Technology

Canby Telcom of Oregon is preparing to launch a streamlined “Pay TV Lite” package comprised of eight local broadcast TV channels that will be offered exclusively on Roku boxes and sell for $14.95 per month.

Canby, a telco based about 25 miles outside of Portland with about 7,000 customers, said its new, authenticated “EZVideo” channel on Roku will augment its current triple play packages using a reduced, lineup of live local broadcast channels, video on demand from its local origination channel, CTV5, that will be delivered through the Roku device.

AT&T AdWorks, the telco’s New York-based advanced advertising division, is pushing ahead with a new audience targeting system that uses anonymous AT&T data from a mix of online, mobile and TV users that’s overlaid with data supplied from third party providers.

The resulting platform, called AT&T AdWorks Blueprint, aims to deliver the most relevant messages to consumers while reducing the amount of “irrelevant ads” that pop up when they're using browsers on PCs and mobile devices or watching TV.

MSO partnerships highlighted TiVo’s fiscal first quarter, as the DVR pioneer added 277,000 subscriptions through pay TV partnerships, marking its largest quarterly subscription gain in the category in more than seven years. MSO revenues, meanwhile, jumped 98% year-over-year, TiVo said.

Virgin Media represented the bulk of those subscriber gains, as the U.K.-based MSO added 172,000 in the period, extending its total to 1.5 million, or 40% of the MSO’s base.

Scripps News, which serves the company's broadcast, newspaper and online properties, Monday began publishing stories that is has uncovered data security lapses affecting thousands of customers whose data was collected by companies participating in the government's Lifeline phone subsidy program. The FCC is testing an expansion of that program to broadband subsidies.