Coda
by Staff -- Multichannel News, 3/2/2009 2:00:00 AM
ESPN Tells 'Her Story’
New York — To commemorate women’s history month, ESPN in March will devote an array of its assets to telling inspirational stories of distaff athletics, culminating with a one-hour special, Her Story, hosted by SportsCenter host Hannah Storm.
Throughout the month, ESPN.com will host a dedicated page with original content, including stories, columns, videos and links from all platforms, plus information from Outside the Lines and ESPNRISE.com. The Web page will also serve as home to the My Story link, where fans can send in their own inspirational clips, with the winner being shown on the televised Her Story special.
Beginning March 8, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic and ESPNU will begin airing a series of vignettes during studio shows, as well as during basketball programming. Some of the shorts will focus on inspirational young women such as Kim Bain-Moore, the first woman to qualify for the Bassmaster Classic, and Jessica Long, a double-amputee who won multiple gold medals at the 2008 Paralympic Games.
There will also be “Then and Now” segments on historical moments in women’s sports.
For its part, broadband service ESPN360.com will offer a dedicated women’s sports channel that will feature a variety of live and taped events.
As for the Her Story special, which ESPN will air on March 27, Storm will highlight up and coming athletes, notably teenage surfing phenom Bethany Hamilton, who returned to the sport after a shark attack took her left arm in 2003, and Oklahoma basketball’s Courtney and Ashley Paris, the daughters of former San Francisco 49ers offensive lineman Bubba Paris.
— Mike Reynolds
Analyst: It’s 'Hammer’ Time
Charlotte, N.C. — Media Metrics and Soleil Securities analyst Laura Martin drew big applause for comments she made at last week’s National Cable Television Cooperative Winter Education conference.
After a fellow panelist encouraged cablers to “embrace” and “leverage” online video sources like Hulu, Martin begged to differ. “I think Hulu doesn’t work in the end,” she said. “Because I think everyone in this room should be hammering away at your programmers to stop giving the Internet free programming. They are destroying your business by hurting your margins.”
The current recession’s impact on consumers also has implications for cable, Martin added. “The consumer is stymied,” she said, can’t make purchasing decisions and has to pay down debt. “No consumer product is immune” from that.
— Kent Gibbons
Startup Lobs Its Web-to-TV Pitch
Atlanta — Video-services startup Clearleap is launching a Web-to-TV service for cable operators and content providers designed to quickly deliver video-on-demand clips — and dynamically inserted ads — to viewers.
CEO Braxton Jarratt said the Clearleap system is live with deployments in cable and Internet-protocol TV providers, but he declined to name them. He also wouldn’t discuss content partners, although CBS College Sports is said to be working with the company.
The company has set up data centers in New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta, where content is aggregated and then delivered to Clearleap’s Linux-based servers in a service provider’s network.
Jarratt, a former executive at Tandberg Television and N2 Broadband, said Clearleap differs from other Web-to-TV approaches in that it’s designed to work with existing VOD and set-top box implementations. That, he claimed, has allowed Clearleap to get the video system up and running with operators in just a few hours.
“We were VOD guys, and we found that incrementally improving the systems built 10 years ago for movies on demand just doesn’t work when you’re talking about huge amounts of content and the desire to keep it fresh,” he said.
The Atlanta-based company, which has 30 employees, has raised $12.3 million from venture-capital firms Silicon Valley Bank, Trinity Ventures and Noro-Moseley. Jim Chiddix, one-time chief technology officer of Time Warner Cable, also is an investor and adviser.
— Todd Spangler
Michalchyshyn Goes Green
Silver Spring, Md. — Discovery Communications hired Sundance Channel executive Laura Michalchyshyn to head up its upstart Planet Green channel.
Michalchyshyn, who replaces the environmentally oriented network’s first general manager, Eileen O’Neill, who left the channel last August for TLC’s top slot, will oversee all aspects of the creative and business strategy including programming, operations and content development for Planet Green’s multiplatform businesses.
Michalchyshyn, who starts at Planet Green on March 16, will report to Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav.
— R. Thomas Umstead
NBCU Taps Banikarim For Sales Post
New York — Former Univision chief marketing officer Maryam Banikarim has been hired by NBC Universal as senior vice president, integrated sales marketing.
In her new post, Banikarim, who resigned from Univision on Feb. 11, is responsible for the enterprise-marketing sales efforts. In this capacity, Banikarim reports to Mike Pilot, president of sales and marketing.
She is also charged with overseeing sales marketing for the company’s women and lifestyle cross-platform sales initiatives, Women@NBCU and Green is Universal. She reports to NBC Universal Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks president Lauren Zalaznick in those areas.
— Mike Reynolds
Lifetime Hires Jane Rice as SVP
New York — Lifetime Networks has hired New York-based distribution executive Jane Rice as senior vice president of affiliate sales, reporting to executive vice president of distribution Lori Conkling, her former colleague at Disney and ESPN.
Rice will oversee all affiliate field-sales responsibilities related to Lifetime’s portfolio of services, including Lifetime, Lifetime Movie Network and Lifetime Real Women, its video-on-demand and HD services and its online endeavors.
— Kent Gibbons
No related content found.
VIEW ALL GALLERIES
