Through the Wire
by Kent Gibbons, R. Thomas Umstead and Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 4/13/2009 2:00:00 AM
'Soundtracks’ Winner Says MSG Struck a Sour Note
Dorian Spencer wasn’t celebrating Cablevision Systems-owned MSG Network’s local Emmy for NYC Soundtracks, even though he won the reality show’s competition among 16 New York City street musicians.
“The irony of the situation is palpable,” Spencer told The Wire in an e-mail. “MSG has won awards for a show where it wasn’t able to give out its own award.”
Spencer complained the eight-episode program promised the winner (picked by Web voters) “the opportunity to play as an opening act on the stage of one of Madison Square Garden’s prestigious venues,” as MSG.com says.
He took that to mean performing before a concert at Madison Square Garden, the Beacon Theatre, Radio City Music Hall or WaMu Theater at MSG.
He ended up with an offer to sing two songs, without pay, at halftime of a New York Knicks basketball game at the Garden. He declined.
Spencer, describing his sound as “bohemian soul,” said he felt taken advantage of “by a multimillion-dollar conglomerate.”
Concerts at MSG venues are produced by promoters such as Live Nation or AEG, so MSG might not have been able to make Spencer an opening act, a music-industry expert says. Spencer said if that was the case, promises shouldn’t have been made.
A source close to the show said Spencer’s performance would have aired on MSG during the game and his CD would have been promoted at the arena. An MSG rep said the network “is currently in discussions” with Spencer “about finding an opportunity for him to perform at one of our renowned venues and showcase his remarkable musical talents.”
BET J, VH1 Soul Nets Could Sing Duet Soon
A marriage of musical digital networks in the Viacom programming stable is in the works, according to people in and outside the company.
Word is 27-million-subscriber BET J — which used to be called BET On Jazz — and music-video network VH1 Soul, with about 20 million subscribers, are merging.
Paxton Baker, the executive VP and general manager of BET J, will oversee the combined entity, staffed by people from both networks, one person said.
Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman wants the smaller diginets to break out of the pack or fold, the person said, and this particular union of African-American targeted networks has been discussed for years.
The problem, others say, is the discussions — and backstage drama — continue to thwart a merger agreement.
A BET official said that BET J, home to such reality fare as cooking show Urban Cuisine and documentary series Leading Men, will be “refreshed” in some way instead of absorbing VH1 Soul.
The truth could be revealed at BET’s April 23 upfront presentation in New York.
Drug or All-In Buffet: Pick Your Metaphor
During a panel session at The Cable Show in Washington, D.C., Jim Blackley, Cablevision System’s senior vice president of corporate engineering and technology, was explaining that the New York-area operator has no plans to institute bandwidth-usage caps.
He used a colorful analogy to make his point: “We literally don’t want consumers to think about how they’re consuming high-speed services. It’s a pretty powerful drug and we want people to use more and more of it.”
Other big MSOs — including Comcast, Cox Communications and Charter Communications — worry about some users getting too much of that good thing and have placed limits on monthly usage. Last week Time Warner Cable caught flack from politicians, including an upstate New York congressman, over plans to charge over-usage fees of $1 or $2 per Gigabyte of data transfers in some markets after an initial launch in Texas. (See page 3.)
Insight Communications CEO Michael Willner explains the concern using a different analogy — the buffet dinner.
“Our networks are hugely burdened by high-bandwidth usage,” Willner said. “Somewhere along the way, that factor has to be dealt with, whether it’s in metered billing or some partnership with high-bandwidth users to deliver the content. But an all-you-can-eat model doesn’t work for where the Internet seems to be going.”
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