Coda
by Staff -- Multichannel News, 7/6/2008 8:00:00 PM
Showtime for 'Inside the NFL’
New York — Showtime has tapped several National Football League veteran on-air announcers to host its inaugural season of Inside the NFL.
James Brown, CBS Sports announcer and The NFL Today host; Phil Simms, CBS’s lead analyst for its National Football League telecasts; and Cris Collinsworth, longtime Inside the NFL panelist, will quarterback Inside the NFL on Showtime, which debuts Sept. 10 and runs each Wednesday through Feb. 11, 2009.
“CBS Sports produces Inside the NFL for us, so we tapped into those relationships to assemble the best team,” said Ken Hershman, senior vice president and general manager of Showtime Sports. “James Brown and Phil Simms are fabulous choices on that front, and Cris Collinsworth is one of the longest running participants on the show, which gives us an anchor back to the show itself that we thought was valuable.”
Hershman said the network will look to rotate a fourth guest personality throughout the show, although he would not reveal specific names.
The show moves to Showtime this season after HBO Sports, which had aired the series since its inception in 1977, pulled the plug in February after wrap up coverage of Super Bowl XLII. Showtime has a two-year deal for the show, with the option for a third.
“We think it brings the most powerful sports franchise in the country in the NFL to Showtime and we think it’s the perfect complement to our existing sports lineup and our original programming lineup,” Hershman said.
— R. Thomas Umstead
NCTA Sets the Date — Again
Washington — Plan on attending next year’s Cable Show in the nation’s capital? Better book your rooms now — and make sure you get the dates right.
Originally scheduled for April 5 to 8, 2009, Cable Show ’09 has been moved to April 1 to 3 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Sources indicate that NCTA moved the show up for several reasons. For starters, Congress will likely not be in session at that time — it’s historically not in session the week before or after the Easter holiday — and the industry group was hoping for a presence at the show from lawmakers under the new administration. Other considerations: the event’s proximity to the Easter holiday (Holy Thursday falls on April 9); and cherry blossom season, a major tourist attraction.
NCTA spokesman Brian Dietz would not specifically address the reason for the schedule revision, other than to say the change was made for “a variety of reasons.”
Cable Show ’09, featuring Insight Communications vice chairman and CEO Michael Willner and TV One president and CEO Johnathan Rodgers as co-chairs, will serve as the anchor for the first-ever “Cable Connections Spring,” nearly a week of cable industry-related activities, meetings, events and conferences that will be held in conjunction with the trade show.
All in, Cable Connection Spring will span from April 1 to 6.
The schedule of events is still being worked on, according to Dietz, who said that NCTA has made arrangements to block out adequate hotel room accommodations.
— Mike Reynolds
AT&T Done Dishing at End of Year
New York— AT&T will stop reselling Dish Network satellite TV services on Dec. 31 under the terms of the two companies’ 2003 agreement, but the telco said it’s still “evaluating” its options on whether it would offer DirecTV or Dish service in 2009 and beyond.
Dish disclosed in an 8-K filing last Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it received a notice of termination from AT&T on June 30 that ends their deal at the end of 2008.
Dish spokeswoman Kathie Gonzalez referred questions on the filing to AT&T.
AT&T spokeswoman Jenny Parker said, “In accordance with the terms of our current agreement with Dish Network/EchoStar, AT&T has provided the required six-month notification for nonrenewal of our current contract, which is set to expire at the end of the year. We continue to discuss options with Dish.”
Parker added, “We don’t comment on specifics about our business-to-business relationships, but we are evaluating our options.”
In the first quarter, AT&T announced it would exclusively resell Dish satellite TV services through the end of 2008, including in the nine states served by BellSouth, which had a reseller agreement with DirecTV. AT&T bought BellSouth last year.
In a statement, DirecTV spokeswoman Jade Ekstedt wrote “this news is between Dish and AT&T, but as we have said in the past, we are still negotiating with AT&T.”
—Todd Spangler and Mike Farrell
NBC Olympics Channels Ring In Cable Deals
New York — NBC Sports has secured significant distribution for four new Olympics-based channels that will launch in August, according to company officials.
It’s unclear, however, whether the channels are part of a far-reaching NBC Universal deal with operators that will provide cable operators carriage rights to future Olympics games in 2010 and 2012.
The channels — separate services each for 24-hour coverage of all soccer and basketball events and two foreign-language channels — are expected to launch to coincide with the Aug. 8 Summer Olympics debut and run throughout the three-week Olympic games, according to an NBC Sports spokesman.
The channels will each reach around 80 million households through deals with “most major MSOs,” according to sources close to the situation.
Multichannel News reported last March that the channels would be offered to operators as carrots to entice MSOs to extend their NBC Universal Olympics carriage deals through 2012. NBC’s current eight-year Olympic deals end in 2012.
But neither NBC Sports nor NBC Universal officials would comment on continuing negotiations with operators.
Officials from Cox and Comcast confirmed carriage of the channels. Representatives from Time Warner, Cablevision and the NCTC could not be reached for comment.
NBC will produce a 12-hour feed on the soccer and basketball channels — and a 14-hour feed for the basketball channel during men’s preliminary days — which cable operators will loop each day of the Olympics coverage.
NBC will also offer a Chinese (Mandarin) and Korean language-based Olympics channel that will be produced in partnership with SINO-TV, a New York-based ethnic broadcasting company.
NBC and SINO will be producing six hours of daily coverage spotlighting sports that are of most interest to Chinese viewers (national teams in soccer, basketball; judo, table tennis, badminton, archery) and Korean audiences (soccer, tae kwondo, weightlifting, shooting).
— R. Thomas Umstead
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