The news at a glance

Media: Cablevision takes Viacom to court

Cablevision filed an antitrust lawsuit this week against media conglomerate Viacom, said Roberto Baldwin in Wired.com. The New York–based cable provider accuses the media giant of forcing it to pay for channels that customers don’t watch in order to provide popular ones like Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and MTV. Cablevision says Viacom coerced it into including 14 ancillary channels by threatening massive financial penalties. “The manner in which Viacom sells its programming is illegal, anti-consumer, and wrong,” Cablevision said. “Viacom effectively forces Cablevision’s customers to pay for and receive little-watched channels in order to get the channels they actually want.”

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, “may represent a watershed moment in the debate over ‘bundling,’” said Amy Chozick and Brian Stelter in The New York Times. This week’s lawsuit is notable because “it seemed in part an industry-wide effort.” Several other major distributors, including Charter, DirecTV, and Time Warner Cable, issued statements supporting the Cablevision lawsuit. “We frequently have pointed out that there are serious problems with the current programming environment,” Time Warner Cable said. “We think this lawsuit raises important issues, and we look forward to their resolutions in the courts.”

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Economy: Spending trumps expectations

Despite a higher payroll tax, late IRS refunds, and higher fuel prices, consumer spending is looking good, said Tim Mullaney in USA Today. Leaked emails from Walmart executives recently revealed corporate panic over lagging sales—“Where are all the customers? And where’s their money?” one senior vice president asked—but it turns out that consumers are looking surprisingly resilient. Though the payroll tax increase cost consumers $10.5 billion in January, auto sales, fuel sales, and retail sales were all up. “The spending letdown has been remarkably small,” said Citigroup economist Steven Wieting.

Tech: Google frets over Samsung

Google executives are worried about Samsung, said Amir Efrati in The Wall Street Journal. The South Korean electronics giant sells about 40 percent of the gadgets that run Google’s Android software, and Google bosses fear Samsung “could flex its muscle” for more of Google’s mobile-ad business. Google is on pace to generate $8 billion annually in mobile-related revenue, and Samsung’s market-share dominance could boost its claim for a bigger piece of that pie. “There is a threat from Samsung to Google that is real,” said one investment banker.

Jobs: Best Buy slashes HQ jobs

Best Buy says it will slash 400 jobs at its Minnesota headquarters, said Tiffany Hsu in the Los Angeles Times. The big-box electronics retailer says that it hopes to save $150 million with the cuts, and that “the so-called Blue Shirt sales associates are protected from the ax.” The company has no current plans to close stores, but brick-and-mortar retailers have suffered stiff competition from online merchants like Amazon in recent years. Last month, Best Buy announced a plan to price-match online competitors to end “showrooming,” in which customers “try out products in physical stores and then hunt for discounts online.”

Oil: BP faces civil trial in spill case

A multibillion-dollar civil trial this week began the work of determining the culpability of BP and its contractors for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, said David Unger in CSMonitor.com. The trial could last for months and “will pit rival claims” among BP and its partners, Transocean and Halliburton. The Justice Department says BP acted with gross negligence, but the oil giant’s lawyer said that charge “is a very high bar.”If BP loses, it could face fines of up to $18 billion.