drew three complaints from the more than two million viewers, the Federal Communications Commission is in the process of determining if the show violated its rules against broadcast indecency or profanity.

Aereo pleaded for its life to a New York federal judge, claiming it was "bleeding to death" in its current non-operational state.

US District Court Judge Alison Nathan reacted swiftly, knocking Aereo for having "jumped the gun in filing, without authorization, its motion for emergency consideration of preliminary injunction issues upon remand."

Aereo's motion has been stricken from the record, but the company told the judge, "Unless it is able to resume operations in the immediate future, the company will likely not survive.”

Cord-cutting, the bane of traditional cable and pay-TV, may finally have reached Europe.

A study published by UK research group IHS Technology found that “TV cord-cutting is now an undeniable phenomenon in a large number of European markets” with growth in traditional pay-TV declining in 12 European territories in the first quarter of 2014.

In a letter to US District Judge Alison Nathan, Aereo hints at a new plan.

"Under the Second Circuit’s precedents, Aereo was a provider of technology and equipment with respect to the near-live transmissions at issue in the preliminary injunction appeal," writes its lawyers. "After the Supreme Court’s decision, Aereo is a cable system with respect to those transmissions." And the implications of Aereo now wrapping itself under the cable system banner? "If Aereo is a 'cable system' as that term is defined in the Copyright Act, it is eligible for a statutory license, and its transmissions may not be enjoined (preliminarily or otherwise)," continues its lawyers.

Aereo reports that it is proceeding to file the necessary statements of account and royalty fees, and asserts that the Supreme Court's decision has overruled the 2nd Circuit decision in Ivi, a predecessor digital TV transmitter which once attempted to gain legitimacy through the paying of compulsory license fees. Even if the judge doesn't accept the argument, Aereo says there are still issues to be addressed about the "scope" of any preliminary injunction.