This Just In
By Staff -- Multichannel News, 8/19/2007 8:00:00 PM
Items:
A Year After Sale, Adelphia To Pay Creditors $750 Million
Nick, Cartoon Pledge New Guidelines for Food Ads
New TV Rival 'Building B’ Raises $17.5M For Rollout
High-Speed Web Hookups Slowed in Second Quarter
HBO Renews 'Entourage,’ 'Conchords’; Cans 'John’
Judge Calls a Halt to Some DirecTV Ads
A Year After Sale, Adelphia To Pay Creditors $750 Million
New York — Adelphia Communications creditors will get paid more than $750 million in cash and Time Warner Cable stock, Adelphia said on Friday.
Time Warner Inc. — which owns 84% of Time Warner Cable — closed a joint $17.6 billion purchase of Adelphia, with Comcast, in July 2006. The payout comes from those proceeds. Adelphia sought bankruptcy protection from creditors in 2002.
Adelphia said creditors will receive $531 million in cash and 6.45 million shares of Time Warner Cable stock, with a “deemed value” of $244 million and a market value (based on the Aug. 16 closing price) of about $220 million.
According to Adelphia’s bankruptcy Web site, holders of Adelphia 10.25% senior notes due June 15, 2011, will get the most cash — $103.08 for each $1,000 principal amount of debt — and 1.26 shares of TWC for every $1,000 owed.
Holders of Adelphia 9.375% senior notes due Nov. 15, 2009, will get the most stock — 1.27 shares for each $1,000 in debt — and $104.30 in cash for every $1,000 owed. Unsecured creditors and holders of trade claims would receive $76.74 in cash and 0.933 TWC shares for every $1,000 in debt.
There are about 18 different classes of creditors listed on the Web site.
Nick, Cartoon Pledge New Guidelines for Food Ads
Atlanta — Cartoon Network said Friday it was adopting new guidelines for food and beverage advertising that uses its licensed characters, following a similar commitment from Nickelodeon earlier last week aimed at the problem of childhood obesity.
Time Warner-owned Cartoon said it will limit use of original characters related to company-owned original series targeted to children under age 12 to food and beverage products meeting specific nutritional criteria. Criteria include a cap on total calories per serving and a requirement encouraging recommended nutrients. The guidelines apply to all new U.S. product licensing and promotional tie-in deals and to renewals of existing deals starting Jan. 1, 2008. The only exception will be for licensing “special occasion” sweets.
Viacom-owned Nickelodeon earlier said that starting January 2009 it would limit use of its licensed characters on food packaging to products that meet “better for you” criteria following governmental dietary guidelines, with a similar exception for “special occasion” products for birthdays and holidays.
New TV Rival 'Building B’ Raises $17.5M For Rollout
Belmont, Calif. — Boasting that it plans to market a new television and Internet video service that could rival existing pay TV services from cable, satellite and telephone providers, startup firm Building B said it has raised $17.5 million in funding.
The company, which plans to detail its commercial partners this fall, said it expects to begin marketing an HDTV programming platform that will combine programming from existing basic and premium cable networks with video delivered from Internet content providers during the second half of 2008.
All of the content will be delivered through a piece of hardware installed inside of the home. Building B executives wouldn’t detail exactly which broadband technologies the company would rely on, but said the service could integrate content delivered from new technologies such as WiMax and broadband over power line service.
Initial investors include Morganthaler Ventures, Omni Capital, Index Ventures and private investors.
Building B’s board of directors include former NBC News chief and current Sony BMG Music Entertainment chairman Andy Lack and Omni Capital managing director Arun Netravali. Its management team includes former CBS, NBC and Viacom executives.
High-Speed Web Hookups Slowed in Second Quarter
Durham, N.H. — The 19 nation’s largest cable and telephone providers added more than 1.7 million high-speed Internet subscribers in the second quarter, but that’s the fewest additions in three years, Leichtman Research Group said.
The second quarter is typically weak, but the latest figure is about 400,000 below high-speed data additions in the same period a year ago. Top providers (94% of the total) now count about 58 million customers: 31.5 million broadband subscribers for cable (54% market share) and 26.4 million for telcos, LRG estimates.
Top telcos added about 925,000 subscribers, or 54% of net broadband adds in the quarter.
HBO Renews 'Entourage,’ 'Conchords’; Cans 'John’
New York — HBO on Friday said it was bringing back original series Entourage and Flight of the Conchords, two days after pulling the plug on freshman skein John From Cincinnati.
Entourage, which will return for a fifth go-round, and rookie Conchords will both wrap the current seasons on Sept. 2 and will come back in 2008. John from Cincinnati’s last episode aired Aug. 12.
During its 10 episode premieres, John averaged 1.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research data. Cumulative viewings over multiple airings averaged 3.9 million per week. Its high-profile premiere episode, immediately after the final episode of The Sopranos, drew 3.4 million viewers. But the show was decidedly not a hit among critics.
Entourage, by contrast, has averaged 2.9 million viewers on Sunday night and 5.3 million viewers per week cumulatively for the current season. Conchords has found a modest following, averaging 1 million viewers to Sunday night premieres and 2.5 million viewers accumulated over the week (excluding HBO On Demand views).
Judge Calls a Halt to Some DirecTV Ads
Chicago — A federal judge has barred DirecTV from airing TV ads making claims about the supposed preference of consumers and home-theater installers for satellite TV’s picture quality.
U.S. District Court Judge John Grady of the Northern District of Illinois, who issued the preliminary injunction, earlier denied DirecTV’s bid for an injunction against ads Comcast was running. Comcast said it intends to keep running those ads, which cite a survey by Frank N. Magid Associates that claim two-thirds of satellite customers thought the cable operator had better HD picture quality.
Comcast spokeswoman Jenni Moyer said in a statement “the court’s order confirms, once again, that DirecTV’s claims are unsubstantiated and based on flawed and unreliable studies.”
DirecTV said it was “quite perplexed by the court’s conclusions. The facts simply don’t support these decisions. We will appeal these rulings and are confident we will ultimately prevail.”
The case is still set for trial and Comcast must post a $500,000 bond to cover any expenses racked up by DirecTV, should the court find it was wrongfully restrained. Grady said Comcast had an “overwhelming” likelihood of prevailing on the merits.
DirecTV’s barred from running ads that rely on claims based on a survey of consumers conducted by TNS in April last year, or on a survey of 400 home-theater installers conducted by Alliance Consulting Group last December.
A DirecTV ad that spoofed the film American Pie referenced the consumer survey; an ad based on the TV series Baywatch referenced the home-theater installer survey.
During a hearing, Grady criticized survey methodology underpinning DirecTV’s ads.
The American Pie ad cited a survey that had consumers comparing TV screens with a digital signal from DirecTV versus an analog signal. In the Baywatch spot, DirecTV proclaimed home-video professionals recommend DirecTV picture quality “4 to 1” over cable.
“The consumers were not told that one signal was digital and the other was analog,” Grady said in the hearing. “The evidence in this case is uncontradicted that digital signals are better than analog signals. The responses of the consumers were predictably that the digital signal was better. It is not easy to think of a test that could be more unfairly designed than the consumer survey run by TNS in this case.”
The installer survey, referenced by the Baywatch ad, started off by asking an unfair question, the judge also said. “The question should have been, based on your experience as an installer, do you have a preference as between the picture afforded by satellite digital or cable digital. That wasn’t asked. Instead, an inherently misleading and unfair question was asked.”
Earlier, an appeals court upheld a lower court decision barring DirecTV from running two ads Time Warner Cable deemed objectionable. DirecTV and Time Warner settled a false-advertising suit lodged by the cable operator.
—Linda Moss
Creditors Finally Get Adelphia Money
08/17/2007Time Warner, Comcast Get Adelphia
04/21/2005
