The disruption of cable by over-the-top video has been greatly exaggerated, said panelists at Digital Hollywood’s Media Summit Wednesday in New York. Some OTT services will survive, many won’t, and consumers will likely adopt a multi-format approach to TV viewing in the future, panelists said. While cord-cutting isn’t happening in large numbers, “cord-nevers” coming out of college present a challenge to the pay TV industry, they said.

The cable industry has faced privacy rules for longer than other sectors, with the 1984 Cable Act the first U.S. statute to mandate fair information practices, executives said Thursday. As this Congress and administration are focused on the issue of privacy across communications platforms, cable lawyer Paul Glist of Davis Wright suggested the Cable Act got much of the balance right between protecting information and allowing operators to aggregate and otherwise use data. “It speaks to the requirements according to pertinent uses,” he said at an International Association of Privacy Professionals conference in Washington. Speakers from Comcast and Canoe Ventures, an interactive ad venture of that company and the five next-largest U.S. operators, also addressed how they think the act is still relevant.

SEATTLE -- The fragmentation of the mobile device industry, patent litigation and even the traditional U.S. subsidy model are challenges for the mobile industry, executives told the GeekWire Summit Wednesday. They agreed Microsoft’s Windows 8 and its new phone software were much better efforts than prior versions but said the software giant’s marketing and reliance on Nokia wouldn’t do it any favors in competition with Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and a likely phone from Amazon.

The FCC is formally launching a public-private initiative, which will be under the Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau. Examples of the kinds of programs the initiative is targeting include the Connect to Compete program, the Digital Textbooks Initiative and the FCC’s cybersecurity small business initiative, the FCC said Wednesday.

The FCC has some options to prevent cable operator withholding from multichannel video programming distributor rivals the channels the operators own when a program access exclusivity ban sunsets Oct. 5, a draft notice of proposed rulemaking says, according to agency officials. They said the Media Bureau NPRM that’s tentatively set for a vote at the March 21 meeting, but may be approved before then, reaches few if any conclusions about how the agency should proceed. Instead, the item seeks comment on several scenarios for program access rules post-Oct. 5, when their five-year extension expires, commission officials said.

Some public broadcasters want more money from the government to pay for fees to change channels as part of an FCC repacking of TV stations before the agency auctions the frequencies of those agreeing to give up some or all of their spectrum. Although some provisions in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act that became law last month recognize public broadcasters’ interests, some public TV executives said they must monitor how the auction will be implemented and the relocation process. The provisions provide $1.75 billion for relocation costs for broadcasters, some of which say that’s not enough money.

Network operators have enough incentive to protect networks from cyber attacks, major telecom industry officials said Wednesday at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing. But legislators should remove barriers to information sharing, promote cybersecurity education and invest in research and development, they said. The witnesses said new mandates are unnecessary and potentially burdensome. “We don’t know what it is that you should be telling us to be doing,” said AT&T Chief Security Officer Edward Amoroso.

Following its plan to be a “disruptive force” in the radio business, Pandora said in its fiscal Q4 earnings webcast Tuesday it expects to be “larger than the largest FM or AM radio station in most markets in the U.S.” by the end of the year. With significant growth in listener hours, the Internet radio company’s relevance to traditional radio advertising buyers “is skyrocketing,” said CEO Joe Kennedy.

BRUSSELS -- Spectrum regulators and users must rethink spectrum allocation in order to make white spaces and other shared uses possible, speakers said Wednesday at a Forum Europe conference on an EU policy for dynamic spectrum access. Cognitive technologies will squeeze more out of radio spectrum, but in practice “we're a long way” from having them, said moderator and Aetha Consulting partner Amit Nagpal. Despite successful white spaces trials in the U.S. and U.K., the regulatory issues for dynamic shared access are far from resolved, regulators and industry representatives said.

The FCC is expected to conduct a voluntary incentive auction of broadcast spectrum in 18-24 months, said Amy Levine, a senior aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski. Blair Levin, who led FCC development of the National Broadband Plan, warned that the U.S. is “moving backwards, not forwards” in getting more spectrum online for broadband. They spoke at a Minority Media and Telecom Council forum Tuesday.