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Kerry Pressures NFL, Cable Operators
Washington – Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) wants to meet here next week in person with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and officials from Comcast and Time Warner Cable to broker a deal designed to ensure that millions of fans get to witness on cable TV whether the New England Patriots can complete their regulate season undefeated. The Patriots, who are 13-0, have to win two more games before they travel to play the New York Giants on Dec. 29 in a match televised exclusively by the NFL Network. Time Warner isn’t carrying the NFL-owned channel and just 1 million Comcast customers have signed up for the sports tier that includes the NFL Network. “Given the unique circumstances surrounding this [New York] game, we cannot allow proprietary interests to trump commercial interests and prevent an agreement from being reached in time to ensure the broadest possible level of viewership,” Kerry said. “Since time is of the essence, I would ask that representatives from the NFL, Time Warner and Comcast join me in a meeting next week in my Washington office to discuss potential solutions to this problem.” Comcast EVP David Cohen responded in a letter to Kerry that the league could put the game on broadcast TV, “as they used to.” He also said he wasn’t available to meet with Kerry.
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DirecTV, Cox Settle HD Lawsuit
DirecTV and Cox Communications settled the false-advertising lawsuit the satellite operator filed over Cox’s assertion that “HD looks better with cable,” after the cable company removed the claim from its Web site. In the suit, filed in October, DirecTV alleged Cox made “false and misleading statements” in citing a Comcast-commissioned survey regarding the quality of Cox’s HDTV service compared with DirecTV’s. A section of Cox’s Web site had previously carried the headline “Cable Wins the HD Picture Challenge” and cited the results of a Comcast survey conducted by research firm Frank N. Magid Associates.
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Cox Arizona Preps VOD
Cox Communications’ Arizona division expects to launch video on demand statewide next year – the operator’s last remaining major market to offer the product – with initial services scheduled to go live in January.
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MTV Cuts AOL Deal
Viacom’s MTV Networks announced a deal with Time Warner’s AOL to distribute show clips from MTVN’s music, kids and family, comedy and lifestyle properties to consumers for free through AOL Video.
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USA Lead’s Record Cable Year
This year represents a sea change in terms of ratings’ records for cable, capped by USA Network landing in the No. 1 spot by delivering the largest number of primetime viewers in the medium’s history, Turner Broadcasting’s top researcher said Wednesday. Cable broke nearly a dozen records in 2007, prompting Jack Wakshlag, Turner’s chief research officer, to characterize the 12-month period as “transformational” for cable, with shows like TNT’s The Closer and TBS’s House of Payne among those shattering former viewing benchmarks.
For example, to date USA has racked up the best total primetime delivery for a cable network in history, with its average of 2.7 million viewers.
In addition, 2007 marked the best primetime ever in the adult 18 to 49 demographic for 35 ad-supported cable networks, Wakshlag said during his annual end-of-year ratings briefing for the press at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan.
In another mark, Disney Channel enjoyed the best audience delivery for a movie in cable’s history with its High School Musical 2, which attracted 18.6 million viewers on a live plus seven-day total.
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Barton’s Mixed Signals
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) is putting out mixed signals about his opinion of FCC chairman Kevin Martin, saying the regulatory chief isn’t “anti-cable” but is continuing to search for problems within cable that don’t exist. Barton, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, discussed the FCC chairman and cable in an interview with C-SPAN in connection with the network’s “Communicators” series.
“I would not say the chairman is anti-cable. He apparently has an agenda that is not as deregulatory as I would hope that a Republican chairman would be with regards to the cable industry,” Barton said. “It appears to me that he sometimes seems to be searching for a problem to solve which simply in my opinion isn’t there in the cable industry.”
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Viewers Dig ‘Paranormal’
A&E Network may have uncovered a new ratings hit. The premiere of real-life show Paranormal State Monday night became its highest-rated series across all key demos since Dog The Bounty Hunter bowed in August 2004. The Dec.10 debut episode at 10 p.m. averaged a 1.8 household rating and 2.5 total viewers, including 1.6 million 18-to-49 watchers and 1.5 million of the 25-to-54 set.
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Charter Rolls Wealth HD
WealthTV said its high-definition programming lineup has become available to Charter Communications customers on demand nationwide. The launch announcement follows a similar one concerning Verizon’s FiOS TV service, which has is now offering the HD lifestyle and entertainment service on demand in Tampa, Fla.; Richmond and Virginia Beach, Va.; Fort Wayne, Ind., and Pittsburgh.
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MTV Woos Freelancers
MTV Networks, following meetings with freelancers irked by changes in their benefits, Wednesday said it had set up a process to possibly convert temporary jobs to permanent positions. The programming giant had come under attack by its permanent freelance and temporary workers when it tried to institute changes to their medical, dental and other benefits. On Monday, those angry workers left their job posts and mounted a protest outside MTVN’s offices at the headquarters of its parent, Viacom, in New York City’s Times Square.
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DirecTV Launches Blimp
DirecTV Inc. will have more than its satellite in the sky beginning Thursday: The satellite leader will steer a blimp to tout its carriage of the NFL Network. The DirectTV Starship will make its maiden voyage over Tampa, where consumers can “simply step outside and look to the sky to enjoy” the NFL Network’s telecast of Thursday’s Denver Broncos-Houston Texans game. The 178-foot-long, DirecTV-branded blimp is equipped with a 2,100-square foot video light sign display. The display, with resolution of 33,600 total pixels, is the largest ever made for a blimp.
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Big Week for ABC Family
Christmas may be coming a little early this year for ABC Family. Lifted by original telefilm Holiday in Handcuffs and a pair of holiday-themed theatricals as key components of its annual “25 Days of Christmas” programming stunt, ABC Family enjoyed its most-watched week ever from Dec. 3-9 among total viewers and with several key demos. With the Dec. 9 debut of Holiday in Handcuffs becoming the network’s most-watched ever program and The Santa Clause 2 (Dec. 8) and The Polar Express also performing well, ABC Family averaged a 1.9 household rating in primetime, fourth for the week in all of basic cable, and 2.8 million viewers.
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Nielsen Counts HBO VOD
In what is reportedly a first, Nielsen will start providing ratings for HBO’s subscription on-demand services, HBO On Demand and Cinemax on Demand. Nielsen and HBO claim that the premium service will be the first network to receive TV ratings for its on-demand offerings. By tracking VOD usage through Nielsen’s National People Meter VOD Audience Measurement service, HBO will learn not only how many households are viewing its VOD offerings but the demographics of the audiences viewing each specific program, as well.
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Analyst Rips AT&T Move
A Wall Street analyst Wednesday called AT&T’s decision to stop reselling DirecTV service in the first quarter – with plans to later re-evaluate that deal and one with EchoStar Communications – “puzzling” and “peculiar.” Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett issued his report a day after AT&T announced its decision regarding DirecTV during an analysts’ meeting. “In a puzzling announcement yesterday, AT&T indicated that it would stop selling DirecTV service in its BellSouth region in the first quarter,” Moffett said. “But AT&T left the door open to revisit the decision at the end of 2008.”|
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JumpTV Lands A&E
A&E Television Networks signed a deal with online-video distributor JumpTV to carry non-English versions of several AETN shows on JumpTV’s broadband service. JumpTV's broadband VOD service will offer paid long-form content from The History Channel and A&E Network libraries, including the series Mysteries of the Bible, Ancient Mysteries, The History of Sex, Weapons at War and Modern Marvels.
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Mio.TV Debuts
Hispanic audiences will have a new, fully-interactive media, communications and entertainment desktop application to call their own in Mio.TV. The service, launched by several cable veterans, will offer streaming video channels, online gaming and social networking, all contained within a single browser window that serves as a user’s personal — and completely interactive — portable desktop. A beta version of which was unveiled Tuesday at a press conference in New York.
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Comcast Greets Troops
Comcast is offering up hundreds of videotaped greetings from U.S. military personnel stationed abroad to 9 million digital cable customers via video on demand. “Troop Greetings On Demand” – available in the New England and Pittsburgh regions before expanding to a nine-state region and the District of Columbia later this month – is available on Comcast’s “Get Local” VOD section for the fourth consecutive year.
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Worth Watching
Ivanka Trump swung by the Fox Business Network “Happy Hour” set at Manhattan bar Bull and Bear Wednesday for an interview.
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Comcast Subs Skip Podcast
What if they gave a podcast and very few people came? The backers of the “Comcast Must Die” Web site held an inaugural podcast Dec. 11 as a forum for the operator’s subscribers to strategize in their fight to receive better customer service, but it was a good thing host Bob Garfield booked some guests. Only two consumers called in during the hour-long podcast and one of those took the host to task for “over dramatizing” Comcast’s service issues. The caller’s comments forced the podcasters to concede that it’s probably true that the majority of customers have no problem with Comcast, but “there are probably millions who can’t get a response on the second, the third or even the 20th trouble call.”
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