Cable Operators

Comcast will make some 36,000 video-on-demand titles available to subs who buy the retail version of the TiVo Mini, a $99.99 IP-based client that requires the company’s four-tuner Premiere DVR, in eight of the MSO’s markets and in parts of 13 others.

TV shows have become the most popular content on Comcast’s video-on-demand service, which overall delivered 2.4 billion hours of VOD across all categories in 2012, up from 2.1 billion a year earlier, according to the MSO.

By comparison, Netflix claims its members stream more than 1 billion hours of video per month.

Turner Broadcasting System, said Thursday it has reached a long-term carriage agreement with the National Cable Television Cooperative, the purchasing group for small and medium-sized cable operators. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Under the terms of the agreement, Turner’s diverse portfolio of networks including CNN, HLN, TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), truTV, CNN International, CNN en Español and Boomerang will continue to be carried by NCTC’s nearly 1,000 independent cable operator members nationwide.

Comcast said it has reached its three-year goal of hiring 1,000 veterans as part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s “Hiring Our Heroes” initiative two years early and that it will double its pledge by hiring another 1,000 vets by 2015.

Comcast in the second half of 2013 plans to introduce prepaid “Opportunity Cards” to let not-for-profit organizations, businesses and others buy up to a year of Internet Essentials service for low-income families eligible under the program.