This Just In
By Staff -- Multichannel News, 7/15/2007 8:00:00 PM
Items:
Empereon Calls Up Coudersport Workers
E! Tails Snoop Dogg In New Reality Series
Tennis Channel Adds Wimbledon Coverage
Court Denies Disney's Motion To Dismiss Starz Suit
Discovery Baits 'Shark Week' With VOD
Empereon Calls Up Coudersport Workers
New York — Call-center provider Empereon Marketing will serve up at least 450 new jobs over the next three years at The Tennis Center — the former Adelphia Communications operations hub, now owned by Time Warner Cable in Coudersport, Pa.
After purchasing Adelphia last July along with Comcast Corp. for $17.6 billion, Time Warner closed the facility in February, effectively laying off about 500 former Adelphia employees.
“They have experience in all facets of what we were looking for,” Empereon CEO Travis Bowley said. “We're doing outbound — soon to be inbound there — customer-service retention programs, cold calls, all that stuff. And that's exactly what they did out of that center before.”
In addition to Time Warner and Comcast, the major cable clients Empereon will serve from the center will be Bright House Networks, Charter Communications and Cox Communications.
The Tennis Center — named for the full-sized tennis court underneath the first floor — is a 30,000-square-foot facility with a capacity for 800 employees. Empereon has committed to hiring at least 300 workers from the Coudersport area, and a total of at least 450 employees over three years.
“As it looks right now, we're going to be exceeding that,” Bowley added. “We didn't realize the business was going to do what it's doing, so I would say 450 on the low inside of three years.”
That may come as a relief to many former Adelphia employees whose unemployment benefits are scheduled to run out Aug. 7.
Time Warner is gifting The Tennis Center to the Potter County Redevelopment Authority, which in turn will sell to it to Empereon, according to Bowley.
Outbound telemarketing operations are scheduled to begin this fall, followed by inbound, customer service and technical assistance services within the year.
While not supplying specifics, Bowley said the number of customer service reps he would hire per distributor would depend on the parameters set by the cable operators themselves. When a job for one operator is finished, those reps will be retained to work on other accounts. “We are gathering resumes now,” Bowley said. “As of August 1st we will start hiring, and we're going to hire by the droves.”
E! Tails Snoop Dogg In New Reality Series
Beverly Hills, Calif. — E! will produce a new celebrity reality series around multi-platinum selling rap artist Snoop Dogg that will air in late 2007. The series, will follow the live of Snoop — whose real name is Calvin Broadus Jr. — as he balances raising three young kids with his rap career, according to Comcast Entertainment Group CEO Ted Harbert.
“Snoop Dogg is, without a doubt, one of the most charismatic and intriguing personalities in pop culture today,” Harbert said in a statement. “While he has captured a legion of fans as the king of hip hop, what makes Snoop most interesting is the side of him that people have never seen. The juggling act that Snoop faces day-in, day-out between career and family is certain to resonate with our viewers.”
Tennis Channel Adds Wimbledon Coverage
Los Angeles — When Roger Federer pursues a record sixth consecutive Open Era Wimbledon crown next year, Tennis Channel will be on the hallowed grounds and grass courts..
The network is expected to announce today that it has reached an agreement with the All-England Club that will give it rights to match coverage, as part of a package, terms of which were not disclosed, to close to 100 total hours of Wimbledon coverage.
The deal, which includes four hours of primetime Wimbledon After Dark coverage and broadband applications, gives Tennis TV rights to three of the sport's four Grand Slam events, adding to its presence at the French Open and Australian Open.
Court Denies Disney's Motion To Dismiss Starz Suit
Los Angeles — A federal court last week tentatively denied a request by Disney's Buena Vista Television unit to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Starz Entertainment alleging copyright infringement.
Starz filed the suit in March in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. According to the suit, Disney is contractually prohibited from providing its films for transmission over the Internet outside of the window of Starz's exclusive license period.
Starz claimed Disney made movies available to Internet distributors — including Apple's iTunes and Wal-Mart's video-downloads online store — which it had already exclusively licensed to Starz for a certain period of time.
In a decision entered July 10, U.S. District Judge Valerie Baker Fairbank ruled that Starz “has set forth allegations which, at this early stage in litigation, are sufficient to withstand [Buena Vista Television's] motion to dismiss for lack of standing to bring a copyright cause of action.”
She added that the order did not preclude Buena Vista Television from challenging Starz's standing to sue “at a time when more facts are before the court.”
Starz alleged that iTunes and Walmart.com fall under the contractual definition of “television,” as included in 1993 and 1999 agreements between Starz and Buena Vista Television. In its motion to dismiss the suit, Buena Vista Television did not dispute this.
But Buena Vista Television, which handles television-distribution agreements for Disney's films, argued that the contracts with Starz did not grant the pay-TV provider exclusivity for all definitions of “television” distribution.
Fairbank, in her ruling, said Buena Vista Television had not shown that the language in the license agreements couldn't be interpreted as giving Starz an exclusive license with respect to all television exhibition.
Starz CEO Bob Clasen said in an interview after the suit was filed that the Apple TV set-top — which allows users to watch iTunes movies on their high-definition TV sets — was a key reason his company took legal action against Disney.
Discovery Baits 'Shark Week' With VOD
New York — The 20th anniversary of “Shark Week” is almost two weeks away, but Discovery Channel is already chumming up the video-on-demand waters with fresh content.
As it did last year, Discovery will precede the official stunt week — July 29 through Aug. 4 — by nine days with “Shark Bites on Demand.” Available July 20, the spate of offerings includes a full new episode, Deadly Stripes: Tiger Sharks; a director's sneak preview of Perfect Predators; a selection of classic Shark Week titles; and assorted short- and long-form companion pieces.
“It has proven very effective for us in terms of driving tune-in to the linear programming,” said Discovery Communications senior vice president of affiliate marketing Michael Snyder. “The networks are very happy to do this because they do see an increase in ratings related to what the distributors are doing even though that marketing might be in the broadband or on-demand or HD space.”
Last year, Discovery prepped Shark Week with its first early VOD premiere, Shark Rebellion. The tactic was used again in spring to launch the high-ranking nature series Planet Earth, which has since netted more than 2 million on-demand views, according to the network.
Snyder said Discovery would continue offering programs during Shark Week on Discovery On Demand and Discovery HD Theater the day after airing on the linear channel. Among those are eight new shark shows, debuting one per night at 9 p.m.
In marketing its annual fish frenzy this year, Discovery took a slightly different tack with affiliates.
“Although we have made linear tune-in spots available for customization and provided those to affiliates — and many of them have asked for those — the vast majority is on on-demand, HD and broadband,” said Snyder.
To that end Discovery designed custom on-demand and high-definition spots for Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable and DirecTV, among others.
On the broadband end, Discovery provided custom microsites with downloadable Shark Week screensavers, wallpaper, instant messenger icons and a widget enabling a Shark Week countdown and factoids, as well as an interactive game where players gain access to special 20th anniversary video shorts by answering shark trivia questions. —Christian Lewis
