My Turn
Multichannel News editor Kent Gibbons covers issues impacting pay TV providers, programmers and technology suppliers in his regular column.
Keeping the Customer Happy
Could personalized video billing help cable operators make their customers happy? That’s one of the things vendor Amdocs is looking into in relation to its sponsorship of the Cable Center Customer Care Committee (C5 for short). Lisa Modisette, a vice president in the Amdocs Consulting Division, and Jana Henthorn, senior vice president of academic and industry outreach at the nonprofit educa ...... Read More
Comments (0)Shatnerpalooza
Capt. Kirk was on deck at the aircraft carrier Intrepid Saturday night. After working the room at a VIP reception with his wife, Elizabeth, there was William Shatner, in the spotlight, on a walkway above the carrier (now a floating museum in New York City). “Wow! What a magical moment,” he said to a couple hundred fans who’d gathered on a warm night on the flight deck for a fr ...... Read More
Comments (0)'Torch' Carries On
Torchwood: Miracle Day does the impossible, or at least difficult. It takes a hit U.K. series and neither remakes it with Americans nor keeps it the same for U.S. consumption. (It premieres Friday, tomorrow, on Starz at 10 p.m.) Instead it takes the U.K. stars and grafts Americans into the cast, shifts the setting to the United States, and retains a winning combination of action, pyrotechnics, str ...... Read More
Comments (1)A Reader's Guide to The Cable Show
Nice to see Comcast take its host city obligations so seriously, providing a huge news story heading into the Cable Show in Chicago by blowing away the competition and securing four more Olympic Games for NBCUniversal. At the convention, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts is already scheduled to make some news on Thursday (the last day) with a “next-generation video demo” that observers belie ...... Read More
Comments (0)Review: HBO's 'Treme'
Here’s my 4.5-star review of Treme’s season 2 premiere Sunday night: TV’s great storytellers, David Simon and Eric Overmyer, return to post-Katrina New Orleans to find it beset by criminals, exploiters and government incompetence. In other words, still in the grips of man-made disasters. In Season 1, Treme’s characters struggled in the days and weeks after the 2005 stor ...... Read More
Comments (0)April Foolery
Media love April Fool’s jokes — heard any good ones? Animal Planet got me with one today, announcing it would air a two-hour documentary about the poisonous cobra that briefly escaped from the Bronx Zoo: With never-before-seen footage, the cobra’s home movies, photography and an exclusive interview with confessionals, the candid special will offer the real story behind the cob ...... Read More
Comments (0)Herb Scannell's 5-Year Plan at BBC America
Herb Scannell, overseer of BBC America among other BBC properties in the U.S., says the network is ready to spend the coin needed to increase ratings, diversify the program mix and generally capitalize on a moment in which “British culture is it culture.” “I feel we’re in a good place,” Scannell, the former MTV Networks executive named BBC Worldwide America presi ...... Read More
Comments (0)ESPN's Wolff ‘Delivers' For Local Kids
New York — Russell Wolff, the million-mile-a-year head of ESPN International, is being celebrated for charitable work at the world’s biggest locally based philanthropy. Honoree of the year at UJA-Federation of New York’s Sports For Youth Division, Wolff co-chairs an effort raising more than $300,000 yearly for projects helping disadvantaged kids play sports. The March 8 lunche ...... Read More
Comments (0)A Diva Fixing America Targets TV
Lynn Tilton has been good to small-town America, buying and rebuilding failed manufacturing businesses and preserving jobs. The question now is: Will she make good reality TV? Tilton is CEO of Patriarch Partners, which buys distressed companies (150 plus in the last decade), gets them back on their feet and helps retain jobs (250,000 of them by her measure). Its portfolio now has 74 companies with ...... Read More
Comments (0)Systems Ready For 'Super' Sunday
Time Warner Cable’s Wisconsin operations have close ties with the local National Football League franchise, the Green Bay Packers. Wide receiver Donald Driver has done ads for the system, and defensive back Charles Woodson has participated in local events, reading to kids, according to local communications director Stacy Zaja. Comcast in Pittsburgh, meanwhile, loves the hometown Steelers, t ...... Read More
Comments (2)Packer Pride On Display
Time Warner Cable’s Wisconsin operations have close ties with the local National Football League franchise, the Green Bay Packers. Wide receiver Donald Driver has done ads for the system, and defensive back Charles Woodson has participated in local events, reading to kids, according to local communications director Stacy Zaja. Comcast in Pittsburgh, meanwhile, loves the hometown Steelers, t ...... Read More
Comments (0)Snow Day TV
School’s out (for some) in N.Y.C., giving me a chance to make some TV recommendations. I’ve been watching The Weather Channel, natch, and SportsCenter sent an anchor out to the parking lot in Bristol, Conn., to report on the snow drifts. Photo here. I also caught the DVR replay of John Oliver’s performance at the Verizon iPhone presser, as noted earlier by Todd Spangler. Fortu ...... Read More
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