Multichannel News Blogs
MoCA Shoots For 800 Megs Over Coax
Zoom! The Multimedia over Coax Alliance is now looking at delivering a high-performance mode for the next generation of its spec capable of hitting a whopping 800 Mbps over existing in-home coax cabling, Cable Digital News reports. You could easily fit more than 40 HD MPEG-2 streams in 800 Mbps — not that anyone other than Bill Gates has that many TVs in his house. The 800-Meg mark would be ... More
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Covering cable TV, broadband and Internet video technologies
The Day The Music Died
It seems like so long ago, but in reality it has only been a year since the music died. One year ago yesterday is when many satellite radio fans consider it the day that XM Satellite Radio died. It was on this day when Sirius and XM merged most of its music programming. The deep playlists that XM customers loved were gone as were a handfull of popular stations. XM customers were in shock with ... More
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The Consumer Satellite Industry through the eyes of WWW.SatelliteGuys.US Founder Scott Greczkowski
The Prisoner Trapped by Original and AMC's High Expectations
Pressure? What pressure? Any new show from AMC has an awful lot to live up to. If it’s not another “Mad Men,” only the greatest show ever on TV right now, it could be declared a disappointment. Bryan Cranston, the Emmy winning star of AMC’s other signature series, “Breaking Bad,” sets the bar sky high for actors on the network. With all of that already sta ... More
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Jon Lafayette, the longtime, perceptive TV scribe for such publications as Television Week, Cable World and Advertising Age, is back in the game, blogging for Multichannel.com on anything and everything TV related. Reach him at jon.lafayette@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter: @jlafayette.
Big Month For VOD Pix
November’s video-on-demand movie lineup, featuring nearly a dozen titles premiering on the same day and date as their home-video release, is close to the business touchdown that cable operators have always envisioned for the platform. With big box-office titles like Sony’s The Da Vinci Code sequel Angels and Demons ($133 million at the box office) and The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 ($64 ... More
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Tom Umstead focuses on TV programming in his column.
Why the Transition to IPv6 is Tricky
For such a nerdy, network-y name, IPv6 rides with some pretty colorful language. Without it, for instance, the global Internet faces “IP address exhaustion.” With it, we could theoretically affix an IP address to “every atom on the surface of Earth.” But getting to IPv6 (from IPv4) won’t be trivial, engineers said over and over during the recent SCTE Cable ... More
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Stumped by tech gibberish? Veteran technology analyst Leslie Ellis translates the latest in broadband gadgetry, services, bandwidth, and gear.
Pinstripe Power
The core four. One for the thumb. A win for The Boss. The phrases associated with five-time World Series champion New York Yankees Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada, plus principle owner George Steinbrenner, can give way to the numbers 27, $207 million and 19.4 million, as in the franchise’s record number of North American pro sports titles, its payroll for the jus ... More
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Making A Statement, Making A Difference
By DAVID PORTER “Make a Statement. Make a Difference” is not only the theme of this year’s Walter Kaitz Foundation’s Annual Fund-Raising Dinner, but is also a call for the cable industry to collectively move forward and engender change. Change requires hard work, and we have lots more work to do on diversity. At its core, the foundation has always been committed to incr ... More
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Just another NWP - Blogs weblog
Get Well Soon, Char
Multi sends good wishes to CTAM CEO Char Beales, who fell yesterday and suffered a broken ankle. With the CTAM Summit, in Denver, about eight weeks away, she’ll have recuperation time, but ouch. We’re sure we’ll hear more about it on Sept. 17 when the cable marketing organization plans to host a conference call with the media to discuss details about the Oct. 25-27 conference ... More
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Multichannel News editor Kent Gibbons covers issues impacting pay TV providers, programmers and technology suppliers in his regular column.
Well, THAT's Fun (Moody Blues in Visa Ad)
I’m sitting here watching and tweeting American Idol when this cool Visa ad pops up on my television screen in big, bright psychedelic colors. The music is Moody Blues’ “Tuesday Afternoon.” Fun In fact, Visa recently released another inspiring ad called “Let’s Go.” (That’s Morgan Freeman in the voice over set to Smashing Pumpkins’ ... More
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May McNamara focuses on TV programming in her column, which is updated at least three times weekly.
Goings and Goings -- Manny, A-Rod and T.O.
This has been a week of goings and goings and goings. I’m talking A-Rod, Manny and T.O. As a Mets fan, I wanted Manny Ramirez on the team. I even thought a simple contract of $25 million a year for two years and a $10 million buyout would work. If Manny wasn’t happy in New York, he gets 10 mill to go away. If the Mets weren’t happy with Manny, they cut him a 10 mill check and ... More
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Kiss the Beijing Olympics Goodbye When the 2008 Summer Olympic Games start this August in that wonderfully polluted Chinese capitol of Beijing, you can bet NBC will cover it in all its glory from the opening ceremonies to the close. I’m sure it will be breathtaking and memorable, especially if the US dominates the medal count and no one flunks the drug tests. With NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Oxygen and the Weather Channel carrying the Games (only kidding about Weather Channel, I think – the bids for the Landmark Communications property have not been revealed yet), there will be enough TV platforms covering the Games to give even the sorry sport of boxing a shot – even if it may be at 3 a.m. With all the hoopla and money to be made pimping, I mean exploiting, I mean shilling, I mean broadcasting the Games, I for one hope to avoid as much of the Olympics as possible. I don’t know, maybe, it has a tad to do with how the Chinese government dictates to its people how to live – or not. Remember, China is a one baby per family utopia. The little issue of Tibetan independence and the Chinese government’s crackdown on its people leaves me feeling uncomfortable to say the least. I know the American Revolution does not compare with Tibet’s attempt at self-governing, but will it take a monk or three igniting themselves to bring attention to what the Chinese government is doing? I know, in the eyes of the Chinese government, the Dali Lama is akin to Osama Bin Laden, and yet, even President Bush has met the Dali Lama, but he needs to go much further. He needs to avoid attending the Beijing Games just like he did the Hurricane Katrina games. Just give it time and the whole ugly mess will be forgotten – or at least he’ll be out of office. I know my job is to watch at least some of the Summer Games and maybe interview a writer or two, but it’s hard to watch an event like the Beijing Olympics when you need the roar of the crowd to drown out a cry for help from its people. U-S-A! ... U-S-A! ... U-S-A! ... just might do the trick especially if the Chinese government can fool, I mean hire, I mean use Stevie Wonder to lead the cheers.
A Rise From 'Ashes'
I’ve seen the future, and it’s set in 1981. That’s the year that modern-day policewoman Alex Drake is transported back to in the new BBC America series Ashes to Ashes. Ironically, the show’s Stateside debut on March 7 comes just days after ABC announced that it was canceling its Americanized version of another U.K. import, Life On Mars - the original time-travel-meets-p ... More
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George Vernadakis writes about pay TV programming and other issues impacting the industry.
Cabler Demands Note from Man in Coma
Is your name on YOUR cable account? You better make sure it is, because if your spouse it injured and in a coma, your cable company may lock you out of your account. My family found this out the hard way, and it could happen to you. Service providers only want to deal with an “authorized user” when it comes to changes ... More
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Memo To Mr. Charles Dolan
Memo to: Cablevision chairman Charles F. Dolan Re: FCC chairman Martin’s War On ESPN Date: Dec. 8, 2008 From: MCN Washington News Editor Mr. Dolan, The rumors are that FCC chairman Kevin Martin will take up residence in Silicon Valley when the clock runs out on the Bush administration in January. That’s a not a bad location for him, actually, in that Martin has clearly been fu ... More
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Ted Hearn writes about moves by the pay TV industry inside the Beltway.
Maybe Sterling Cooper Should Do An Ad Campaign For 'Mad Men'
This past weekend Mad Men lead Jon Hamm did a stint hosting Saturday Night Live, and his intro poked funat the conundrum of the AMC show: It’s critically revered, the first basic-cable series to win an Emmy as best drama, yet relatively few people have seen it. In his SNL intro, Hamm alluded to Mad Men’s relative obscurity. The dark, handsome actor also said that when he tells people ... More
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Brian Besieged
You wanna know how tough it’s gotten out there for cable stocks? So bad that one institutional investor, one that doesn’t normally do things like this, is calling for the ouster of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. Brian Roberts. The guy who a couple of years ago was being hailed as the smartest guy in cable. The guy who grew his father’s company from a 3-million subscriber regional ... More
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