Coda
by Staff -- Multichannel News, 2/15/2010 12:00:00 AM
WWE Sees Network by 2011
New York — World Wrestling Entertainment chairman Vince McMahon’s latest pronouncement about a prospective standalone WWE cable network is that the channel could launch within the next 18 months.
McMahon, speaking last Thursday during the company’s fourth-quarter 2009 earnings call, said WWE has been doing “a great deal of due diligence” toward creating a network that presumably offers live and library content.
WWE claims to have a library of 100,000 hours of wrestling content, now used for a WWE Classics subscription video-on-demand service.
“I would hope a year and a half from now we would be up and running,” McMahon said of a full-time WWE network. “We think there is a tremendous opportunity for us out there and, quite frankly, if things happen as we hope they will happen, it will be a really big game changer for the WWE.”
The proposed network would not infringe on the WWE’s current cable and broadcast shows, including USA Network’s WWE Monday Night Raw and MyNetworkTV’s SmackDown, but instead could promote those shows, McMahon said.
Some in wrestling circles have speculated that WWE could partner with USA parent NBC Universal to make over the 17 million-subscriber Universal HD channel, which now shows Raw, into a full-time WWE outlet. Raw also replays on NBCU’s Telemundo and Mun2.
“We are unique in that what’s good for the WWE is good for all our television partners as far as promotion and things of that nature,” McMahon said.
— R. Thomas Umstead
MSG Stock Rings in With a Dip
New York — Madison Square Garden debuted as its own stock, separate from Cablevision Systems, on Feb. 9 and, after a 4% price dip on its first day of NASDAQ trading, it recouped ground later, ending Feb. 11 at $17.22, $1 (5.4%) off its initial price.
MSG was distributed to Cablevision shareholders, who got one share of MSG for every four shares of Cablevision. The new unit, trading as “MSG,” includes the Madison Square Garden arena, its New York professional sports teams, theater venues and cable channels MSG Network, MSG Plus and Fuse.
Cablevision stock fell about 15.4% ($4.01, to $22.10), mainly due to the spin. Most analysts valued MSG at around $5 per Cablevision share.
Adjusted for the spin, Cablevision actually rose almost 2% on Feb. 10. Cablevision closed at $22.45 on Feb. 11, up 1.6% on the day.
Analysts have praised the spin for creating deal currency for MSG and removing a potential drag on Cablevision, mainly because of a potentially costly renovation to the aging Garden.
— Mike Farrell
MSNBC HD Now on FiOS TV
New York — Keith Olbermann is finally available in high-definition to FiOS TV customers in the New York suburbs.
Verizon Communications said Thursday that it added MSNBC HD to its FiOS TV lineup, on channel 603. The telco added the standard-definition MSNBC feed to FiOS lineups in areas earlier this month after Cablevision Systems lost its exclusive hold on terrestrial distribution of MSNBC in the New York metro area.
NBC Universal plans to deliver live curling coverage and other events from the Winter Olympic Games, which run Feb. 12-28, on MSNBC.
Cablevision’s exclusive terrestrial deal for MSNBC had also prevented AT&T U-verse TV from carrying the service in areas that overlapped with the MSO’s footprint.
— Todd Spangler
BBCA Gets HD VOD Launch
New York — For some subscribers in Tacoma, Wash., BBC America HD video on demand is now just a click away.
BBC America, which launched its high-definition simulcast version of the network last July, is currently supplying Click! Network with HD VOD content. That makes the division of Tacoma Power the first video provider in the nation to offer the programmer’s fare in that format. The first VOD asset the overbuilder is presenting is BBCA’s top show, Top Gear.
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