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Wall Street Analyst Refutes FCC Chairman’s Cable Math
Washington – Wall Street cable analyst Craig Moffett told an FCC Commission official last week that it was not “mathematically possible” that cable penetration of U.S. households is 70% or higher. Moffett, a cable analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., provided his analysis in a Nov. 21 letter to FCC Democrat Jonathan Adelstein. Adelstein became the third FCC member to seek an outside data after FCC chairman Kevin Martin infuriated the cable establishment by declaring that cable TV operators had breached the 70% barrier, triggering a legal provision that gives the FCC expansive new powers to regulate cable. Moffett, based on a review of Securities and Exchange Commission filings and other publicly available data, concluded there are 63.5 million U.S. cable subscribers, which means the total number of homes passed would have to be 90.7 million or fewer to achieve 70% penetration. But, Moffett said, such a result could not be possible because “the eight publicly trade cable companies” alone have reported passing 94.2 million homes. The eight MSOs have 48.4 million subscribers. After looking at the total number of cable subscribers and the total number of homes passed by all cable companies, and after adjusting to exclude vacant households, Moffett determined that cable penetration was no higher than 60.5%. “We do not believe that is mathematically possible … to arrive at cable adoption rates materially in excess of 60%,” Moffett told Adelstein.
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Rigases Denied New Trial
A U.S. District Court Judge shot down an attempt by former Adelphia Communications executives John and Timothy Rigas to get a new trial, stating that their claim that a key witness for the prosecution lied on the stand was unfounded. Former Adelphia founder and chairman John Rigas and his son former Adelphia chief financial officer Timothy Rigas were convicted on 18 counts of fraud and conspiracy in 2004 stemming from the massive accounting scandal at the cable company. John Rigas was sentenced to 15 years in prison and Timothy to 20 years in 2005. They began serving their terms in a federal correctional facility in North Carolina in August. After an appeal of that conviction was denied in May, the Rigases attempted to have their convictions thrown out and win a new trial when they claimed that former Adelphia vice president of finance James Brown – a key prosecution witness – lied on the stand. Attorneys for the Rigases pointed to testimony Brown gave in a civil trial months after the Rigases criminal trial, where he appeared to perjure himself. The Rigases also petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in October to hear the case. The court has not yet responded as to whether it will hear that appeal.
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Frank TV Hooks 2.9M Million
TBS said the premiere of Frank TV drew 2.9 million viewers Tuesday night, according to preliminary numbers from Nielsen Media Research. TBS said the premiere pulled a 2.1 household rating and 2.05 million households. It drew 1.08 million adults 18 to 34; 1.85 million adults 18 to 49; and 1.72 million adults 25 to 54.
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Eagle Files for Chapter 11
After slugging it out in the Internet-protocol television space for the past couple of years, Eagle Broadband has thrown in the towel. The League City, Texas-based supplier of IPTV equipment and services filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Nov. 14 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in Galveston. In its bare-bones filing, Eagle listed assets of about $2.8 million and $8.8 million in liabilities. Tops among those liabilities is about $3 million the company owes to its former chairman, H. Dean Cubley, who sued Eagle in August 2006 for nonpayment of a $1.9 million promissory note the company owed him in lieu of stock options tied to his employment. Eagle did not say in its filing why it chose the bankruptcy route. It said in a separate Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it intends to continue to operate as a debtor-in-possession business.
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Dexter Slashes Ratings Mark
The eighth episode of Showtime’s serial murderer series Dexter killed with Nielsen. The initial airing of the Nov. 18 installment at 9 p.m. attracted 1.23 million viewers, the most ever for a Showtime series, according to Nielsen Media Research data, topping the 2004’s Soul Food debut, which averaged 1.2 million watchers.
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Charter to Double HD Lineup
Charter Communications expects to roughly double its high-definition channel lineup in 2008 from the low 20s today to more than 40 across its entire footprint, using switched digital video and other techniques, according to Doug Ike, vice president advanced video engineering and applications. New HD channels “will be added market by market, as capacity and bandwidth permits,” Ike said. “We’ll stay competitive with our peers.”
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MTV Pins Down Web Fare
Take the nonstop grappling and punching action of the mixed martial arts genre, add a little spice in the form of two model-ready ladies, splash in the viral nature of the Web and you have the makings of a hit Web show that could translate into an on-air franchise if MTVN Entertainment Group has it way. In an effort to combine the best of the Web with its on-air cable ventures, the MTVN Entertainment Group is scouring the Internet for originally produced shows like MMA Girls — in which two women act out the various submission and pin moves seen in Ultimate Fighting Championship and other mixed-martial-arts bouts — to feature on its iFilm.com Web site, and hopefully to exploit on such MTVN cable properties as Spike TV.
As both iFilm and Spike TV seek to reach young, male viewers, the ability to create new on-air properties from originally-produced Web content is something MTVN Entertainment Group executive vice president of digital media Erik Flannigan hopes to successfully pin down.
The two properties are already linked through a mouse-click: in August MTV merged ifilm.com, which MTV purchased in 2005, with the Web site for 96 million basic-cable network Spike TV.
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Cox Launches HorseRacing TV
HorseRacing TV said Cox Communications launched the network on its New Orleans system. Under the Cox agreement, HRTV will appear on Channel 313 of the Digital Sports & Information Tier, alongside the NHL Network, the NFL Network, NBA TV, The Golf Channel and ESPN News.
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WGA Lauds Candidates
On the eve of Thanksgiving, the Writers Guild of America East Wednesday thanked the three leading Democratic Presidential candidates for their vow not to cross strike picket lines. TV and film writers went on strike Nov. 5, and their union said it was “thrilled” with the support it has gotten from Sen. John Edwards, who is opting not to appear on ABC’s The View next week due to the strike. In addition, the WGA lauded Edwards, Sen. Hilary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama for saying they won’t cross picket lines if CBS News employees go on strike. The CBS employees, also WGA members, have voted to authorize a strike.
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FCC Extends Deadline
Washington – Major cable programming suppliers on Wednesday received additional time to prepare their attack on a Federal Communications Commission proposal to permit cable and satellite distributors to purchase channels on an a la carte basis from programming vendors. Responding to requests for more time from Disney, Viacom Fox, and NBC Universal, the FCC’s Media Bureau agreed to move the due date for initial comments from Nov. 30 to Jan. 4, 2008 and reply comments from Dec. 17 to Jan. 22, 2008.
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TV Guide Lands on Helio
Gemstar-TV Guide International announced a deal Wednesday with mobile operator Helio to sell a service that provides TV listings, entertainment news and other content to wireless handsets. Helio will charge $2.99 for 30-day access to the downloadable TV Guide Mobile application. Helio customers can access a personalized version of TV Guide’s 14-day listings grid, set program reminders, and read daily show recommendations and other editorial content.
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Worth Watching
In their latest commercial, the Slowskys, the turtle stars of Comcast's anti-DSL ad campaign, compare high-speed Internet service delivered by telephone companies to flowing lava.
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Cuban: DirecTV is Trying to ‘Kill Off’ HDNet
HDNet co-founder and owner Mark Cuban is the latest independent programmer to cry foul to federal regulators about a distributor, expanding his dispute with DirecTV from a Texas court to Washington.
In several filings with the Federal Communications Commission earlier this month, Cuban claims that both his HDNet and HDNet Movies are being unfairly treated, and discriminated against, by both DirecTV and Liberty Media, which is seeking to acquire News Corp.’s 38.5% stake in the satellite provider for $11 billion.
“The proposed transaction cannot be in the ‘public interest’ as required by law without the addition of conditions to protect independent programmers carried by DirecTV at the time this application was filed,” HDNet said in its ex parte papers Nov. 13 regarding the proposed Liberty Media-DirecTV deal.
In the FCC documents, HDNet also charged that DirecTV is trying to “kill off” the network, and that at one point Liberty Media was seeking to acquire 50% of Cuban’s HD network.
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