This Just In
By Staff -- Multichannel News, 10/28/2007 8:00:00 PM
Items:
Charter Signs Deal for NHL Network Carriage
Comcast Picks Motorola For Switched Video Gear
Fox News Led Ratings For Calif. Fire Coverage
Vonage Settles Dispute Over Verizon Patents
Sci Fi, Microsoft to Bring 'Battlestar’ to Big Screen
ValueVision Board Ousts CEO, Chairman Fills the Gap
No Action Yet on Cable-Event Squeeze
Charter Signs Deal for NHL Network Carriage
St. Louis — Charter Communications is the latest cable operator to sign on to carry the upstart NHL Network.
The parties are expected to announce a distribution deal that will place the network on Charter’s digital sports tier, although it’s unclear how many subscribers will actually receive the service.
Charter joins Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision Systems and Cox Communications — as well as satellite distributors DirecTV and Dish Network — as carriers of the league’s 24-hour channel, which offers 50 live regular-season games, as well as classic games, documentaries, instructional shows and highlights.
While the league said the network will pass some 80 million subscribers with its deals, the network’s actual subscriber count will be closer to the 12 million subscribers that sports tier-based networks such as NBA TV reach.
Comcast Picks Motorola For Switched Video Gear
Schaumburg, Ill. — Comcast has selected Motorola as a supplier for switched digital video, Motorola president and chief operating officer Greg Brown said on an earnings conference call with analysts last week.
Comcast has been testing switched digital video systems in Denver and New Jersey for the past several months and is expected to name at least one additional SDV vendor. The company expects to use Arris’ edge quadrature amplitude modulation as part of its switched-digital deployments.
Switched digital video delivers linear TV channels only when a subscriber requests them, allowing operators to deliver more programming in less bandwidth, assuming not every channel being switched will be viewed simultaneously.
Motorola’s solution is based on software developed by Vertasent, which it acquired in September 2006. Its SDV products include the ERM1000 edge-resource manager, the SVM1000 switched-video manager and the SVOM1000 switched-video operations manager.
Fox News Led Ratings For Calif. Fire Coverage
New York — Fox News Channel was leading the ratings among all-news networks last week in coverage of the California wildfires, which dominated programming on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and CNN Headline News.
Fox averaged 1 million viewers for its coverage Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. That topped CNN’s 681,000 average for the three-day period. MSNBC averaged 324,000 viewers, and Headline News pulled an average 260,000 viewers Monday through Wednesday.
In the core adults-25-to-54 demographic advertisers target on the all-news networks, Fox News averaged 264,000 viewers. That beat CNN (251,000), MSNBC (125,000) and Headline News (103,000).
Vonage Settles Dispute Over Verizon Patents
New York — Vonage Holdings has settled its patent dispute with Verizon Communications, saying on Oct. 25 it would pay the phone company between $80 million and $120 million depending on a decision by a federal appeals court about whether to rehear part of the case.
The deal apparently puts closure on a second patent-infringement suit targeting Vonage, after the Internet voice provider settled with Sprint Nextel for $80 million last month.
Meanwhile, AT&T filed a copyright-infringement suit against Vonage alleging the smaller company infringes on the telco’s U.S. Patent No. 6,487,200, titled “Packet telephone system.”
The terms of the resolution between Vonage and Verizon depend on whether the U.S. Court of Appeals decides to grant Vonage’s request for rehearing regarding two of the Verizon patents.
Vonage said that if it wins rehearing on either the 6,282,574 or 6,104,711 patent or if the injunction is vacated as to either patent, Vonage will pay Verizon $80 million. If Vonage does not win rehearing on either of the patents, or if the stay is lifted reinstating the injunction, Vonage will pay $120 million, which includes $2.5 million payable to certain charities.
Sci Fi, Microsoft to Bring 'Battlestar’ to Big Screen
New York — Sci Fi Channel and sponsor Microsoft are bringing preview screenings of the new two-hour extended episode Battlestar Galactica: Razor to select movie theaters on Monday, Nov. 12, in an event managed by National CineMedia.
Screenings will take place in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Dallas and Seattle. Admission is free, underwritten by Microsoft’s Xbox360, Zune and new space adventure game “Mass Effect.” A complete list of theaters and ticketing information are at www.BattlestarEvent.com. Seating is extremely limited.
Razor airs on Sci Fi on Nov. 24 at 9 p.m.
ValueVision Board Ousts CEO, Chairman Fills the Gap
New York — ValueVision Media, the parent of home-shopping channel ShopNBC, said Friday that CEO William Lansing stepped down at the request of the board of directors. The board has appointed chairman John Buck as interim CEO, effective immediately.
ValueVision also reduced 2007 financial guidance. Revenue growth for the year is now expected to be in the low single digits — instead of between 6% and 8% — and cash flow is expected to be in the $5 million to $10 million range. ValueVision had previously forecasted cash flow would be in the $15 million to $20 million range.
ValueVision hired executive search firm Spencer Stuart to assist a selection committee of the board in a national hunt for a permanent CEO.
Lansing joined ValueVision in 2003. Its stock — which hit a new 52-week low of $5.25 on Friday — was $5.47, down 99 cents or 15.3%, Friday afternoon.
No Action Yet on Cable-Event Squeeze
New York — Cable CEOs may be looking to squeeze more industry conferences and meetings into two core weeks each year — one in spring and a second in the fall — but association leaders say don’t expect major changes soon.
“No specific decisions were made,” National Cable & Telecommunications Association senior vice president Rob Stoddard said regarding the Oct. 22 meeting the NCTA organized in New York with cable chiefs and heads of associations ranging from Cable Positive to the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers.
The goal of the meeting — which featured presentations from Turner Broadcasting System CEO Phil Kent, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, Fox Networks Group CEO Tony Vinciquerra and Comcast chief operating officer Steve Burke — was to begin looking at events that could be folded into common weeks to reduce travel expenses and time spent away from the office.
But the cable CEOs, NCTA and heads of the associations attending the meeting at the Time Warner Center only agreed to schedule follow-up conference calls.
“It wasn’t an us-versus-them” situation, said Cable Positive president Steve Villano, whose organization holds a fundraiser in New York each spring to support HIV/AIDS awareness.
“We’re just waiting to see how things are going to unfold,” said Melissa Northern, director of marketing and communications at Women In Cable Telecommunications, which is preparing for Nov. 15 gala in Washington, D.C. “I think it’s going to work out for everyone.”
Other associations’ officials also said the tone was positive but it’s clearly just the beginning of a process.
NCTA has taken steps in recent years to consolidate industry events, including folding the annual CTAM Digital conference and the CableLabs CableNet exhibit into The Cable Show convention.
Groups that attended the meeting included the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, Cable Positive, the Cable and Telecommunications Human Resources Association, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers, CableLabs, WICT and the Association of Cable Communicators.
—Steve Donohue, with Kent Gibbons
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