My Turn
Multichannel News editor Kent Gibbons covers issues impacting pay TV providers, programmers and technology suppliers in his regular column.
Adieu, Equalizer
Edward Woodward is dead at age 79 and I have three things to praise him for. The first is ‘Breaker Morant,’ a film that isn’t even mentioned in the obits I’ve seen this morning, including one on the BBC site. It’s about Aussies fighting for the Brits in the Boer War and becoming “scapegoats for the bloody empire,” if dialogue memory serves and ...... Read More
Comments (0)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 ...... Read More
Comments (0)BBC America HD Launches in NYC on TWC
BBC America says it has signed a Time Warner Cable distribution pact, with New York City the first region adding the channel. It goes on the system today, on channel 685. More details to come but wanted to get the news out to hopefully calm the legions of fans disappointed when the channel went unseen during the July launch week which featured such sci-fi HD treats as Torchwood: Children of Earth ...... Read More
Comments (5)Football (English) is Coming
English Premier League football (soccer), so tempting a product ESPN snapped up U.K. game rights and has reformated a channel there to show them on, returns Saturday, amid the buzz of FIFA 2010 World Cup and UEFA Champions League qualifying matches. UEFA Champions League, you know, the tournament that will even be seen on FX next May, hence the promotional ads you might have seen for English Premi ...... Read More
Comments (2)Digital Cable Takes the Lead
Digital cable in 2008 overtook direct-to-home satellite TV as the leading digital pay-TV platform. Pop the Champagne! This comes from U.K-based IMS Research, promoting an upcoming report on … worldwide digital TV. Digital cable was about 4.5 million customers behind DTH systems at the start of last year, but added an impressive 32 million subscribers to 16 million for the DTH providers. At ...... Read More
Comments (0)Time for More Access
Cablevision’s refusal to sell the HD versions of its regional sports networks in New York to Verizon could be an issue that seals the case for eliminating the so-called terrestrial loophole that lets cable companies withhold some of its programming to competitors, avoiding program-access rules established by Congress that helped make satellite TV and telco TV businesses possible. Or at leas ...... Read More
Comments (6)'WH 13' Remembers Nora O'Brien
Fans praised the dedication to late NBC production exec Nora O’Brien at the end of Syfy’s premiere episode of Warehouse 13 last night. “Dedicated to Nora O’Brien,” the closing credits began, under a photo of the former Sci Fi Channel original programming executive, who left the channel about two years ago to become VP of drama programming for both parent NBC Univ ...... Read More
Comments (6)'SportsCenter' Avoids Staples Traffic
ESPN’s 1 a.m. ET SportsCenter will return to the Bristol, Conn., mother ship overnight, to avoid the traffic nightmare created in Los Angeles by the Michael Jackson memorial at the Staples Center, close by the L.A. Live complex where the worldwide sports leader has been producing that edition of the flagship news program since April. “We produce multiple SportsCenters from our Bristo ...... Read More
Comments (0)Setanta On the Ropes
The Setanta Sports flameout in the U.K. can’t be good for the U.S. premium channel. I’m also not sure it helps U.S. soccer fans, even though the rights it holds are used on a channel that’ll cost you $15 or more on satellite TV or, less likely, on Comcast, Cox, RCN, FiOS TV or U-verse. The update, which you’ll know if you’re a U.S.-based footie fan, is that Irel ...... Read More
Comments (2)Programming Costs
Dogs bite men — and cable programming costs rise. Not news, in other words. But it’s a reality programmers grapple with daily as they try to gain, or improve, carriage of their services on cable and satellite distributors. Comcast and Time Warner Cable reported healthy first-quarter earnings last week, with Comcast nearly doubling its free cash flow and Time Warner Cable adding 36,00 ...... Read More
Comments (3)Caprica Launches -- on iTunes
Sci Fi Channel’s Caprica premiere is for sale on iTunes so some early reviews are in. The Battlestar Galactica followup is also a prequel — it deals with events that come decades before the Cylons attack Caprica and other human-occupied planets, scattering the survivors in spaceships. It got greenlit last year but the series isn’t scheduled to air on the channel soon to be cal ...... Read More
Comments (0)Robert Carlyle's New 'Universe'
The great Scottish actor Robert Carlyle was standing more or less by himself at the party after Sci Fi Channel’s upfront song and dance last week (March 16). I’m a fan of many of his projects - Hamish Macbeth; Begbie in Trainspotting; The Full Monty and his early, epic U.K. TV appearance as a football fan turned deranged killer in Robbie Coltrane’s Cracker. I’m also a S ...... Read More
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