Coda

Los Angeles — HBO has seen its creative thunder stolen by rivals such as Showtime, FX and even once-humble AMC in recent times. So following a dry spell without any big hits, the premium service has finally made an executive shift, with one of its top programming executives exiting her post.

Last week, HBO said that Carolyn Strauss, president of HBO Entertainment, was stepping down from her position, but that she would remain involved with the network.

Under Strauss’s watch, HBO put a host of groundbreaking marquee shows on the air, programs that made a mark in popular culture such as The Sopranos, Sex and the City and Six Feet Under.

But most recently, Strauss had failed to find a new breakout hit for HBO. John From Cincinnati flopped, while Tell Me You Love Me and In Treatment won some critical plaudits, but no huge audiences or big buzz. After word of Strauss’s exit broke, it was disclosed that HBO had put the kibosh on 12 Miles of Bad Road, a one-hour comedy starring Lily Tomlin, after producing six episodes of the pricey show.

Strauss was part of the regime of former HBO chairman Chris Albrecht, who left the network last May after an incident in which he was arrested on charges of assaulting his girlfriend in Las Vegas.

— Linda Moss

New York — Sundance Channel, home of environmentally friendly programming dubbed “The Green,” is looking for another kind of green as investment bank UBS shops the network around.

Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield wrote in a report, citing “multiple” sources that Sundance, which counts some 26 million subscribers, was seeking a minimum of $400 million, which would value it at $15 per subscriber.

The report suggested that Sundance — whose ownership comprises a 55% stake by NBC Universal, 35% control by CBS’s Showtime unit and 10% by Robert Redford, who founded the service a dozen years ago — was looking to receive closer to $500 million.

Should NBCU and CBS pass, Greenfield listed Viacom, Time Warner and Cablevision, which owns Sundance rival IFC, as prospective buyers. Sundance officials declined comment.

— Mike Reynolds

Alexandria, Va. — Cox Communications, in a court filing last Tuesday, denied that it infringed voice patents owned by Verizon Communications and requested that the case be dismissed.

Verizon filed suit against Cox on Jan. 11 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging the cable operator infringes eight patents related to delivering phone service over data communications networks. The telco last month lobbed a similar suit against Charter Communications.

In its response and counterclaim, Cox denied that it “is infringing or has infringed any Verizon patent.”

Cox also seeks a declaration that the eight patents are invalid and charged that Verizon did not have “a well-founded, good-faith belief that Cox infringed” the patents.

Verizon’s actions against Cox and Charter come after its courtroom victories last year against Vonage Holdings. Last March, Vonage was found guilty of infringing three Verizon patents by a jury in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Vonage appealed the decision, but a federal appeals court affirmed the lower court’s ruling on two of the three patents. The Internet voice provider subsequently paid Verizon $120 million to settle the suit.

— Todd Spangler

New York — Cablevision Systems CEO James Dolan is reportedly among the suitors interested in purchasing Newsday, Tribune Co.’s Long Island newspaper, according to a number of reports.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch and real estate investor and New York Daily News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman are also said to be engaged in the sales process.

Dolan is said to be considering an outright purchase of the newspaper, which has a weekday circulation of 387,000 and serves customers on Cablevision’s home turf on Long Island in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Cablevision, based in Long Island’s Bethpage, N.Y., declined to comment.

New York — Season two doesn’t bow until March 30, but it already looks as if The Tudors might be back on a Showtime for a third go.

At a party prior to a screening of the series’ second-season opener, Showtime Entertainment president Bob Greenblatt told Multichannel News that writing had begun for episodes for a third campaign of the Henry VIII soaper.

Greenblatt, in his remarks before the screener, made similar comments, while noting that Showtime had yet to make an official third-season pick-up.

Last year, Showtime ordered the show’s second season following the airing of its first two episodes.

— Mike Reynolds

London — Director Anthony Minghella, who won an Academy Award for The English Patient, died last week in London at age 54, days before his last movie, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which is being adapted into an HBO series, was set to debut on television in the United Kingdom.

The Associated Press reported Minghella died last Tuesday at Charing Cross Hospital of a hemorrhage after surgery.

Minghella, who adapted the Ladies screenplay with Richard Curtis from novels by Alexander McCall Smith, directed the two-hour pilot and was to be an executive producer.

Dominic Minghella, the director’s brother, is principal writer for BBC America’s Robin Hood.

— Kent Gibbons