Coda
By Staff -- Multichannel News, 12/30/2007 7:00:00 PM
Bulls Trample N.Y.
It won't exactly be Pamplona, but the bulls will be running in Manhattan this Thursday.
Versus, touting its title sponsorship of the second Professional Bull Riders event at Madison Square Garden next weekend, plans to kick off its “Invasion of the Bulls” at Union Square on Jan. 3. Passersby should be warned that the bulls, starting on the west side of the square at 15th Street any time between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., will head in a northward herd toward 17th.
Then beginning at noon, 10 top riders, including J.B. Mauney, third-ranked on the PBR's top-level Built Ford Tough Series circuit in 2007, Matt Bohon (seventh), Brian Canter (11th) and Kasey Hayes (12th), will try to stay in the saddle against a bevy of bucking bulls at 17th Street.
Comcast Corp.-owned Versus has also marked the PBR's Apple arrival with “wild postings” featuring medical-themed copy (pictured) around Manhattan.
As for the Versus Invitational itself, there will be a pair of 8 p.m. shows on Jan. 4 and 5, followed by a 1 p.m. event on Jan. 6. On the small screen, the network will present a pair of 2.5-hour shows at 8 p.m.: the Jan. 5 telecast will present the action from the Friday primetime session, while the second will be a same-day delay on Jan. 6 encapsulating the stomping and twirling action that occurred earlier.
The Versus Invitational is the first of 37 PBR events (excluding encores) the network is scheduled to televise in 2008, culminating with the World Finals from the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas over two weekends next November.
Last year's inaugural bovine Garden party drew some 30,000 fans to three sessions. The Saturday and Sunday night telecasts averaged a 0.3 rating and 349,345 viewers, in keeping with Versus' PBR average, according to a network spokeswoman.
— Mike Reynolds
Comcast, Dingell In Boxing Match
Comcast could be in hot water with a powerful lawmaker on Capitol Hill.
House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) was upset to learn that Comcast is requiring many Michigan subscribers to obtain a digital set-top box to view local public, educational and governmental channels, or PEG channels.
According to Dingell, a Comcast customer would get a free set-top for one year but would need to rent boxes for additional sets.
“Your intent to charge consumers as much as an additional $4.20 a month per television set to receive PEG channels is plainly inconsistent with congressional intent that PEG channels be made available 'at the lowest reasonable rate,'” Dingell said in a Dec. 21 letter to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. “I ask that Comcast reconsider this decision.”
Sena Fitzmaurice, Comcast's senior director of corporate communications and government affairs, said in a conciliatory statement that the company “appreciate[s] the chairman's concerns and look[s] forward to working with him regarding this issue.”
In a dig at the conduct of competition, she added: “Most of our competitors, including satellite companies and AT&T, either do not carry PEG programming or require consumers to have digital boxes to receive it.”
— Ted Hearn
Insight Separation Looks on Track
Comcast's acquisition of half of Insight Communications' 1.3 million subscribers is expected to close by the end of the year, although there is some confusion whether the deal will make that date.
Comcast exercised its right to dissolve its 50-50 Insight Midwest partnership in April, agreeing to assume control of about 684,000 customers in southern Indiana and Illinois. Insight will keep 639,000 customers in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio but lose the ability to purchase programming at Comcast's volume discount.
The deal was originally expected to close by Dec. 31, after the required local franchise transfers were obtained.
A Comcast spokeswoman would only say that the Insight deal was expected to close “early in the first quarter” of 2008. Insight, though, was a bit more optimistic. The company said the deal itself should close on Dec. 31, with the financial assets to be transferred on Jan. 1. — Mike Farrell
Hallmark Distribution Talks Continue
New York— Crown Media Holdings, parent of Hallmark Channel, is expected to be in deep negotiations with three of its largest distributors over the next few weeks, securing carriage deals that involve more than 30% of its total distribution.
Four of Crown's biggest distributors — Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision Systems and DirecTV — representing about 60% of its total carriage, had deals that expired on Dec. 31, 2007. While Crown was able to reach a deal last month with Comcast — which represents 20.5 million Hallmark Channel subscribers — the Hallmark Channel parent had yet to secure deals with TWC, Cablevision, or DirecTV by last Friday.
According to Crown's 10-K annual report issued in March, TWC, Cablevision and DirecTV represented a total of 31.6 million Hallmark Channel subscribers, or about 37% of Hallmark's 84.5 million subscribers.
DirecTV vice president of public relations Darris Gringeri said the satellite-TV giant continues to negotiate with Hallmark.
“The network is not going to go down on Jan. 1; it's going to continue,” Gringeri said.
While it is likely that the network will continued to be aired on TWC and Cablevision systems as talks continue, the lack of a deal appears to contradict Crown CEO Henry Schleiff's prediction in early November that at least two deals would be done before the year was out.
Hallmark Channel senior vice president of corporate communications Nancy Carr declined to predict when the deals would be done.
“Negotiations are going well,” she said. “We are optimistic we will reach an agreement.”
Schleiff has been pushing for carriage-fee increases with operators and satellite companies for months, claiming that healthy ratings for Hallmark make it a valuable network for operators.
According to Oppenheimer & Co. cable and satellite analyst Tom Eagan, the Hallmark Channel was able to wrangle a carriage fee of between 4 cents and 8 cents per subscriber per month from Comcast.
— Mike Farrell
