It’s a super Sunday for MTV Networks: MTV, Spike TV, BET and Comedy Central high-definition channels have launched on Time Warner Cable in New York City.
Back in July 2009, Pali Capital analyst Rich Greenfield observed that Viacom’s MTV Networks only had the concert music channel, Palladia, launched on the key Time Warner Cable systems in Manhattan and Los Angeles. He observed that TWC and MTVN did a big carriage deal in January 2009, and expanded its HD offerings overall starting in February.
Since then I’ve been watching for other MTVN HD channels to appear, and now they have. I’m not sure when they launched exactly: TWC of NYC and New Jersey’s channel changes page doesn’t mention it. But it had to be very recently. (Update: someone posted an earlier channel change notice on Broadbandreports.com that foretold these additions and mentioned some other shifts, including Palladia and Weather Channel’s SD channel positioning. Posters there said the channels, plus VH1 HD, launched in Columbus, Ohio.)
Maybe the December launches of HD versions of Comedy Central’s must-watch shows, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, were a catalyst. Colbert, in particular, encouraged his fans to urge their cable operators to launch him in HD — and had a funny rejoinder on his program to those distributors that kept him in standard definition.
Maybe it was Jersey Shore, and the prospect of J-WOWW and The Situation in glorious HD, that did the trick. MTV HD is showing a Jersey Shore marathon today, starting at 9 a.m. ET. Spike is showing a bunch of CSIs. Comedy is showing movies on Super Bowl Sunday, mostly.
Most likely it just took TWC a (long) while to get to these launches: it typically adds HD networks in small bunches, I’m told, and if a programmer misses a window, it can have a (long) wait ahead until the next one.
Maybe cable operators are on to something with these 3DTV demonstrations of hockey and golf.I base that on how firm their telco and satellite competitors are in denouncing the demos as worthless hype.
After Cablevision Systems beamed a thoroughly uncompetitive hockey game in 3D from its Madison Square Garden to whichever of its customers might own 3D-capable TV sets on March 24, DirecTV said it was offered the opportunity but passed. Rather than focus on “one off events,” it’s focused on providing HD customers with “a complete 3D experience.”
After Comcast last week demonstrated for reporters in New York a 3D feed it and other cable operators will receive and transmit from The Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, Verizon said it was “committed to delivering a quality 3DTV experience, not just hype.”
The telco described the market for 3D as “very, very early,” said content is only now becoming available, and FiOS plans to have a formal 3D offering ready in time for holiday sales of TVs.
I went to both the hockey and golf demos. For me, the golf worked better, but hockey is a difficult TV sport, and golf is a perfect fit. (Especially if it’s Sunday afternoon and a sofa is nearby to nap on.) At the Comcast demo, there were both “passive” and “active” glasses. The active glasses, with battery power, were tight and my eyes never seemed to fully adjust; Comcast executives said it would take a few minutes. I hope that’s not a common experience, as I’m told active glasses (the more expensive of the two) will be the ones needed for most 3D sets at first.
Both demos were cool. Cablevision’s press demo at MSG’s Club Bar & Grill, had the best celebrities, with actors Chloe Sevigny (Big Love) and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) and Rangers legend Mark Messier. Al Trautwig’s shtick before the start of the game, pushing objects from his bag into the foreground until he found his 3D glasses, was amusing. All in all, a fine show.
Comcast’s, at the street-level studios of the SNY regional sports network, had three great 3D-on-cable advocates in the form of executives Mark Francisco, Mark Hess and Derek Harrar. Hess had played the Augusta course once and gave a perfect real-world example of 3D’s impact. On TV, Augusta looks flat, he said. When you go in person, you are overwhelmed by the hills and dips and contours; 3D, he said, gives you a much better feel for the course.
Francisco had answers for all the tech questions, including that the picture resolution and transmission rate were the same as for a typical Comcast live sports event shown in high definition.
Harrar made the business case for the “one-off” events DirecTV derided. Maintaining a loop of canned programming, even as gorgeous as the Augusta images, isn’t the best way for a viewer to sample 3DTV. It makes more sense to have programs available on demand, including the movies that Comcast has already shown.
As for predictions that 3D is a decade away from being a mass market, Harrar said no way it takes that long. He said of the movies Comcast has shown in HD and 3D formats, 16% of the views were in 3D using glasses Comcast gave out at payment centers and kiosks.
Considering the mix for Comcast on-demand movie buys is about 20% to 25% in HD versus standard definition, that’s a sign of strong early adoption, he said.
To the early 3D momentum powered by Avatar and CES, add cable cheerleading to the list.
Heard any good advice on how to fix your network lately?
CNN executives today alluded to the recent spate of stories about its ratings plunges. The New York Timesran a big one on March 30 and then ran an April 4 Op-Ed piece headlined “Can CNN Be Saved?” The Op-Ed author, Ross Douthat (a good name for someone giving free advice), advised bringing “real debate” back to the network that canceled Crossfire in 2005.
Leading off a “News Makers” cavalcade of CNN talent at the Time Warner Center this morning, ad-sales chief Greg D’Alba told assembled media buyers and reporters: “So much has been written about us lately, so much. However, is the complete story being told? There’s no way it is — not when media consumption is changing and moving faster than ever before.”
He focused on CNN’s global, mobile and Web platforms — the reach argument.
Jim Walton, head of CNN Worldwide, came out and thanked buyers and advertisers for their business. “I’d also like to thank some of the members of the media out there in the room as well for all the great coverage we’ve had over the last few months, we’re appreciative of that so thank you, as well.”
Walton stressed CNN’s longtime investments in journalism and technology. He said CNN Domestic reaches “millions more viewers” per month than its cable news competitors, a stat CNN derives from the number of unique viewers tuning in for at least several minutes at some time in the month. And, he added: “We stand apart. We’re the only, credible non-partisan-voiced platform. And that matters.”
Take that Fox News Channel and MSNBC.
CNN U.S. president Jon Klein kept it up: “Our mission, our mandate is to deliver the best journalism in the world. First hand reporting, incisive analysis. No bias, no agenda. That puts us, in the world of cable news, in a category of one. Our traditional competitors have abandoned the field.”
He added, not too modestly: “Our journalism is the currency of national conversation.”
The shows fans have come to expect on Friday nights — Stargate, in the latest form, Sanctuary, Caprica– are moving to Tuesdays. Syfy Tuesday isn’t quite as alliterate, but it could catch on. Dave Howe and co. have produced high-rated fare on Tuesdays, notably the surprise hitWarehouse 13. As with the switch to Syfy, I say, it’s their network and they should do what they think best.
I’m sad to see Stargate and Battlestar Galactica Fridays go, though. Space adventure is what soothes my savage synapses after our grueling Fridays in the ink shop, not the historic home of Randy Savage. No Stargate on Friday just doesn’t seem right.
Howe told our Tom Umstead that a move to Tuesdays could well help shows such as Caprica, the well-produced, well-received prequel to Battlestar Galactica. Over nine episodes, it has averaged 1.8 million viewers, even with seven days of DVR playback counted in (the show, and other Friday night fare, is heavily recorded). Syfy touted that the ninth episode, the mid-season finale, on March 26 had more than 1 million viewers in the 18-49 demo, with seven days’ playback. It should really be doing better, in my humble view.
“Friday nights in terms of our originals has become increasingly problematic,” Howe told Tom, “and we’ve been looking over the last two or three years into how we can move off of Friday to an earlier weekday so that we can offset some of the issues with regard to DVRs and time shifting.”
“Warehouse 13, our biggest hit ever on the network, was a Tuesday show,” he said. “We’ve experimented with originals on other nights of the week. The problem with Fridays are that the HUTs are lower, younger viewers in particular are not around on Friday nights and people who are around are mostly playing catch-up with their DVRs. It’s also become more competitive than it used to be, so the opportunity to create more live viewing on a Tuesday is fantastic for us.”
Fridays at 10 p.m. are still available for new originals, Howe said. “What we’re aiming to do is use Smackdown as a springboard to launch new shows on Friday or put in repeats of our scripted shows so that we can continue to grow that Smackdown audience across our schedule.”
Can’t see the WWE audience hanging on for a space drama, though. Pity.
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 Ireland-based Setanta TV is in serious financial trouble. In February, it lost the rights to half of the 46 Barclay’s English Premier League games it once had in the United Kingdom, and that crushed its chances of hitting subscriber marks it needed to stay in business. Today it was reported that ESPN had picked up those EPL games for U.K. broadcasting after Setanta failed to meet a payment deadline last week.
In the U.S., EPL matches — featuring teams such as Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal — are the main reason to subscribe to the U.S. Setanta Sports channel. For the longest time Setanta Sports USA was only on DirecTV but is now on Dish, too, and select cable systems such as Cox in Northern Virginia and Comcast in New England, as well as Verizon and AT&T’s video platforms.
It’s not widely available and costs upwards of $15 a month when it is. It has games that aren’t on Fox Soccer Channel, but FSC does have a good selection of games. If you are a diehard and can’t get the channel on satellite, you likely live in a big city, and can catch Setanta matches at a pub that gets the two Setanta channels. I for example saw every Liverpool match this season, on TV, except for the last one, which wasn’t on either Setanta or FSC. And I subscribe to a cable system that doesn’t offer Setanta.
I probably would get the channel if offered — but would certainly be scared by the events in England.
Setanta’s U.S. channel posted an important message to subscribers on its Web site, stating that events over there are separate from the U.S. channel.
“As has been widely reported in various media channels, Setanta Sports has had its agreement to broadcast 46 Barclays Premier League matches in the UK terminated. This development does not affect our channels and other services in the US. Setanta Sports in the US is a separate operation that has separate agreement to show the Barclay’s Premier League. Our channels and other services in the US continue to broadcast and our subscribers can still enjoy our programming including the Lions Tour of South Africa and the UEFA U21 European Championship. New customers are welcome to subscribe to watch some of the world’s best soccer and rugby either by contacting our cable and satellite partners or online at www.setanta.com. We thank you for your continued interest in Setanta Sports and look forward to bringing you a wealth of sport over the coming months and years.”
Will this continue to be the case? ESPN had bid before on EPL rights, but only for Europe, where it seems to have plans to launch a soccer channel. In the U.S., ESPN divides the soccer matches it has on various channels but doesn’t have a dedicated soccer channel. It doesn’t seem to want one here.
If Setanta went under, would those matches be as available as they are now, to anyone who can subscribe to Setanta as a premium channel or see the games at a friendly pub, such as Kinsale Tavern on the Upper East Side of N.Y.C? Questionable.
Hard to see how FSC, which also shows Italian Serie A matches, could accommodate the extra load. Not clear to me if Fox would set up pub channels. Maybe it would though: ESPN made a deal with News Corp.-owned BSkyB to retail its new EPL games to “residential and commercial customers.”
Is international soccer hot in the U.S.? Yes. The World Cup is returning next year, to South Africa, and that always raises interest in the sport, though the USA squad isn’t doing that well at the moment. (Update: I guess I missed the last match, where USA! USA! USA! beat Egypt 3-0, advancing in the just-for-yucks Confederations Cup only because Italy lost to Brazil 3-0.) ESPN and Gol TV cut a deal that will double the number of matches from Spain’s La Liga shown on U.S. cable and satellite platforms. La Liga and the EPL are considered the top European leagues.
My tilt is to the EPL, which Setanta now presents here in quantity. So I’m hoping, for now at least, that Setanta (named for a mythical Irish hero) hangs onto the U.S. matches.
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 36,000 basic subs when compared with year-ago figures. Yet both reported significant growth on the expense side for programming.
TWC, on April 29, said programming expenses rose about 8% on year-to-year basis in the first quarter. Comcast, on April 30, said its programming costs rose 9.6%.
Their chief financial officers addressed the increases, which were higher than what was being seen in recent prior quarters.
“Yes, programming costs were up about 8% in the quarter. That is higher than we experienced last year where for the full year we were up about 6% and I think it is consistent with what we articulated on the fourth quarter call. I do expect that over the course of the year our programming costs will be higher. I think you know the things that are driving that. It is a combination of new networks in particular, a full year of [Big 10 Network] and MLB Network. There are some resets in there. A couple of the Fox services in particular that sort of have a step up function impact. Then we have more [retrans] costs certainly this year than we did in the past. You couple that with normal contractual rate increases and that drives the cost growth higher than last year and higher than the first quarter.
“I don’t actually see a material change to the relationship with programmers that is going to affect this year’s numbers. The dye to some extent is cast. We are always negotiating but this year’s programming costs are kind of taking shape.”
“… on the Programming side, total we experienced over 9% increase in Programming for the quarter. Obviously that’s not a heartwarming number and I think that we are working really hard to bring that number down. In addition, we are growing revenues on the video side; we’re having certainly more digital penetration and so forth. So I think that the number we’re looking at this quarter is abnormally high. We don’t think that’s a normalized number in terms of 9.6%.”
Overall, through “expense management,” Comcast’s total expenses rose only 0.4% year to year despite adding 2.2 million subscribers to various services, Angelakis said. So money going out for programming outlays has to be made up from savings elsewhere.
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 called Syfy until 2010.
Apple says that despite the $14.99 price tag for the 90-minute pilot and an already free trailer, Caprica is No. 20 on the top 100 TV shows sales list on iTunes. The pilot also is on sale via DVD ($17.49 on Amazon.) There are plenty of reviews on iTunes. Others are on blogs, including a 4-star recap by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Rob Owen.
I haven’t coughed up the cash yet so I can’t review it, although the trailer shown at the Sci Fi upfront in March was intriguing and it’s from the same team that brought you BSG. Eric Stolz is starring, which is a good sign.
The average iTunes rating is 4 stars — 55 gave it 5 stars and 13 gave it just 1 star. The 1 star posters seem to be objecting most to the price for a single “2-hour” movie that’s really a little over an hour and a half. Also it’s not in high definition and iTunes labels it a “season pass” though it doesn’t seem as if it will include the 18 hours that will follow the debut.
Anyway, if you need a way to sate that BSG jones this year, Caprica is out there.
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 Stargate follower, still slightly shocked Carlyle was cast in Stargate Universe, the next series in the franchise, now in production in Vancouver.
Last Friday, Sci Fi aired a 30-second promo for SGUduring the finale of Battlestar Galactica. A boyish-looking Carlyle is seen a couple of times, seeming quite concerned (and looking a bit guilty) amid screaming chaos. Other people’s voices are heard saying “we’re not supposed to be here” and “there’s not a chance in hell that we’re going to be able to escape this” and “we’re all going to die out here.”
You can also pick out Lou Diamond Phillips. Otherwise it’s very imagistic, a darkened room filled with panicked people, lit by the blue glow of a stargate’s event horizon. (A shimmering puddle.)
I asked Carlyle about his character and the show and how it was all going.
He said the producers hope to keep the core audiences of Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis and introduce them to “something different.”
Something a bit more of a “character piece,” in his words.
Caution to readers:
There are a couple of plot spoilers ahead.
Skip past the next, asterisked-off section to avoid reading them.
Thanks.
***
“I play a guy called Dr. Nicholas Rush,” Carlyle said with his familiar, crisp Scottish accent. “A scientist. A driven kind of man. You’re never sure what motives this guy has. Never.
“At the beginning of the show, Rush has transported a team through a stargate to what they believe is another world. In fact, when they get there, they realize they’re actually on another ship, a space ship, a massive spaceship. Which has been floating through the universe for hundreds of thousands of years, launched by the Ancients long ago,” he said, using Stargate terminology adeptly. “Unmanned, picking up information, gathering data.
“So once they get there — and they’re relieved to get there because they have a very tricky situation to get there — Rush then tells them: ‘You can’t go back. You can never go home.’
“Then things start to get really, really tense. A battle for leadership takes place on the ship. We have three deaths in the first three hours. A suicide in episode five, I think.
“This is a hearty band,” he continued. “They’re literally billions of light years away, on the very far side of the universe. And the thought of that is quite terrifying. So it has to be character driven. This piece will stand and fall on the characters, for sure.”
OK, that’s the end of any potential spoilers.
***
Carlyle said the first three hours are about finished, and that scripts are being written on the fly. “As soon as you finish a scene another one comes into your hand.”
The Stargate franchise - which teams MGM with “powers that be” Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper - is a TV- and movie-making machine. Two made-for-DVD movies that followed Stargate: SG-1’s run will air on Sci Fi Channel on back to back Friday nights: Stargate: Ark of Truth on March 27 and Stargate: Continuum on April 3. Stargate Atlantis was canceled after five seasons but an SGA movie is in the works.
“The producers, particularly Brad Wright and Robert Cooper, these guys are the main reason why I’m here,” Carlyle said.
“They explained it extremely well when they got in contact with me at first. The first thing I said was: ‘Why do you want me in it?’ The way they put it was very interesting: They said they wanted someone who can ‘make unattractive things seem quite attractive.’ I said: ‘I’m your man.’ ”
Others in the cast include Justin Louis, “who’s another terrific actor,” he continued. “Lou Diamond Phillips is in there as well. David Blue, a good young actor. And there’s a couple of youngsters, a guy called Brian J. Smith, who’s working out extremely well, and a girl called Elyse Levesque, she’s actually from Vancouver, a wonderful young actress, the first thing she’s ever done.”
It’s a nice mix of youth and leadership and trying to fight for survival and leadership aboard this craft for the next 20 episodes.”
The obvious question is: what is Robert Carlyle doing in a Sci Fi Channel series?
“I’m very happy to be here, that’s all I can say,” he said. “I’ve done an awful lot of nitty-gritty type of stuff in my career over the last 15-20 years or so and I felt it was time for a change. I wanted something different. When I came out to Los Angeles about a year ago, I talked to various television people with various ideas. I put it out that I was looking for something that was going to interest me. And I was very fortunate, three or four things came in. This one, for me, was by far and away the best.”
The former Bond villain said he has time during the year to do other projects that come up. There are also lifestyle reasons to be based in Vancouver during production periods. He has three small children - ages 3, 5 and 7 - who live in Glasgow, Scotland, who’ll come over and camp out with us there. It gives me more time to be a dad at the weekend.”
Last plug for the show: Carlyle says within the first hour, you’ll be hooked.
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 SportsCentersfrom our Bristol headquarters daily and therefore have flexibility to make adjustments like this when needed,” a spokesperson said when we inquired. (Thanks to Linda Haugsted for the suggestion to ask.)
As the Los Angeles Timespointed out today: “Not only was the area around Staples being sealed off, but the California Department of Transportation said it would close several ramps on the 110 and 134 freeways to keep traffic flowing as smoothly as possible.”
Avoidance was the better part of valor clearly. Whether many TV viewers felt the same way — I’ve certainly seen some Facebook posters say they were steering clear of the coverage — will be seen in the ratings.
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 Universal and Universal Entertainment.
In April, she died on the set of NBC show Parenthood, at age 44. Warehouse 13 was one of her shows before she left for the studio job. At Sci Fi, her programming executive credits include both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. “She was intelligent, skilled, highly-focused and, above all, a genuinely kind and caring individual,”Stargate writer-producer Joseph Mallozzi said in a blog post after her death. “She was our champion at Sci-Fi — ever-approachable; always willing to lend a sympathetic ear,” he said.
Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable hosted the On Demand Summit at the Convene conference center in New York on May 8. (Photos by Mark Reinertson)
Click through for photos from Scripps' upfront in New York, Comcasters lending a hand on Comcast Cares Day, the Rocky Mountain Cable Association's "Cable Apprentice" winners and more events for the week of May 13.
Click through for photos from the opening of the TCM Film Festival, the convening of the Pennsylvania Cable Academy and more event photos for the week of May 6.
