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Favre Drives Huge ESPN Win
With a thriller on its hands and the World Series ending the night before, ESPN scored its best Monday Night Football ratings of the season and cable’s second best performance in 2007 overall behind coverage of the Green Bay Packers-Denver Broncos game. The Oct. 29 contest – in which Brett Favre, the NFL’s all-time TD passer connected with Greg Jennings via an 82-yard bomb on the first play from scrimmage in OT to give the Pack a 19-13 win over the hometown Broncos – delivered a 10.5 rating, translating into nearly 10.2 million homes and some 14.02 million total viewers. The latter trailed only the 17.2 million Disney Channel’s High School Musical 2 drew in its live window premiere on Aug. 17.
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Willner Fights for Dual Carriage Exemption
Washington – In House testimony to be delivered Wednesday, Insight Communications CEO Michrael Willner calls for a blanket exemption for small cable TV operators from new digital TV station carriage rules adopted by the FCC in September. Last month, the FCC said that cable systems that didn’t convert to all-digital platforms by Feb. 17, 2009 had to provide viewers with analog and digital versions of local TV stations that demanded cable carriage of their signals.
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Bush Eyes Tax Ban Extension
Washington – President Bush is expected to sign legislation approved Tuesday by Congress that will renew the ban on the Internet access taxation until 2014. The new seven-year extension means that no state or local government may impose taxes on the retail price of cable modem service and other forms of Internet access.
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Harron Buys Systems
Harron Communications bought cable systems in and South Carolina from Northland Cable Networks, which is majority owned by Providence Equity Partners. Waller Capital Partners advised Northland. Earlier Tuesday, Harron said it was buying 33,000 subscribers from Vista Media III, in Mississippi and Alabama.
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Roberts Touts OpenCable
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts had a solid day of meetings last Friday at the FCC, delivering presentations to chairman Kevin Martin and the FCC’s four other commissioners to lobby for the industry’s OpenCable Platform as the standard for accessing interactive cable TV applications. In the Oct. 26 meetings, Roberts and his staff “stressed that America’s cable industry is committed to OpenCable” and that the technology has the support of “leading” consumer-electronics companies, according to a Comcast ex parte filing. The rare face-to-face between Roberts and Martin came after Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt met with Martin and FCC commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps on Oct. 24, also to promote OpenCable over the consumer-electronics industry’s rival proposal.
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BigBand to Lay Off 15%
BigBand Networks, as part of reporting third-quarter earnings Tuesday, said it will cut its work force by 15% -- about 86 employees – and announced it will discontinue its Cuda cable modem termination system.
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TBS Ties ESPN
Things were tight in primetime during October as TBS and ESPN tied for the ratings top spot, narrowly edging Disney Channel. Executives at the “very funny” network had to be smiling as TBS, behind the strength of the rookie season of its exclusive coverage of Major League Baseball’s four Division series, averaged a 2.4 household rating from Oct. 1-28. ESPN was down 17% in October from a 2.9 average the prior year.
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O’Reilly, Fox Dominate October
Fox News Channel dominated the all-news network ratings battle in October, and it’s The O’Reilly Factor flagship marked its 83rd consecutive month as the No. 1 news show on cable TV. Fox News averaged a 0.7 Nielsen Media Research rating in primetime, topping CNN (0.4), MSNBC (0.3), CNBC (0.2) and Headline News (0.2).
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11.3% of Households Get HDTV
Nielsen said Tuesday that 13.7% of TV households in the U.S. are equipped with an HDTV and HD tuner capable of receiving signals in HD, while 11.3% are equipped with an HD television and HD tuner and receive at least one HD network or station. Los Angeles has the highest penetration of HD-capable homes, or 20.4%, and New York has the highest penetration of HD-receivable homes, 17.5%.
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Dish Launches NBA TV HD
EchoStar added NBA TV HD to its lineup. Subscribers to America’s Top 100 package with DishHD will receive NBA TV HD free on Channel 402.
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U-verse Expands in Detroit
AT&T said that U-verse TV is now available to 300,000 living units in Southeast Michigan, and the telco is touting its carriage of Big Ten Network as part of marketing the service in the region against incumbent cable provider Comcast.
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HBO Tweaks PPV Report
HBO’s record-setting May 5 Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather pay-per-view fight delivered an even bigger performance knockout than originally thought. HBO said the event, in which Mayweather won a close decision, drew 2.4 million buys and $134.4 million in PPV revenue, up from original estimates of 2.15 million buys and $120 million in revenue.
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Retirement Living Signs Dr. Ruth
Retirement Living TV said it signed well known sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer as its resident sex therapist and on-air expert for its Daily Cafe program.
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BabyFirstTV Gets Charter Crib
BabyFirstTV, the commercial-free educational and child development channel for babies and toddlers, is gaining carriage on Charter Communications. BabyFirstTV will debut on Charter in Alabama in mid-November.
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Imagine Raises $15M
Video-compression startup Imagine Communications said it raised $15 million in second-round funding, bringing it to a total of about $25 million.
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Chrysler Backs TBS’s ‘Payne’
Chysler is in the driver’s seat with TBS’s sitcom series, Tyler Perry’s House of Payne
The automaker steered a multiplatform deal with the ‘very funny’ network surrounding its 2008 Chrysler Town & Country model and the channel’s comedy show.
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