AT&T Packages 20 Nets on Broadband
By Steve Donohue -- Multichannel News, 9/17/2006 6:00:00 PM MT
AT&T Corp. is breaking ranks with rival pay TV providers, rolling out a 20-channel broadband video service targeting not only its local high-speed data customers, but the subscribers of competitors ranging from Comcast Corp. to Verizon Communications Inc.
While its new “AT&T Broadband TV” product is designed for consumers to view through computers, AT&T is making the service available to any U.S. consumer via the Internet. That means a consumer living in markets controlled by cable and telephone rivals could access networks such as The Weather Channel or Bloomberg Television by relying on their local Internet provider, but pay only AT&T for the service.
AT&T secured the programming agreements through a deal it cut with MobiTV, which has license deals with several pay TV providers and provides video content to Sprint cell phones.
Not all networks are allowing AT&T to offer their programming outside of its footprint. Fox News Channel is supplying a 24-hour feed to AT&T Broadband, but only allowing it to offer the network to local AT&T customers.
Fox News senior vice president of affiliate relations Tim Carry said the network insisted on the restriction to protect agreements with other pay TV providers operating outside AT&T’s 13-state footprint. “MobiTV is an aggregator … I get to decide who they do business with and who they don’t, relative to Fox News Channel,” Carry said.
Weather Channel spokeswoman Connie Malko declined to comment.
AT&T is charging $19.99 per month for the Broadband TV service, which consumers can order via http://att.mobitv.com or http://www.att.net.
Of the 20 programmers currently offered through the service, only Fox News Channel, The Weather Channel and Bloomberg Television are providing 24-hour channel feeds. Fox News is the only network limiting AT&T to offering the network to its own subscribing households.
The lineup mostly features streaming four-to-six-hour loops of programming from networks such as Oxygen, History Channel and newcomers Comedy Time, Toonworld and Maxx Sports, plus audio channels.
One senior network executive supplying programming to the AT&T service said he declined to supply 24-hour versions of networks to AT&T so as not to rile other affiliates. He said two programming executives at two top-six multiple-system operators complained about the service after AT&T announced it.
“The press release made it look like we were doing an end-around with our affiliates and streaming the live feed of the network in their franchise areas. We were trying to put out a fire, even though the fire didn’t exist,” the executive said.
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