Evil Greetings

John Clark's business contacts were subjected to an unscheduled test of their security systems on Nov. 8. The Society of Cable and Telecommunications Engineers CEO was victimized by a virus that spread throughout his e-mail address book.

The virus presented itself as a colorful electronic greeting card with a cartoon flower decoration that told the recipient to "Have a Nice Day." But when opened, the greeting showed its thorns by locking up the user's computer. It isn't the first time Clark has landed in the e-mail emergency room.

"The good news is, the attachment was not obscene," Clark said with a chuckle. The cheerful greeting card "is much better than the last virus I got involved with, which ended up having me send the e-mail message of 'I love you' to six cable CTOs — one of which I was on a conference call with at the time."

Clark was able to send a warning message to about 80 percent of the contacts in his e-mail address book warning them not to open the file.

"But for the 20 percent that got through, many were pleased and thought it was very thoughtful," Clark said. "We seem to have gotten through it fairly unscathed, and for many people their security systems weeded it out."

For the record, Clark's e-mail system was given an electronic cleansing and is now safe.

Waiting, Waiting

We were intrigued by the news that Movielink, the studio-sponsored Web site developed to sell films streamed over the Internet, had opened for business. (See related story in Broadband Week, page 25.) So, last week, a correspondent settled in before a cable modem-fueled computer to sample the delivery mode of the future.

Navigating the site was quite easy and credit verification was quick and painless — as was downloading the mandatory Movielink Manager software. Sadly, the actual film download was excruciating.

Maybe it was that cross-country trip from the Movielink server in New Jersey; maybe it was a download streaming cap imposed by our reviewer's residential cable provider. But the anxious viewer believes she actually completed menopause waiting to view the selection. The on-screen monitor showed that on average, the film was streaming in at 28 kilobites per second. The download started at 4:25 p.m. and ended at 9:11 p.m.

We were impressed by the audio and video quality once the dump was completed. We checked back later to see if we missed a prompt to indicate our modem speed. We found none other than the initial screen, which indicates the site is checking the recipient's settings.

If this is normal performance, it's not what we'd call an impulse buy.

Was It Something We Said?

He used to love us once, but after taking a couple of hits on the The Wall Street Journal
editorial page, Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell is limiting his exposure to Washington's telecom press hounds.

Not long after the WSJ
compared him to an International House of Pancakes waffle when it came to fulfilling his deregulatory promises, Powell read a statement at a press conference saying the FCC was killing the proposed merger between EchoStar Communications Corp. and DirecTV Inc. parent Hughes Electronics Corp. He hurried from the room without taking a question.

Then, last Wednesday, the FCC cleared the AT&T Broadband merger with Comcast Corp., but Powell didn't bother to show up to read his statement or take a question on the largest cable merger in human history. FCC spokesman David Fiske blamed Powell's absence on a scheduling conflict.

Soapy Junket

How do you give affiliates a real feel for how nutty your network's – or at least your genre's – fans are?

For the past three years, SoapNet has piggybacked onto ABC Daytime's annual "Super Soap Weekend" event at Disney MGM Studios in Orlando, where soap fans attend show tapings, get autographs and stand in a lot of lines. About 40 executives from each major distributor – "usually at a pretty high level" – came to the most recent one, held the weekend before last, said Ben Pyne, senior vice president of affiliate sales and marketing at ABC Cable Networks Group.

One attendee IDed Charter Communications CEO Carl Vogel and Cox Communications operations chief Pat Esser, and confirmed that the fan fervor was quite impressive. One popular feature was a computer program that matched fans with the soap character they most resemble, then generated a photo button, Pyne said. "Mine was Ned Ashton," he said. (He's on General Hospital, and played by Wallace Kurth)

The Insider

Adelphia Communications Corp.'s Southern California system has unspooled a series of spots in which customers praise the financially troubled operator for its responsiveness, the speed of its cable-modem product and its pricing.

But as a reporter was watching the commercials, a familiar face flashed by: that of a marketing veteran for a competing cable company.

When queried about the "ringer," Adelphia executives stressed, "He's a customer!" No other cable insiders are included in the consumer spots, they added.