Cable Pirates Redux

The Wire has learned that CBS'60 Minutes
will be doing a story revisiting the 1996 FBI sting known as "Operation Cable Trap." You may recall that the operation — funded in part by the cable industry — brought down an international network of cable pirates and resulted in 92 federal indictments.

It's a sexy story, even if it's fairly old now. The thieves provided an undercover cable-industry investigator with a no-limit Visa card linked to an account in the Cayman Islands, in exchange for getting them a stock of set-top boxes.

So what's the focus of the 60 Minutes
story? A where-are-they-now segment on jailed cartel chief Frank Russo or his associate Trey Prevost? The $6.6 billion in annual losses to the cable industry by signal pirates?

An investigator in the original case guessed the story might have been triggered by DirecTV Inc.'s recent anti-theft actions. A CBS News researcher said only that the story is scheduled to run in October.

Parody for Charity

AT&T Broadband's upcoming annual musical parody will be a turn-of-the-century-style melodrama dubbed, "Positively Cable 2001: The Technical Trials of Our Sweet Cablene." Slated for Oct. 18 at Comedy Works in Denver, the fundraiser will benefit Cable Positive and Rainbow House, which cares for Denver-area youngsters whose lives are affected by HIV or AIDS.

The MSO – whose CEO, Dan Somers, is the honorary co-chair along with former Jones Intercable executive Glenn R. Jones – promised the show will "skewer cable industry 'has-beens and wannabes,'" via songs inspired by hits of the pre-MTV era — from the 1890s into the early 1900s.

AT&T Broadband spokesman Rob Stoddard said the annual event usually is "an hilarious romp." Last year's "Sgt. Broadband's Magic Dot-Com Land" — based loosely on The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
— raised $70,000.

Carey On

Songstress Mariah Carey may have dropped out of circulation to recover from her much-publicized breakdown, but Fox Family Channel will carry on with its Total Access 24/7
sweepstakes tied to the Hollywood premiere of Carey's 20th Century-Fox theatrical film, Glitter.

Although the movie's premiere has been pushed back from Aug. 31 to Sept. 21, Fox Family's daytime series will still feature backstage footage taken during the filming of Glitter
— and the recording of its soundtrack — on Aug 11 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. And the network's promos and Web site ask consumers to tune in for a special toll-free phone number to enter the contest, sponsored by Procter & Gamble Co.'s Sunny Delight juice drink.

The grand prize is a trip to Glitter's Hollywood premiere and an opportunity to meet Carey.

"If there is no premiere, the winner will have a meet-and-greet with Mariah at some later date," a Fox Family spokesman said last week. Some 500 first-prize winners will receive copies of Mariah's soundtrack CD, whose own release has just been bumped to Sept. 11 by Virgin Records.

The Check's In the Mail

Roughly 91 million tax-rebate checks are slated to be mailed by the Internal Revenue Service between July 23 and Sept. 24. So The Wire decided to check in with the Federal Communications Commission bosses to find out whether they were doing anything rad with their 600 bucks – say, like paying down a 30-year mortgage on a tuner-equipped HDTV set.

Since each FCC member is married and presumably has more than $12,000 in annual taxable income, that means chairman Michael Powell and fellow commissioners Kevin Martin, Kathleen Abernathy, Michael Copps, and Gloria Tristani are all eligible to receive a $600 federal tax rebate, the maximum amount under President Bush's $38 billion tax cut.

Not surprisingly, all the FCC chieftains declined to comment — except for Martin, a former Bush campaign worker and White House aide. But Martin said he wasn't sure whether he'd net $600, since he filed for a tax extension and might end up owing the IRS money.

How's That Again?

EchoStar Communications CEO Charlie Ergen may have to put in a call to Ray Smith, the former head of Bell Atlantic Corp.

In 1993, Bell Atlantic called on the FCC to slash cable rates by 28 percent. That was Bell Atlantic's position before it signed a letter of intent to merge with Tele-Communications Inc., a deal that ultimately fizzled. Accounting for that proposal before a Senate committee, Smith, then Bell Atlantic's COO, had a clever response: a cut in cable rates would lead to lower TCI cash flow and reduce Bell Atlantic's acquisition cost.

Ergen, of course, just made a $30.4 billion unsolicited bid for DirecTV Inc. Only three days before that bid was announced, EchoStar claimed in an FCC filing that "looming further increases in media concentration should be at or near the top of the Commission's concerns…"

So how might Ergen sidestep that declaration if the FCC has to approve a merger with DirecTV that would create the No. 1 provider of multichannel video programming in the U.S. with 16 million subscribers? EchoStar said only that its concerns were related to the possible sale of AT&T Broadband to Comcast Corp. or The Walt Disney Co.

On Making It

There's a new barometer for success out there — a game show. In QVC Inc.'s annual magazine, Current, published late last month, QVC president Doug Briggs said: "I knew we had really made it when I watched Regis [Philbin] ask on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, 'What does the 'C' in the name of the TV network QVC stand for?' Sixty-eight percent of the [studio] audience knew the answer. In fact, they helped the contestant select 'convenience.' "

And in the latest TV Guide, dated Aug. 11-17, The History Channel executive vice president and general manager Abbe Raven said she knew her network had truly made it as a cultural icon last May, when "they [were] talking about us on The View, then we were spoofed on a Saturday Night Live
skit and after that, we're an answer on Jeopardy."