• NBC To Buy Oxygen for $925 Million
• Hallmark Looks For Leverage At FCC
• Crown Nears NICC Deal
• Former Cox CEO Robbins Seriously Ill
• AT&T $2.5B Mobile TV Play
• Spike Names Kay President
• AT&T Expands HD Lineup

• Baseball Drives TBS
• ACA’s Norm Mills Dies at 84
• HBO Signs`Roc’ Dutton
• Sci Fi’s Unique ‘Tin Man’ Pitch
• R.E.M. Song to Debut CNN
• Tolle Joins Denver Law Firm
• Lifetime Recruits Schneider

• C-SPAN Contest Seeks Student Videos
• TWC Funds School Web Program
• Worth Watching
• Nielsen Rescinds Rules

NBC To Buy Oxygen for $925 Million
NBC Universal agreed Tuesday to shell out $925 million to Oxygen Media. The deal gives Oxygen a powerful promotional platform that could help it compete with rivals Lifetime and WE, with NBC U president Jeff Zucker noting that NBC could promote Oxygen programs on the Today Show and supply Oxygen with Universal movies. Oxygen founder Geraldine Laybourne said she’ll step down from the network at the end of the year. Zucker didn’t say who will run Oxygen or if there would be staff cuts, but said NBC would “look to utilize what we already have in place.” NBC and Oxygen expect to see $35 million in cost savings next year through the deal, he added. click to read more...
Back to top

Hallmark Looks For Leverage At FCC
Washington – The Hallmark Channel is turning to the FCC for some possible regulatory leverage in upcoming carriage renewal talks with cable and satellite TV companies. Henry Schleiff, CEO of Hallmark parent Crown Media, made the rounds at the FCC last week, meeting with aides to FCC chairman Kevin Martin and FCC member Deborah Taylor Tate, according to an Oct. 4 FCC filing. His message: Pay-TV distributors are not paying Hallmark, a top-10 rated network, what it deserves, probably because the channel is unaffiliated with a major cable company or broadcast TV network. In a phone interview Tuesday, Schleiff said Hallmark’s carriage deals with Comcast, Time Warner, and DirecTV expire in December. He went to the FCC, he said, because the agency itself had proposed rules that would give all independent networks more clout in carriage talks. “This was an FCC-initiated proposal,” Schleiff said. In his discussions at the FCC, Schleiff provided data showing that Hallmark was paid 3 cents per subscriber per subscriber and generated a 1.1 prime time rating. Cable channels affiliated with Comcast (Golf Channel, E! Entertainment Television) and Time Warner (CNN, Court TV) had higher license fees but lower prime time ratings than Hallmark. click to read more...
Back to top

Crown Nears NICC Deal
Crown Media Holdings, the parent of the Hallmark Channel, could be close to reaching a deal with the National Interfaith Cable Coalition regarding the NICC’s put rights for 4.4 million shares of Crown stock. In an interview shortly after his presentation at the Natixis Bleichroeder Hidden Gems conference in New York, Crown CEO Henry Schleiff said that the two parties were getting closer to a deal. click to read more...
Back to top

Former Cox CEO Robbins Seriously Ill
Former Cox Communications CEO James Robbins’ cancer has spread and the cable industry veteran is seriously ill, the cable company confirmed Tuesday. According to some friends of the Robbins family who have been informed about his condition, the former Cox executive’s cancer has spread to his brain and liver. Also on a sad note, people in the cable industry said that former Time Warner Cable executive vice president of programming Fred Dressler was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Dressler, who was with the cable company for 30 years, retired last year. click to read more...
Back to top

AT&T $2.5B Mobile TV Play
AT&T acquired wireless spectrum in the 700-megahertz band covering 196 million people – in 72 of the top 100 markets in the United States – from Aloha Partners for about $2.5 billion in cash. The company will use the 12-MHz of spectrum from Aloha for either broadcast video or two-way communications (such as voice, data and on-demand video), but not for both, AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said. click to read more...
Back to top

Spike Names Kay President
Spike TV dubbed veteran executive Kevin Kay “king of all men.” Kay, Spike TV’s general manager and executive vice president, was named president of the male-targeted network. click to read more...
Back to top

AT&T Expands HD Lineup
AT&T next week will add History Channel HD and Lifetime Movie Network HD to U-verse TV – bringing the service to 26 national high-definition channels – and will carry the Oct. 15 debut of Fox Business Network in standard-definition. The telco is also expanding ethnic-programming options with Filipino, South Asian and Vietnamese channels. click to read more...
Back to top

Baseball Drives TBS
Boosted by the third and fourth games between the Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees, TBS averaged a 4.4 household rating and 5.7 million viewers through its exclusive coverage of Major League Baseball’s four Division series. click to read more...
Back to top

ACA’s Norm Mills Dies at 84
Norm Mills, one of the founding members of the American Cable Association, passed away Monday after a long battle with a heart condition, officials at the lobbying group said Tuesday. He was 84. Mills was president of Colstrip Cable TV in Billings, Mont. His funeral arrangements are being completed, but it is expected that his funeral will be Saturday in Billings. click to read more...
Back to top

HBO Signs`Roc’ Dutton
HBO said it entered into an exclusive development deal with actor/writer/producer Charles S. Dutton to create several projects for the pay cable service. The agreement covers the development of series, movies and miniseries featuring Dutton. click to read more...
Back to top

Sci Fi’s Unique ‘Tin Man’ Pitch
To promote Sci Fi Channel’s upcoming series Tin Man, the channel recruited computer-generated art creators who designed an immersive online experience that riffs off the storylines and settings but transports viewers into an imagined “Outer Zone” (O.Z.). The site, www.road2oz.com, is a flash-enabled digital environment that uses ZoomQuilt technology to let users “dive” into the zone, starting out on the fringes of a prairie tornado slash wormhole. click to read more...
Back to top

R.E.M. Song to Debut CNN
“Until the Day Is Done”, the new song from R.E.M., will debut on Anderson Cooper 360° on Wednesday, Oct. 10, in advance of the group’s album due for release next spring. The song will be matched to clips from CNN’s Planet in Peril, which features footage from areas around the world where environmental crises are not a theory but are happening in real time, and will play over the documentary’s closing credits. click to read more...
Back to top

Tolle Joins Denver Law Firm
A former EchoStar Communications programming executive joined the Denver law firm of Moye White, officials said Tuesday. Ken Tolle, EchoStar’s former vice president of programming and business affairs, is coming to the 45-attorney firm with expertise in distribution deals. click to read more...
Back to top

Lifetime Recruits Schneider
Lifetime Networks named Jeffrey Schneider, a veteran of Fox and MTV, senior vice president of business affairs and deputy general counsel. click to read more...
Back to top

C-SPAN Contest Seeks Student Videos
C-SPAN is calling for entries in its StudentCam video documentary competition that will award $50,000 in prizes. The competition, at www.studentcam.org, includes 92 student awards and 11 teacher awards. click to read more...
Back to top

TWC Funds School Web Program
The Weather Channel and Landmark Communications Foundation will donate $2.5 million to the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) to create an interactive, Web based environmental education program that will ultimately reach 20 million U.S. high school students. click to read more...
Back to top