Coda

New York — As the soccer tournament headed into the knockout round, ESPN boasted solid numbers with its coverage of the group stage of Euro 2008 on ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and across its digital properties.

Covering the Euro for the first time, ESPN2 averaged a 0.5 rating, 521,000 households and 655,000 viewers for the first 15 matches (through June 17). Those numbers represented gains of 67%, 64% and 81%, respectively, according to Nielsen Media Research data.

On ESPN Deportes, live Euro 2008 matches averaged a 2.1 Hispanic coverage rating, the equivalent of 74,000 Latino homes, helping the network become the most-watched Spanish-language cable network for the first 11 days of the tourney with a total-day Hispanic coverage rating of a 0.8.

Digitally, ESPNSoccernet.com averaged more than 1 million daily visitors, an 82% increase in daily visits to the site when compared to the same period during Euro 2004.

ESPNdeportes.com is on pace to see a 139% increase in page views and breaking traffic records set in May; while Euro 2008 has already notched several top 10-live events for the ESPN360.com broadband service.

Not surprisingly, ESPN vice president of programming Scott Guglielmino said the company was “very pleased” with results to date. “Anything that allows us to overlay our brands and put our talent before audiences is key to helping drive growth,” he said.

— Mike Reynolds

Washington — A majority of the Federal Communications Commission was expected to vote to back cable operators in a dispute with Verizon Communications over the phone company’s efforts to hold on to customers that have agreed to try cable’s phone service.

At press time, the vote was expected to come as early as Friday (June 20), while FCC chairman Kevin Martin was in Beijing, China, in the middle of a two-week visit to three Asian countries. In April, Martin ordered the Enforcement Bureau to rule in favor of Verizon. Three commissioners — including Republican Robert McDowell and Democrats Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein — and potentially Republican Deborah Taylor Tate have now agreed to reverse the bureau’s decision, a senior FCC official who asked not to be indentified by name said on Friday.

Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks filed a complaint at the FCC alleging that Verizon violated FCC rules by trying to retain customers who were attempting to switch to cable phone service. The MSOs maintained that the FCC prohibited so-called retention marketing after a cable operator had notified the phone incumbent that its new voice customer wanted to retain his or her existing phone number — a process called number portability.

In April, the Enforcement Bureau concluded that Verizon had not violated the law. But, after reviewing the decision, Copps, Adelstein and McDowell concluded that since June 2007, Verizon had been violating the statute by using knowledge from the number-portability process to keep customers from defecting.

Tom Tauke, Verizon’s executive vice president of public affairs, policy and communications, posted a blog Friday critical of the pending FCC action, calling it “puzzling.”

— Ted Hearn

Washington — The Consumer Electronics Association said a small Colorado vendor’s digital-to-analog cable converters should not be granted an exception to the Federal Communication Commission’s separable-security mandate, alleging in a filing with the agency that such a waiver would “harm the public interest.”

Evolution Broadband in May asked the FCC for a three-year waiver to the agency’s separable security mandate to allow its customers to deploy digital-to-analog (DTA) adapters and convert their systems to all-digital operation.

“This is not the time to be introducing new security technologies that are not disclosed or available to competitive entrants, and that cannot be implemented competitively on a nationally portable basis, ” the CEA said in its June 16 filing.

Evolution’s DTAs use conditional-access security from Conax, a subsidiary of Norwegian telecom provider Telenor.

“Evolution has not shown that the 'Conax security’ used by its set-top boxes is available to competitive entrants or nationally portable and scalable to cable systems nationwide, as would be required under commission rules,” the CEA argued.

Asked to respond, Evolution president and chief operating officer Chris Eagan said: “The CEA’s response is completely off-base. They obviously have no idea what the product is. … There’s nothing proprietary about it.”

Egan added that Evolution plans to file a formal response to CEA’s opposition with the FCC.

— Todd Spangler

New York — Meteorologists and media deal-watchers are still waiting for the gavel to drop on the auction over The Weather Channel.

Landmark Communications, owner of The Weather Channel and its attendant Web site, Weather.com, back on June 13 said it had entered into “exclusive” negotiations with NBC Universal and private equity firms Blackstone Group LP and Bain Capital LLC.

That followed word that Time Warner Inc. dropped out of the auction for the properties, which were put on the block by Landmark in January.

The NBC group had reportedly offered $3.5 billion — $1.8 billion in equity, $1.7 billion in debt, according to several published reports — well below Landmark’s $5 billion asking price.

— Mike Farrell

Washington — The six cable networks that have mounted a judicial challenge to a new federal rule on the carriage of some digital TV stations have no legal standing to attack the rule in federal court, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC said the cable networks shouldn’t be allowed to pursue their court claims because the DTV carriage rule applied just to cable operators and has a built-in incentive that would actually benefit cable networks looking for distribution from capacity-constrained cable systems.

“Only cable systems are regulated by the order; [cable networks] are not,” the FCC said in a court brief filed June 6.

In February, C-SPAN, Discovery Communications, The Weather Channel, TV One, A&E Television Networks and Scripps Networks sued to block an FCC rule that requires the vast majority of cable systems to provide consumers with analog and digital versions of local TV stations that demand carriage, starting on Feb. 18, 2009. All-digital cable systems are exempt from the rule, which sunsets in 2012.

The case is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.