This Just In
By Staff -- Multichannel News, 10/14/2007 8:00:00 PM
Items:
Rigases Ask High Court To Toss Fraud Convictions
Bright House Adding 'Start Over’ in Florida
HealthiNation Adds FiOS, Bright House Affiliations
Current TV’s New Portal Will Be 'Curated’ Page
Wal-Mart to Sign Cable, Internet Subs for Charter
Fox Business Fuels Ad Competition
Clearing the air
Rigases Ask High Court To Toss Fraud Convictions
New York — Stymied by a court of appeals in their quest to overturn their fraud convictions in May, former Adelphia Communications executives John and Tim Rigas filed a petition Wednesday to have their case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Adelphia co-founder and former chairman John Rigas was sentenced in June 2005 to 15 years in prison and his son former chief financial officer Timothy Rigas was sentenced to 20 years in prison as a result of their 2004 convictions on 18 counts of fraud and conspiracy stemming from the massive accounting scandal at the cable company. Both men are currently serving their terms at Butner Correctional Institute, a medium-security prison in North Carolina.
In their most recent appeal document, the Rigases claim the lower appeals court made an error in holding that Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) rules “do not govern” in a securities fraud case and that compliance with GAAP is relevant only as evidence on an issue of good faith. The Rigases contend those statements contradict rulings in several different courts that “the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] requires companies to prepare their public financial statements in conformity with GAAP.”
The Rigases have also claimed that the federal government’s star witness — former Adelphia vice president of finance Jim Brown — perjured himself on the stand during the Rigases criminal trial. They point to civil actions in which Brown testified that neither he nor the Rigases ever lied to auditors regarding Adelphia’s financial statements. Brown said the opposite during the Rigases criminal trial, their lawyers claim.
The Rigases also contend the government erred by not calling expert accounting witnesses during the criminal trial.
“Plaintiffs who bring civil securities-fraud cases are subject to a clear and well-established rule. If the case turns on accounting issues outside the knowledge of lay jurors, the plaintiff as the party bearing the burden of proof must call expert witnesses,” the Rigases claim.
While that is not a rule in criminal trials, the Rigases contend that it is “intolerable and illogical for the rule in criminal cases — where loss of liberty is the consequence and the burden of proof is supposedly higher — to be in conflict with the rule in civil cases, where only monetary damages are involved.”
Whether or not the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case remains to be seen. According to its Web site, the Court has more than 7,000 cases on its docket, but only grants a plenary review with oral arguments by attorneys in about 100 cases per term.
Bright House Adding 'Start Over’ in Florida
Syracuse, N.Y. — Bright House Networks said its Tampa Bay, Fla., division will soon launch a Start Over service for digital-cable customers, allowing viewers who miss the beginning of a program to start it over by the end of the show by pressing a button on their remote controls.
Time Warner Cable, a close cable partner of Bright House, first debuted the Start Over service in November 2005 on its Columbia, S.C. system.
Bright House said Friday the Tampa Bay Division will deploy Start Over on Oct. 24, allowing digital cable customers to use the service with 40 national and local networks.
The first launch will be in Manatee County, followed by Pasco, Hernando, Citrus, Hillsborough, Polk and Pinnellas counties.
In addition to national cable networks, such as Comedy Central, National Geographic Channel and USA Network, Start Over will also work with regional sports channel Sun Sports, local news channel Bay News 9 and Tampa TV stations WFTS-TV, an ABC affiliate, and Fox affiliate WTVT-TV.
HealthiNation Adds FiOS, Bright House Affiliations
New York — HealthiNation, an on-demand provider of video programming about health issues, said it has been launched by Verizon’s FiOS TV systems and by Bright House Networks’ cable systems in the Tampa Bay area and central Florida.
The service also has been launched by Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Bresnan Communications, Yahoo and Joost.
Current TV’s New Portal Will Be 'Curated’ Page
San Francisco — Current TV is reinventing itself online to become, well, more current.
On Oct. 16, Current.TV, the user-generated news portal feeding the cable network, will cease to exist, but will become one of the tabs on www.current.com, the cable network’s new portal.
Joshua Katz, president of marketing for the cable network and Web site, said the venture acknowledged that it was rather a “closed community,” since contributors were only the production savvy. The executive himself used to visit current.tv and realized “I couldn’t make TV to save my life.”
The new Web iteration, executives said, would be a “curated home page.” Current’s user-generated content will be a part of the mix but the news displayed will be from any source from which users can clip and build, from professional news sites like CNN.com or the New York Times, to content they find on MySpace, Facebook or YouTube.
Wal-Mart to Sign Cable, Internet Subs for Charter
St. Louis — Consumers will be able to buy cable and Internet services, along with the other low-priced goods, at Wal-Mart stores under terms of a new deal with Charter Communications.
The pact covers 700 Wal-Mart stores serving 93% of Charter’s service territory.
Fox Business Fuels Ad Competition
New York — As much as Paul Rittenberg believes in the strength of Fox Business Network, he knows the service, slated to launch Oct. 15, is drawing a lot of attention on Madison Avenue for other reasons.
“We’ve had a good response. There is a lot of goodwill from the success of [sister service] Fox News Channel as a network and advertising vehicle,” said the Fox News senior vice president of ad sales. “Competition is a good thing for advertisers. They can use us to price against CNBC.”
Christine Olson, Starcom vice president, cable activation director, is happy to see a newcomer in the space, which also includes the non-commercial-rated Bloomberg TV. “We’ve always welcomed competition, and we’re excited to see what their business network can do. They [Fox] have a good history of success, so we welcome it,” she said.
Rittenberg, especially in light of the fact that FBN won’t be rated until sometime next year, also believes the network’s positioning in Manhattan via Time Warner Cable is an advantage.
“It gives the agencies a chance to see what’s on or what they’ve bought,” he said, noting that FBN is open to different commercial lengths, including single-advertiser standalone pods, and sponsored-vignettes.
Unlike the five-year charter deals Fox News sought at launch, FBN, whose more Main Street approach means it’s casting a net beyond endemic financial-news categories, is pursuing premium-priced costs per thousand (CPMs) and capping schedules at 52 weeks.
“We could have tried to get more volume by packaging with Fox News in the upfront or peeled back $50 million from Fox News to make things look good,” he said “But longer term that’s not going to work; Fox Business Network has to stand on its own merits.”
Some of the clients on FBN’s initial ad roster include: Scottrade, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, IBM and Lending Tree. Also on board: SHRM, the acronym for the Society for Human Resources Management, which after underwriting PBS shows in the past, has taken its first schedule on commercial television, via a year-long deal, according to Rittenberg.
But CNBC’s budget is not the only one Rittenberg’s sales team is going after.
“It’s also Forbes money and, for now, The Wall Street Journal. That will change when [parent News Corp.’s $5.6 billion deal to purchase Dow Jones] is finalized,” he said. “I’m going to borrow from cable operators here and say we’ll have a pretty compelling triple play with Fox Business, the Journal and their online assets.”
— Mike Reynolds
Clearing the air
The name of Zodiac Interactive was misspelled in an article in the Oct. 8 special report on Next Generation VOD (“Still Bullish,” page 32).
Fox News Promotes Cheatwood
10/23/2007Fox Business Net Launches Oct. 15
07/15/2007Fox Business Network to Launch Oct. 15
07/10/2007NBCU Nets Dial Up In New York City
09/05/2007NBCU Nets Move Up N.Y. Dial
09/08/2007
