Kent Gibbons's blog

Baseball’s Risky Squeeze Play

By: Mar 9 2007 - 1:23pm

Major League Baseball threw a curve at the cable industry Thursday by giving cable operators one last opportunity to play ball with the league’s “Extra Innings” out-of-market package.

My bet is that cable will not take a swing at the proposal.

The league and DirecTV Thursday finally consummated their seven-year, $700 million Extra Innings deal, giving the satellite provider carriage of the $179 service — as well as distribution rights to MLB’s new Baseball Channel, when it launches in 2009.

But it left the back door open for cable to again secure the package. MLB execs said that operators have two weeks to retain the Extra Innings package for their subscribers – if they agree to the same terms as DirecTV. Otherwise, DirecTV gets the package exclusively through 2014.

Butdissatisfaction with baseball’s deal was never about the cost of the Extra Innings deal: cable executives say they are willing to match DirecTV’s price for the package dollar for dollar.

It also wasn’t about DirecTV’s promise to offer more technical bells and whistles to the package: cable executives have said the industry is willing to offer a Strike Zone channel with live cut-ins to other games, as well as real-time scores and statistics, just like DirecTV.

Let’s be clear: This whole dustup between baseball and cable boils down to the same simple issue that has plagued negotiations between content distributors and cable operators since the first cable lines were rolled out into the home more than two decades ago. Baseball wants to secure distribution on the basic analog tier for its soon-to-be launched 24-hour channel.

And cable operators said no.

DirecTV purchased a minority interest in the Baseball Channel – which is expected to offer vintage as well as live games – and will put that network on a tier that reaches all of its 15 million subscribers. Cable has already countered by saying it would guarantee that the baseball network would be in front of at least 15 million subscribers via $5 a month sports tiers.

But baseball wants basic carriage from cable. The industry said it would not open an analog slot for The Baseball Channel.

In doing so, the industry is sending a very loud message to baseball, as well as any other sports league, college conference or startup track and field network thinking about aggressively pushing for analog or basic cable distribution: you’ll strike out before you even get up to bat.

Cable said that same thing to ESPN several years ago before caving into fears of a subscriber revolt if it moved the very expensive, sports juggernaut to a sports tier.

But times are different now. Cable operators have very limited analog bandwidth, and they’d rather allocate it to new technologies such as high-definition channels or video-on-demand programming, to help sell digital subscriptions.

Operators also can’t continue to absorb pricey sports network licensing fees that range from 75 cent to $2 per subscriber within its basic cable tier. License fee and distribution wars with ESPN left cable operators battle weary, but resolute in their desire not to lose such costly battles again with up-and-coming contenders.

Last year, much of the industry, led by Time Warner Cable and Comcast stood firm against the NFL Network, when it tried to leverage an eight-game package of life football telecasts into distribution on the basic analog tier, with a 75-cent per subscriber fee, to boot.

Comcast instead decided to place the network on a digital cable tier, while Time Warner and Cablevision refused to carry the network at all.

While those games generated strong ratings and a bevy of complaints from unhappy fans unable to view the games, subscribers didn’t storm Time Warner or Comcast’s offices.

It remains to be seen if the operators will stick to their guns this fall when the NFL Network comes knocking again, but it sure seems like the industry is now willing to fight tooth and nail for what it believes is right for its business.

That’s not to say that new sports networks will forever be regulated to sports tiers. Regionally-based sports networks such as Fox Sports’ upstart Big Ten Channel will rely on the popularity of Indiana, Ohio State and Michigan Universities to undoubtedly gain significant distribution in those states.

But networks, like the NFL Network and the Baseball Channel, wanting access to every household, automatically, across the country will find it much tougher going. The cable industry is saying a national sports network — even if it’s a ratings home run with its fans — no longer is guaranteed nationwide distribution.

Words Worth Remembering

By: Oct 23 2007 - 5:43am

New York — There were lots of things John Higgins would’ve liked about the B&C Hall of Fame dinner here last night.

Everyone wearing black tie, for one. He liked black and white clothes.

The fast-moving nature of the program would have pleased him. A baker’s dozen honorees and still the event was over around 10 p.m. In this blog age, particularly, John always had a deadline.

Most of all, he’d have been proud of his wife, Debbie.

Higgins was on many minds last night, partly because he was so associated with B&C magazine and partly because it was around this time a year ago when he died, of a heart attack, at age 45.

I’d been thinking of him over the weekend, as I mentioned to his close friend, Paul Rodriguez. It came up as it often does for me: after I’d done a calculated act of consideration to a stranger. "That would do it," Paul replied by email. John was well known for acts of kindness.

At last year’s B&C event, he was equal parts host and reporter, as Debbie was with him and she had finally moved up to New Jersey after working in Washington, D.C., as a lawyer at the FTC.

This year, his good friend Mark Robicheaux, B&C’s editor, inducted Higgins into the Hall of Fame in a special tribute before the scheduled program.

He reminded us of one of John’s favorite sayings, "Life is an Adventure," words now carved on his gravestone.

Debbie accepted the award. She gave heartfelt thanks and reminded everyone how much he loved events like this dinner, and in fact had been at a television awards event hours before he died last November.

She saluted the newsmakers, news gatherers and the entertainers in the room, saying how much comfort she’d drawn over the past months with a quiet respite in front of the TV.

Then she went a step further.

She bravely pointed out something many in the room didn’t know, about John’s final hours.

At the hospital, she said, he wasn’t treated with the kind of emergency care that should have been given a man who’d had a prior heart attack a few years earlier and who knew he was experiencing the symptoms. In fact, she said, at one point he fell to the floor and was left lying there for several minutes.

It’s important for the media to report not just on the best hospitals in the area, but to warn people about the worst hospitals, too, she said.

It’s also important, she said, for people to know that in an emergency situation, it’s best if at all possible to wait for an ambulance. That way critical care starts right away and continues at the hospital. John was, understandably, agitated and took the quickest means at hand, which was a taxicab.

She also said it’s important for people experiencing heart attack symptoms to take an aspirin, which is something they weren’t aware of at the time.

These weren’t the typical remarks one hears at a hall of fame event.

It took a lot of courage for her make her points so strongly, and yet turn them into positive advice.

John couldn’t have asked for more.


















Time to Move Beyond Grid

By: Apr 9 2007 - 8:51am

Here’s hoping the guidance at next month’s Cable Show in Vegas indicates steady evolution beyond The Grid.

As in the grid-based listings that are still at the heart of most cable customers’ electronic program guides. They’re fine for managing, say, what’s on 100 channels or so. But there are now digitally video recorded shows also to choose among, and HD channels and thousands of hours of on-demand programming. And downloaded shows and YouTube shows and, well, you get the idea.

Right now there are too many clicks and screens and interfaces to sift through on screen, even without adding searching for shows on the Internet.

“At some point, industries really have to get off the dime and make things easier because things are getting a lot more complex and linear grids don’t make it anymore,” Gartner Group analyst Patti Reali commented on the situation. Comcast, she said, had made some nice improvements to its iGuide, and she likes the guide Verizon rolled out with FiOS TV and how it shows what’s been recorded and what’s on-demand, as well as what’s scheduled.

But TV electronic guides still have a ways to go, Reali said, adding, “Just from a personal usage standpoint, you have to go into three different interfaces for three different kinds of content. It’s not user-friendly.”

The cable companies have invested heavily in guide upgrades. Comcast and Gemstar-TV Guide have a joint venture, GuideWorks, tasked with improving the current iGuide, and Time Warner Cable has begun rolling out a new guide that evolved from the Mystro headend-based-DVR project. But change has come slowly to cable guides, and early rollouts of Time Warner’s Digital Navigator have been problematic. There were enough complaints about it in Lincoln, Neb., that the City Council held a hearing to let consumers air grievances. Limited memory capacity in many digital set-tops is a challenge, as well.

But outside forces are at work. Last week, The New York Times published a rave review of TiVo’s set-tops’ ability to grab home movies from the PC and record Web videos from CNET and other Internet sites, for TV display. Apple TV and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 also are showing consumers new ways to find and display content from places far off The Grid.

Cable’s advantage against those options right now is cost – there’s little extra charge for a cable DVR and guide – but Web-savvy consumers, used to instantaneous search and navigation, want more from their user experience.

Gemstar promises to show and tell about next-generation guides at the cable industry’s Las Vegas gathering next month, but Tom Carson, president of the company’s North American interactive-program-guides business, isn’t saying much about it yet. But he called it “a whole different paradigm from what we’re used to.”

Moving beyond The Grid? “Trying to, yes,” Carson said. “That’s the concept.”

Next-generation guides must make it easier to navigate along different content highways. “Simplicity is part of the exercise,” he said. Future TV guides also should make viewing recommendations based on your habits, he added. And the guide should make it easy to tap into content across platforms, and make it easier to schedule recordings from outside the home. (Those are all things TiVo offers, of course.)

Carson said Gemstar’s consumer research is guiding development efforts, and cable customers agree with the direction, he said. Timing is always an issue. “Everybody wants it sooner than later,” he added.

Outside vendors are hoping to help out. Hillcrest Labs, of Rockville, Md., uses graphically presented “visual directories” to sort through content rather than pages of text and has a “pointer” type remote that provides a certain wow factor. Or as executive VP or marketing Andy Addis points out, there’s a “Wii” factor, as in the Nintendo Wii motion-sensing remote system that’s a big hit with consumers now.

Hillcrest will have a presence at the Cable Show, Addis, a former Comcast executive, said. “We’re getting traction” with cable, adding that Hillcrest can provide some enhancements to existing guides.

“I think there is increasingly a recognition on cable’s part that the guide is central to the customer experience and it needs to evolve beyond the grid,” he said. “I think the grid is going to look pretty darn old two years from now.”

Here’s hoping for some big upgrades sooner than that.

Lenfest's New Cause

By: Nov 26 2007 - 9:06am

 

H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, cable billionaire, is in the news again in Philadelphia.

The former proprietor of Oaks, Pa.-based Suburban Cable, who sold his half of the company to co-owner AT&T in 1999 (the 1.2 million subscribers ended up with Comcast), makes frequent hometown headlines with charitable donations. He also has backed controversial plans to move the Barnes Foundation’s world-famous art collection from Merion, Pa., to Philadelphia.

On Friday, Lenfest turned up in a remarkable Philadelphia Inquirer story about a 32-year-old black physician and political newbie named Keith Leaphart who’s considering a Democratic primary challenge to five-term congressman Bob Brady, of Philadelphia.

Lenfest and Peter Buttenweiser, a Philly resident described as a prominent political fundraiser, are co-chairing a Dec. 6 benefit in Philadelphia to back Leaphart’s possible candidacy in next April’s Democratic primary.

"Keith is a man of deep integrity and intelligence,” Lenfest told the Inky. “He thinks he can represent his community in an honest, straightforward way, and do something more than is being done by the current congressman."

Said the Inky: “He met Leaphart in 1999 when Leaphart, then completing his first year of school at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, opened a janitorial company whose major client was Lenfest’s Suburban Cable. While Leaphart cleaned Lenfest’s executive office nearly every day, they developed ‘a mutual respect,’ Leaphart said.”

I say: Talk about your brushes with greatness.

Lenfest hasn’t previously been politically active, other than making contributions to candidates, the newspaper said.

Leaphart, who has an MBA in addition to his medical degree (he works in a rehabilitation hospital), has a couple of things going for him, the paper said. Brady lost badly in a primary leading up to the Philadelphia mayoral election. And Brady is the only white member of the House who represents a mostly black constituency (Pennsylvania’s First District). Still, the paper says Leaphart would face a "formidable task."

But he has some rich friends.

Where PEG Fits In Squarely

By: Feb 11 2008 - 3:29pm

At a public hearing in New York City on Jan. 17, a man stood up and told city officials about a category of local programming that is cable exclusive.

“You’re not going to find this on satellite,” the man said. “You’re going to find it on cable.” 

The unusual thing was, the man doesn’t work for a cable company, or even one of those for-profit programmers that rely on cable distribution to earn their profits.

The man, Michael Knobbe, runs BronxNet, the non-profit organization that operates four public-access channels on Cablevision Systems, available to about 300,000 Bronx residents. The hearing was part of Cablevision’s renewal of an expiring franchise in the borough; Time Warner Cable’s franchises in other boroughs also has been the subject of hearings.

BronxNet falls under the category of public, education and government channels. They exist as a giveback to communities by cable companies as part of their franchise agreements, a part of doing business that also creates programming that goes on their cable systems.

Those agreements now are mostly done community by community, but increasingly (about 17 states and rising) they are being done state by state, mostly so states can make it easier for telephone companies to widely roll out their own multichannel video services. Sometimes the new statewide franchises laws cut back on those PEG obligations.

As long as they’re considered “obligations,” PEG channels are vulnerable. Cablevision is the primary funder for BronxNet’s $1.4 million annual budget, including for 12 full-time staffers, according to Knobbe. The channels themselves are increasingly valuable commodities, used to provide cable-modem and Internet-based phone services in addition to standard and HDTV.

PEG channels have been getting moved from analog channels to compressed digital channels. When such a change forces customers to get (and pay for) a digital set-top in order to receive the public-access channel in, say, Flint, Mich., the courts have gotten involved and Rep. John Dingell, the powerful Democrat of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, held a hearing on the subject on Jan. 29.

Comcast apologized for its handling of the planned channel changes in Michigan, but says it still needs to figure out a way to get PEG programming off analog because all TV broadcasting is switching to digital next February. Bright House Network systems in the Tampa, Fla., area moved PEG channels to digital in December, settling one lawsuit over the shift last month.

Knobbe told me BronxNet gets along well with Cablevision. There doesn’t seem to be any threat to its four channels, although he’d like more funding in order to upgrade its, such as getting more digital servers to replace older tape machines. The channel operates from a sub-basement in Lehman College, and a flood several months ago knocked out a studio (since reopened) and an editing suite.

Speakers at the public hearing pleaded for more staff at BronxNet, whose model is to make professional productions and use them to train school kids and other volunteers in TV production. Some Bronxnet shows, including a documentary about the Hunts Point commercial area of the borough, have won local Emmys. Knobbe also would like money and gear to do live remote telecasts from community events.Bronxnet

“You’d be surprised. People watch this channel,” Bronx attorney David P. Lesch, a frequent guest on BronxNet talk show Open, told me before one such appearance. “My clients watch it.”

The public perceptions of public-access TV are of city council hearings, Wayne’s World goofiness and Robin Byrd nudity. Knobbe said Bronxnet doesn’t allow lewd programming, and producers have been suspended or kicked off the air altogether for bad behavior.

Cable companies also are developing more local programming, including such PEG staples as city council meetings, for video on demand. There should be a good fit there to exploit the local programming PEG organizations create.

Satellite doesn’t have it. But Verizon, also negotiating New York City cable franchises, has been to visit BronxNet and said nice things about the operation, Knobbe said. Unlike Cablevision, which owns local News 12 outlets, Verizon doesn’t produce local programming, he noted.

Cable operators around the country have touted PEG programming as a local edge against satellite TV, PEG advocate Bunnie Reidel, a telecommunications consultant in Columbia, Md., said. “They use it as a marketing strategy – then they do everything they can to kick it to the curb,” she said.

Maybe BronxNet, which has had some success getting underwriters such as Open sponsor Hebrew Hospital Home, can be a model of how PEG can work for communities and operators.

Play Fair, Satellite Radio

By: Feb 22 2007 - 9:48am

The proposed merger of separated-at-birth satellite-radio twins XM and Sirius is making me mad.

The reason: Conventional wisdom is heading toward the belief that a merger will go through, even though both companies (and their investors) knew going in that the Federal Communications Commission created two slots for two independent license holders when it created the Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service category of spectrum use. Its belief: By having two licensees, there would be “an incentive to diversify programming.”

The companies claim that this merger, the prospect of which has already benefited their stocks, is essential for their survival, despite the 1997 rule about two independent licensees.

Sounds like a government bailout to me. One that would diminish competition while enriching investment bankers and the corporate fat cats that hire them.

I’m not a satellite-radio subscriber. Satellite radios are typically installed in new vehicles; my elderly car has an analog radio with five buttons and a knob. People shopping for satellite-radio service might get excited by the merger if they have trouble choosing and don’t want to buy both. Think of all those 20-something males having to pick between Howard Stern on Sirius and Major League Baseball on XM. Decision, decisions.

Of course, if the monthly fee – now $12.95 – goes up for new customers, as Sirius’ blustery CEO, Mel Karmazin, has indicated, maybe subscribers won’t be that thrilled about the new monopoly.

Monopoly’s a harsh word. It gets applied to cable-TV operators often, even though two direct-broadcast satellite TV companies provide alternatives across the country and new entrants such as Verizon Communications and rural IPTV firms are gaining ground daily.

But there are only so many satellite-TV or satellite-radio orbital locations that can serve the whole country.

That’s why the federal rule stipulated that there be two providers for each of those services. And the FCC picked two winners out of four applicants.

XM and Sirius, which have just 13 million subscribers combined, said the competitive question can’t be judged so narrowly. Consumers have many, many choices of audio programming to help distract them from driving. In addition to free over-the-air radio, they can plug in a CD or rig their MP3 players to run through the car speakers.

So what? Ask EchoStar Communications chairman Charlie Ergen about non-satellite-TV competition. He still couldn’t get the government to let him buy DirecTV. Good. Let there be choices between satellite-TV players and between satellite-TV and wired multichannel-video systems.

If the satellite-radio companies spent like drunken sailors on the likes of Stern and Oprah Winfrey and MLB and the National Football League, trying to distinguish themselves against each other and against all those other audio options, that was their choice. The government doesn’t need to provide them a way of sharing those bloated expenses.

They knew what they were getting into.

DirecTV and EchoStar’s Dish Network have successfully created different identities and don’t seem in any danger of going out of business. DirecTV is willing to pay up for exclusive sports packages – first with the NFL and now, it hopes, with MLB. Sports fans know that. Now DirecTV, to cable’s chagrin, is staking a claim to HDTV leadership. Dish Network is for the more cost-conscious consumer, and smartly targeted immigrant communities with ethnic programming. It’s also been an interactive-TV leader.

These are good choices for consumers, as are the distinctions between XM and Sirius, even if they aren’t as familiar to consumers as satellite TV is.

Can satellite radio survive if its two providers aren’t permitted to merge, after piling investment-banking expenses onto what they’re paying Stern and Winfrey? Who knows. But mergers like these benefit the companies more than consumers.

Remember when SBC Communications promised when it was merging with Ameritech that it would build fiber-optic networks in 30 cities outside its regions? According to Bruce Kushnick’s tome, $200 Billion Broadband Scandal, SBC told the government it fulfilled that obligation by building networks in 22 cities that had at least three customers each. That’s 66 customers.

Karmazin said this week he believes the FCC commissioners’ evaluation of whether the merger qualifies as “in the public interest” would center on consumer choice and control. If consumers can use an a la carte approach – buying basically only the programming they want, or at least opting out of high-priced programming by taking a low-cost package – that’s in the public interest, he indicated.

If that’s predicated on combining their menus in order to let consumers order fewer items, I say: pass.

Verizon Offers To Pay Tributes -- Just Like Cable

By: Apr 16 2008 - 10:57am

Verizon’s being required to seek a franchise to offer fiber-based cable television service in New York City is likened to “legalized bribery” today by an analyst who follows one of Verizon’s key FiOS TV vendors.

To which the response here is: um, yes, but so is every cable franchise. Should Verizon be any different?

Anton Wahlman, a prominent technology analyst with ThinkPanmure, sent out a note this morning (not posted online so not linkab;e) related to Verizon and vendor BigBand Networks and concerning the telco’s application to provide FiOS TV service throughout the Big Apple. Its headline was “Verizon’s Struggle With Mercantilism And Institutionalized Bribery.”

“We think it is a sad day in America when Verizon has to apply for a permit in order to offer consumers an alternative. This ‘franchising’ process has all the elements of legalized bribery, in our view; otherwise, why would Verizon have to apply for a permit at all?” Wahlman asked.

He cites Apple’s coming to town with a glitzy store, to compete with Microsoft, Dell, Nokia, and even cable TV with its Apple TV – all without need of permit.

The franchise process – in which city committees, the council and state regulators all get to have their say and impose requirements in the way of revenue percentages, free government-agency fiber networks and support for constituents’ producing TV shows on public-access channels – is that has led to cable companies paying their pounds of flesh for decades. It’s well established. Cities control “rights of way,” the way the feds control the “air waves” it’s reclaiming from TV stations and selling off. Congress hasn’t yet agreed to overrule the process.

I credit Verizon for going through the franchise paces and competing on as fair a basis as possible with cable. AT&T has tried to separate itself from such mundane niceties, with mixed results.

Verizon’s commitments, cited in its press release on Monday, include a guarantee to build everywhere in the city (which makes sense as it is upgrading existing phone-line infrastructure) – something geographic duopolist incumbents Time Warner and Cablevision are unlikely to do as their networks don’t overlap.

Verizon also said it would pay the same 5% gross revenue fee that the cablers pay; install an “institutional network” for city government and comply with existing customer-service standards.

All part of being a good neighborhood cable provider.

As for me, I look forward to the day my Upper East Side building is served by Time Warner Cable, RCN and FiOS TV. However long it takes or whatever Verizon has to pay to do it.

Best Of TV-Turn-On Week

By: Apr 30 2007 - 10:47am

Last week was TV-Turnoff Week.

Hopefully, like every other year, you ignored that obnoxious advice.

“Empowering people to take control of technology and not letting technology take control of them so they can live healthier lives,” says tvturnoff.org, the group behind this off-putting idea. If that’s the point, make it, ‘Get a Digital Video Recorder Week’ instead. Watch on your schedule, but keep watching.

Sure, the weather improved in a major way, hitting the 80s with sunshine in the Northeast, making it more palatable to go out of the house and stay out, maybe get some exercise, get together with friends.

But with the TV off all week you’d have missed so much.

For instance …

ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball. Technically, this took place before Turnoff Week began, but the week starts on Sunday, and you might have gotten confused. Not many baseball fans did, apparently. ESPN said last Sunday’s game, pitting the New York Yankees against the Boston Red Sox, drew an average 5.5 million viewers, topping the earlier best Sunday night game, a Yankees-Red Sox tilt in 2004.

History was made in the game, as for only the second time in Major League Baseball history, a pitcher (Yankee rookie Chase Wright) gave up home runs to four consecutive batters.

ESPN’s play callers, Jon Miller and Joe Morgan, make any game listenable, and have done so together on this telecast for 18 years.

Even the in-dugout manager interviews were great Sunday, coming after the four-homer barrage. Red Sox manager Terry Francona’s father, Tito, played for the Cleveland Indians the first time the four-homers, one-pitcher feat was accomplished, and we learned from Miller’s questioning that that was a story the dad had told often over the years. The Yankees lost the game, 7-6.

HBO’s The Sopranos. Another Sunday show, and sure, if you have HBO On Demand, you could watch it after Turnoff Week ends.

But you might have to wear an “I Hate Sopranos Spoilers” T-shirt all week if your workplace is anything like mine. In New York, even sports-radio jocks blather away with detailed second-day Sopranos analyses.

The show is certainly worth analyzing, but I’ve long since given up hoping for more action or for plotlines to get resolved or for creator David Chase and the writers to do anything other than where they want these characters to go.

Just sit back and enjoy the turmoil. These characters have aged a lot over the show’s run, which is a miracle in itself given their violent occupations. Once in, you can’t put off watching for long.

Logo’s The Big Gay Sketch Comedy Show. It debuted on April 24 and, as The New York Times pointed out in a lengthy review, it’s the kind of show the deliberately serious, earnest MTV Networks outlet waited almost two years to risk putting on the air.

“There’s been enough cartoonish gay characters over the years” on television, channel president Brian Graden pointed out to the Times.

But it seemed like it was time now for Logo to loosen up a bit, he said. At a time of extreme sensitivity to what gets said in jokes on the airwaves — including on basic cable — it’s a welcome move.

Plus, as we all know from so many popular sitcoms, gay characters are funny. Big Gay’s debut episode acknowledged. The opening skit was about a girl who gets a “Pocket Gay Friend” just like “the grownups you see on TV.” “Those Crocs look fierce on you,” the khaki and polo shirted “friend” says.

“Now, work the runway!” The pocket friend — “tiny H-O-M-O” — then calls her the “B” word, all in good fun, exchanged within the boundaries of gay-to-gay humor.

Other highlights of the week in TV no doubt include Fox’s 24, which I recorded but haven’t gotten to yet (no spoilers please); The Shield on FX (ditto); and two semifinal matches of the European soccer Champions League on ESPN2, one of which hadn’t been played yet at this column’s deadline.

And that only gets me to Wednesday.

Turn off the TV? Only with both tuners on the DVR ready to roll.

Updated: 'MCN' Editors Played Guess The Cylon

By: Jun 6 2008 - 12:26pm

Warning: This post is a group effort by a few Multichannel News editors who watch Sci Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica. The opinions expressed are solely those of the editors; standard spoiler warnings and disclaimers apply. 

Midway through the final season of Battlestar, the ever-present tease to reveal the final Cylon was kicked into overdrive during the preview to this week’s episode. 

In the teaser, we see the unboxed model No. 3, D’Anna (Lucy Lawless), say to someone, “You know about the final five, but you don’t know you are one of them.” It sounds a lot like tonight’s episode will reveal that missing Cylon. Here’s the promo. (Note to legal department: Sci Fi emailed us the actual file but it’s so huge we decided to use this YouTube posting instead.) 

 

The story so far: We’ve been told since the beginning that there are 12 Cylon models. We’ve known seven models for quite some time. Last season’s stunning finale unveiled that four of the final five were members of the Galactica crew: Saul Tigh, Galen Tyrol, Samuel T. Anders and Tory Foster. 

That left fans of the show guessing at who the final Cylon could be – including our own Maria Hernandez, Eric Smith and Tom Umstead, plus me. 

Here are some of our theories: 

Tom thinks it has to be someone really big. Like Lee “Apollo” Adama. Actually Admiral William Adama, played by Edward J. Olmos, would be even cooler. But Eric and Maria point out a flaw in that theory. The “Last Supper” photo Sci Fi has used to promote the show this season includes both Adamas, and executive producer Ron Moore said in an interview the final Cylon is not depicted in that image. 

The empty cup is supposed to represent the last Cylon. You can see the photo (and watch a 10-minute promo of tonight’s episode) here.  

Eric has a new theory. The four revealed at the end of season three — Tigh, Tyrol, Tory and Samuel T. Anders — all had a "T" in their names. That could set up Kara Thrace or Tom Zarek as the final Cylon. But Eric thinks that’s actually a weak theory. 

Eric and Maria were kicking around some ideas in an earlier email thread. I will set this up by saying the promo video implies D’Anna is telling Laura Roslin, the ailing colonial president played by Mary McDonnell, that she (Roslin) is a Cylon. 

Eric: Roslin doesn’t look like she’s reacting to D’Anna. She reacts to something, but I think she would look much more horrified if she was just told she was a Cylon. 

Maria: I thought it was (Felix) Gaeta too, but after seeing how manipulative (Romo) Lampkin was, he’s got another vote. Can I get two votes? 

Eric: It’s not Romo. Besides, he’s not on the base ship. 

Maria: Neither is Tyrol or Tigh. 

Eric: Well, if we believe D’Anna is going to out the final Cylon tonight, that person would have to be on the base ship. 

Anyway, that’s about where we’ve left it until we actually see what happens tonight, which is the second-to-last episode before the series takes a break. What’s your theory? Please add it to Talkback

UPDATE: As she was unable to add her views to Talkback, due to technical difficulties, herewith are Betsy Smith’s views:

My personal feeling is that it’s Gaeta but I’m intrigued by the idea it’s Cottle.  We know that it’s a skin job.  Hypothetically, it could be several different characters who have already been killed before the story even began. Hence, the empty place at the "table" of the story of BSG characters. 

However, if we take them at their word that the final cylon is not in the picture, only consider "live" characters, believe it is someone of significance, and somewhat known,  the choices are narrowed to Felix Gaeta, Dee Dualla, Doc Cottle and Romo Lampkin.  I believe it should be someone who has been there since the beginning, which excludes Lampkin. Dee is just too boring. Gaeta and Cottle have both been flying somewhat under the cylon-suspicion radar. Someone I know also pointed out that Cottle is missing from the cast on scifi.com… just like he might be missing from the picture.

UPDATE (includes spoiler): Well, no new Cylon was named. The preview tease remark from D’Anna to Roslin was … a joke! Funny Cylon!

Here’s Eric’s response to the episode:

Wow. What a monumental mind-frak, if I may. I’m glad I threw the remote at the couch instead of the TV. Once again the BSG team has taken us to the brink and left us hanging.

My money is still on Gaeta. Over the past four seasons, he has quietly become a pretty important cast member. The four of the final five that we already know were big players in the resistance on New Caprica, and Gaeta also played a very big role in the anti-Cylon efforts.

Of course, I don’t know why he didn’t hear the funky version of "All Along the Watchtower" in the season three finale…which leads into a crackpot theory I had after that episode: Maybe the final Cylon is already on Earth. Maybe it’s Bob Dylan.



















 

 

Don't Touch That CableCard! Oops, Too Late

By: Jan 12 2008 - 10:21am

Woke up Saturday morning, toddled to the TV to see what English football matches were on Fox Soccer Channel, only to see the error message: “CableCard failure. Please remove and reinsert CableCard to continue.”

Knowing, from my reading of Todd Spangler, that CableCards are firmly secured in the box, I got my screwdriver out and proceeded to remove the two screws on the plate securing the little darling in the back of the Scientific Atlanta HD DVR. I also had to remove a piece of green colored tape that covered the bottom screw.

The card was in snugly, with a little cap holding it in place. It was hard to get out, so I called Time Warner Cable customer service to make sure I was doing it the right way. In the meantime I used needle nosed pliers to remove and reinsert the card. The TV screen went a shade of maroon, then went through the set-top’s all-too-familiar several-minutes rebooting phases. (It happens spontaneously or by manual command quite frequently.) After booting up, my cable was back in business.

By this point, Time Warner Cable customer service was on the line. And finally got to the trouble. I explained what I had done.

“No, don’t remove that CableCard,” the person on the other end of the line was saying. If you touch it, it’ll likely short out and there won’t be anything more we can do until a technician arrives, he said.

Then your error message should have said call customer service, not remove the CableCard and reinsert to continue, I replied.

What you’re supposed to do is what you get used to doing with these HD DVRs: push three buttons (select, volume up and volume down) on the front of the box to re-boot it.

Gee, I said, this box needs to re-boot a lot. We realize the HD boxes have issues such as that, the technician replied, and we’re working on a software solution.

That’s good news. Hope it works and soon. And don’t worry, next time the box tells me to remove its CableCard, I’ll do something else instead.







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