This Just In

Atlanta — Cox Communications began marketing the Pivot wireless-phone service in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla. — the third market where the operator is rolling out the Sprint Nextel-provided service.

Cox launched the Pivot service, being developed by the joint venture between Sprint, Cox, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Advance/Newhouse Communications, in San Diego and Arizona in January. It’s designed to tie into other cable services with features that include access to home voice-mail messages and free calling between home and Pivot phones. A separately sold multimedia option — an additional $15 to $25 per month — allows subscribers to check e-mail and watch live TV channels such as ABC News Now, ESPN 3G and The Weather Channel.

Customers must subscribe to at least one other Cox service — phone, high-speed Internet or digital cable — to qualify for Pivot.

In Oklahoma, as in Cox’s initial markets, calling plans carry the same pricing as Sprint’s — there’s no bundled break.

Silver Spring, Md. — Discovery Communications is talking to several companies, including CBS Corp., to buy half of its Discovery Times Channel.

Discovery executives who wished to remain anonymous confirmed a Washington Post report that the company has initiated talks with CBS to invest in the 45-million-subscriber channel. If completed, CBS would add to its cable collection, the company owns the College Sports Television Network and premium programming service Showtime Networks.

The five-year old Discovery Times initially was a joint venture between Discovery and The New York Times Co., but the Times in April 2006 exercised a put in the agreement to sell its share back to Discovery.

The executive also said the company is talking to other media companies about the Discovery Times stake, but would not identify those entities. Discovery representatives would not comment on the matter. CBS executives could not be reached at press time..

Fort Wayne, Ind. — Verizon Communications is offering a “sneak peek” at its new interactive-media guide for FiOS TV, touting the software’s visual features, responsiveness and usability.

Verizon will first roll out the IMG, as the company refers to the guide, here. Spokeswoman Sharon Cohen-Hagar said the guide will be deployed throughout rest of the FiOS TV footprint over the course of the summer.

The telco announced the media guide in January, when it said customers in New Jersey would be the first to receive the new TV applications. Cohen-Hagar said it has conducted trials with the guide in the state and is on track to go live the next few months.

The IMG features hierarchical, tabbed menus and a search function that spans TV channels, video-on-demand titles and DVR recordings.

For entering text, the IMG provides an on-screen keyboard, a scroll wheel or “cell-phone style” entry (using the letters on a number keypad). IMG includes interactive-TV applications, called Widgets, which offer weather and traffic reports based on ZIP code.

Verizon also claims the guide has very low latency, responding to a remote-control command in less than two-tenths of a second.

Other enhanced features for IMG are still in development.

Verizon initially struck a deal to use on-screen guide software from Microsoft. However, last year the telco took over virtually all of the development of IMG internally.

Silver Spring, Md. — Discovery Communications will remain a sponsor of the U.S. pro cycling team, despite Friday’s disclosure by 1996 Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs.

“The news about the Danish rider today has no bearing one way or the other” on Discovery’s sponsorship of the U.S. team, executive vice president of communications and corporate affairs David Leavy said Friday.

In January, Discovery declined to extend its three-year sponsorship of the team beyond this year. The U.S. team won the Tour de France in 2005 behind Lance Armstrong.

Riis’s confession came after other riders admitted last week to doping, including sprint star Erik Zabel. Ivan Basso, the 2005 runner-up to Armstrong, left the Discovery team after Italian authorities reopened a doping investigation. Last year’s winner, American Floyd Landis, still might see his title stripped because of doping.

New York — To help promote the second season of series Big Love that begins June 11, HBO has trotted out a line of polygamy products — or so it would seem, from looking at messaging from a current online video ad campaign.

Last week, HBO began running spots for “Polygarol,” a send-up of male sexual performance-enhancers like Viagra, and “Eau de Polygamie,” a spoof on perfume commercials.

The kicker: the faux products feature images of a man involved with a trio of women, just like on Big Love, where Bill Paxton’s Bill Henrickson character juggles the needs of his three wives.

In the case of Polygarol, the protagonist is depicted playing backyard touch football with his teammates before throwing the pigskin through three hanging tires, while the Eau de Polygamie spot shows women hanging laundry before the man catches the preferred scent and chases the wearer through the sheets blowing in the breeze. The tagline: “Set Yourself Apart From His Other Wives.”

HBO senior vice president of consumer marketing Courteney Monroe hopes the campaign will help make Big Love “quite large. Like the show, we want the ads, on the surface, to seem normal. But when [viewers/users/readers] take a closer look they’ll find the campaign, like Big Love, is anything but normal.”

In addition to YouTube, other online partners include NYTimes.com, LATimes.com, iFilm, AOL and iVillage. The ads also appear on HBO’s Web site, which also features fake sponsorship banner ads for Big Love.

Working for the first time with Creature, HBO challenged the Seattle-based agency to do “something unexpected, entertaining, that is clearly tongue in cheek. At the same time, the idea was to make the show more accessible to viewers.”

Monroe said the campaign was designed to be a stealth marketing experience, to build word of mouth: But the ads are effective because they are high quality and have strong production values. The Eau de Polygamie ad looks like something from Estee Lauder.”

Print ads have also been produced and will run in the appropriate Sunday sections of The New York Times and Los Angeles Times on June 3. The message for the PolygaWorld Travel Group states: “The honeymoon begins when you all say, 'I do.’” It’s accompanied by an image of three women in white running after their man on the beach.

The ad for Polybrook Haven, which will be placed in the newspapers’ real-estate section, sports copy reading: “Where plural marriage meets the American Dream.”

Print take-downs for Polygarol and Eau de Polygamie will run in the business and style sections, respectively.

— Mike Reynolds