Coda

New York — Time Warner Inc. has dropped out of the race for The Weather Channel, throwing the auction for one of the more attractive cable network properties to hit the market recently into disarray.

Reuters first broke the story last Friday afternoon that Time Warner had withdrawn its bid for The Weather Channel. Sources close to the auction confirmed the Reuters report.

Whether this means that Weather Channel will fall to the other remaining bidder — a group including NBC Universal, Blackstone Group and Bain Capital — or that the auction has been broken still remains to be seen.

According to published reports, NBC has engineered a package that would include about $1.8 billion in equity and $1.7 billion in debt.

An item in the Wall Street Journal late Friday said that NBC was in “final negotiations” with Weather Channel parent Landmark Communications, but that no deal had been reached.

Officials at NBC and Landmark Communications did not return phone calls for comment.

Time Warner was one of the two lead bidders for The Weather Channel, which was put on the block in January. Landmark had hoped to attract as much as $5 billion for the network and its related Web sites.

That hope may have been what forced Time Warner from the table, according to cable executives familiar with the auction. Bids for the company were in the $3.5 billion to $4 billion range. — Mike Farrell

New York — Tim Russert, NBC News' Washington bureau chief and a contributor to MSNBC, died Friday of heart failure in Washington. He was 58.

Russert, an Emmy-winning and respected TV journalist, was the moderator of NBC's Meet the Press. Russert joined NBC News in 1984, coming to the news organization after serving as a counselor in New York Gov. Mario Cuomo's office in Albany in 1983 and 1984.

In addition to his duties at NBC News, Russert also anchored a weekend show for MSNBC, The Tim Russert Show, and contributed political coverage to the cable service. Russert helped moderate a Democratic presidential debate in February that broke ratings records for MSNBC, drawing 7.8 million viewers.

Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw came on air on NBC Friday afternoon at 3:39 p.m. to say that Russert had collapsed and died at work.

He was slated to receive the Fred Dressler Lifetime Achievement Award from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications June 23.

The veteran political analyst and author became managing editor and moderator of NBC's Meet the Press in 1991, leading the show to its perch as the most-watched Sunday morning interview show in America.

His two books, Big Russ and Me and Wisdom of Our Fathers, were New York Times bestsellers.

“This is a loss for the entire nation,” NBC News president Steve Capus said in a statement. “Everyone at NBC News is in shock and absolutely devastated.”

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, in a statement, added, “The enormity of this loss cannot be overstated.” — Linda Moss

New York — Versus's new ad campaign for the Tour De France takes direct aim at the doping scandal that has tarnished what has been the network's signature event in recent years, claiming Floyd Landis' 2006 crown and prompting the disqualification of two teams and many individual riders in 2007.

Centering on the tag line “Take Back The Tour,” the multifaceted campaign, encompassing TV, print, online, outdoor and guerrilla elements, sports copy starting with “Screw the dopers, politics and critics … They ripped the soul out of this race.”

“Fans are very passionate about this sport and they don't want to have what is a testament to human spirit and endurance marred any more,” said Versus vice president of marketing Bill Bergofin.

The Comcast-owned network, which recorded its highest rating ever with Lance Armstrong's final ride down the Champs Elysees back in 2005, just signed a five-year contract renewal valued at $27.5 million with Amaury Sport Organization, the organizer of the cycling competition from 2009-2013.

During this year's Tour (July 5-27), Versus will average 14 hours of race action per day.

Sources familiar with the campaign estimate its media value as in the seven-figure range. — Mike Reynolds

Washington — The Federal Communications Commission would be required to regulate the volume of television commercials for excessive loudness under a House bill recently introduced by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.).

Eshoo, a member the Energy and Commerce Committee who represents Silicon Valley, wants the FCC to regulate “excessively noisy and strident” ads on broadcast, cable and satellite television. The bill would exempt radio stations and the Internet.

“We're still studying it,” said Dennis Wharton, executive vice president of media relations for the National Association of Broadcasters.

Dan Brenner, senior vice president of law and regulatory policy at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, said he looked into volume changes on television when he worked at the FCC in the early 1990s. Brenner found that people might mistakenly perceive that ads are louder if regular programming ends at a low-volume moment just before cutting to a commercial set at a normal volume level.

As to whether the cable industry deliberately elevated the volume of its commercials, Brenner said, “I've never heard of that.”

Eshoo named her bill the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act or the CALM Act. She has one co-sponsor, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.).— Ted Hearn