Through the Wire

Contributors: Mike Reynolds, Steve Donohue, Ted Hearn.

These Artists Sure Can Dish It Out

Three cable companies in Los Angeles have partnered for a program that will give them public-affairs buzz while diminishing their ever-growing supply of traded-in direct-broadcast satellite dishes.

Adelphia Communications Corp., Charter Communications Inc. and Time Warner Cable are offering budding high school and college-aged artists in Southern California a chance to showcase their talent — and win some dough — by redecorating the dishes. Two systems from each of the MSOs will offer a $1,000 prize (for a total of $6,000 in first-prize cash throughout the region).

Second place in the six systems will each be good for $500 for the student/craftsman, with $250 for third place.

Potential contestants can e-mail the operators to obtain a discarded dish and to get the address of the nearest drop-off location for the completed refabrication.

Deane Leavenworth, Time Warner’s Los Angeles spokesman, noted that the contest kicked off at the Center for the Arts in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock with a workshop on assemblage art.

Contest notices have been posted to system Web sites, supported by posters in the schools. As far as interest goes, “we’re anticipating rolling thunder,” Leavenworth said.

The embellished dishes will have a second life as fund-raising vehicles. Following the March 25 submission date, the companies plan to create a virtual auction site, soliciting bids for the dish art from cable executives and others across the country. Proceeds will be donated to Cable Positive.

Set Your Calendars For Upfront Shows

Upfront presentations by networks are coming soon – and a newcomer kicks things off first, in New York.

Comcast Network Sales, taking its first group swing for E! Entertainment Television, Style, G4, Outdoor Life Network, The Golf Channel and The International Channel’s Asia Street block, has one scheduled for Tuesday (Feb. 15) at Cipriani, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Chief operating officer Steve Burke and new programming czar Jeff Shell are expected to be in the house.

The following morning, Cartoon Network assembles the press for breakfast at Café Gray at the Time Warner Center at 9:30 a.m. The real fun should follow seven hours later in The Allen Room, Jazz at Lincoln Center. Cartoon reps are promising panoramic views of Central Park and a performance by cult band The Polyphonic Spree.

Described as a cross between performance art and a revivalist meeting, the 30-member group dons choir robes and thrives on audience participation. Cartoon GM Jim Samples should be on the lookout.

From our list thus far, ABC Kids Networks is next on March 1 at 5 p.m. at the Hudson Hotel. Eight days later, Nickelodeon — whose last two upfronts featured network executives immersed in a rollercoaster film and a poetry slam — returns to the Roseland Ballroom at 9 a.m. A rep promises attendees will “take in a new twist on the future.”

Moving to April 7 and Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Discovery Networks U.S. will exhibit its wares at 3:15 p.m. A spokeswoman promises a performance, but guests should rest assured that they will be spared the spectacle of officials “playing horns or using their own pipes.”

If AT&T, SBC Merge, Whither 'Golden Boy?’

The planned merger of SBC Communications Inc. and AT&T Corp. raises many questions about the details of the deal. But one Wire reader (and art fan) is most curious about the fate of an early and well-traveled corporate symbol of Ma Bell — a bronze known as “The Spirit of Communication” or “The Genius of Electricity,” a.k.a. Golden Boy.

The 24-feet-tall, 40-ton statue, an image of the Greek God Hermes bearing lightning bolts, adorned the roof of American Telephone & Telegraph’s corporate home on Broadway in Manhattan, beginning in 1914. Its image was used on such consumer communications as telephone books through the 1930s and ’40s.

When the company moved several blocks uptown in the 1970s, Golden Boy was moved and promoted to a lobby position (and, given the proximity of admirers, he was re-gilded and, er, gelded).

In the 1990s — when AT&T Corp., then a telephone and cable company, decamped to Basking Ridge, N.J. — he was trucked out to Jersey. He was moved and regilded once again when that headquarters was sold for new digs in nearby Bedminster.

Barry Orton, a cable consultant, is curious what will happen to that symbol of AT&T’s golden age. He fondly remembers seeing the statue daily during walks in his youth.

After all, it could be expensive to truck a 40-ton statue to SBC headquarters in San Antonio, Texas.

“Hope it doesn’t end up on eBay,” Orton quipped.

S-A Woos DVR Fans With iPods, Chocolate

Scientific-Atlanta Inc. came up with a unique way to solicit positive feedback from cable subscribers that use its digital video recorders — free Apple Computer Corp. iPods.

Looking for feedback on the DVRs that it could tout at the upcoming National Show, S-A recently invited its DVR users to enter a contest called, “I love my DVR.”

S-A said it will reward iPods to winners in five categories, including “best entry that shows how a family loves/needs its DVR” and “best answer in the fewest words.”

One grand prize winner gets the new iPod Photo, and four other contestants will get the smaller iPod Shuffle. The honorable mention prizes are boxes of chocolate from Schokolad.

It’s a Dog’s Life, So Just Watch It

Dog people are so sensitive — and so are their pets. When our Ted Hearn reported the other day that broadcasters were likely to suffer their worst FCC policy defeat in “dog years” and made a reference to “barking up the wrong tree,” he got an e-mail from former Federal Communications Commission economist Tom Hazlett.

On behalf of Hazlett’s two dogs. Accompanied by a picture of said dogs looking forlorn, or maybe determined.

“Catfish and Girlfriend demand that you cease all references to 'dog years’ or 'barking,’ which they consider offensive,” Hazlett wrote. “If such demeaning references continue, they pledge to doggedly pursue further action. Woof.”

We’ll gnaw on that bone awhile.