• HBO Eyes PPV Record From De La Hoya Bout
• Panero Out if XM, Sirius Merge
• Viacom Cuts Joost Licensing Deal
• Department of Defense Turns to Dish
• Versus Adds Indoor Soccer Games
• Rainbow Rebrands Mag Rack
• Anystream Buys Cauldron Solutions

• HGTV Adds Online ‘Neighborhood’
• CTAM U Accepting Applications

• Time Warner's Britt Gets $5.6M Bonus
• FiOS TV Picks Ad Agency
• Wireless Op Faces Costly Transition

HBO Eyes PPV Record From De La Hoya Bout
HBO expects its May 5 Oscar De La Hoya -Floyd Mayweather pay-per-view event to break the 1 million-buy mark, and it could set an all-time PPV-performance record, according to HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg. The fight, for De La Hoya’s junior-middleweight championship, arguably pits the two most popular fighters in the sport against each other. Greenburg, who spoke to Multichannel News during the bout’s New York press conference Monday, said the event is expected to be the second non-heavyweight fight to break the 1 million PPV-buy barrier. The first was the 1999 De La Hoya-Felix Trinidad fight, which drew 1.25 million buys. The event, which will retail at $54.95, also has an outside chance of surpassing the $103 million generated by the 2002 Mike Tyson-Lennox Lewis fight (http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA223058.html) as the most lucrative PPV event of all time. “The market will have to determine how big a fight this will be,” he said. “This fight will give us an indication as to how high the PPV [buy] cap is.” click to read more...
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Panero Out if XM, Sirius Merge
XM Satellite Radio CEO and cable veteran Hugh Panero will leave the company when and if its planned $13 billion merger with Sirius Satellite Radio is completed, Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin told a group of employees Tuesday. Current XM chairman Gary Parsons will continue that role in the new company if the merger is completed. Karmazin -- who headed a town-hall gathering for Sirius on-air talent, employees and consultants at the McGraw-Hill building in New York Tuesday -- said Panero would continue to be CEO of XM through the merger process, but he would “not be with the companies when the merger happens.” Karmazin alluded to two of his past jobs -- at CBS Westinghouse and Viacom -- where he was part of a tandem of top executives. Karmazin left Viacom in 2004 (http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA422238.html) partly because of friction over how the company should be run with chairman Sumner Redstone. “The hard part is in running the company,” Karmazin said. “You really can’t have a complex management structure. You really do need to have a CEO, and not a team and not co-CEOs and not multiple people running the company. And in this company going forward, both boards decided that I should be the one to run the company.” click to read more...
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Viacom Cuts Joost Licensing Deal
Viacom cut a broad licensing deal with Joost to supply content from its MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures units to the Internet start-up. The deal comes just two weeks after MTVN ordered top viral video Web site YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) to pull thousands of clips from MTVN programs from its site (http://multichannel.com/article/CA6412990.html). Joost -- which plans to launch its ad-supported Internet-programming service during the first half of 2007 -- obtained the rights to programs including MTV’s Laguna Beach, Beavis &Butt-Head and Real World; Comedy Central’s Stella, Comedy Central Presents and Freak Show; VH1’s Flavor of Love, Surreal Life and I Love New York; and several shows from CMT, MTV2, Logo, Spike TV, mtvU and GameTrailers.com (http://www.gametrailers.com). BET will supply Beef, DMX: Soul of a Man, Comic View and American Gangster. Viacom said Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage and Paramount Classics will supply full-length feature films to Joost. (http://multichannel.com/article/CA6408789.html). click to read more...
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Department of Defense Turns to Dish
EchoStar Fixed Satellite Services and Artel reached a long-term deal to provide fixed-satellite service for the Department of Defense. Under terms of the pact, parent EchoStar Communications will provide Artel with multiple satellite transponders within its fleet. click to read more...
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Versus Adds Indoor Soccer Games
Comcast-owned Versus will air a Major Indoor Soccer League game of the week starting Saturday, March 24, with a match between teams from Baltimore and Philadelphia, two of the MSO’s cable markets. Also slated are two regular-season games, a championship-series semifinal game April 14 and the MISL Championship Game April 21. click to read more...
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Rainbow Rebrands Mag Rack
Rainbow Media Holdings is saying goodbye to Mag Rack and hello to Lifeskool. The programmer said video-on-demand content focused on personal growth and self improvement that had been part of Mag Rack will now appear on Lifeskool, which will join Sportskool (http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA301333.htm) and soon-to-be-launched Musicskool under Rainbow’s VOD umbrella. The change will become official March 8. click to read more...
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Anystream Buys Cauldron Solutions
Video-on-demand-software provider Anystream acquired content-management-software firm Cauldron Solutions, looking to fully combine Anystream’s video-production know-how with Cauldron’s rights-management expertise. Cauldron CEO Steve Salzinger, chief operating officer Russell Zack and chief technology officer Bhavan Shah will join Anystream as senior vice president, VP of products and VP of advanced technology, respectively, a spokesman said. Sterling, Va.-based Anystream’s key VOD product, Agility (renamed Anystream Media) -- used by Scripps Networks, CNN and numerous other programmers -- automates the formatting of digital content for television, the Internet and mobile devices. click to read more...
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HGTV Adds Online ‘Neighborhood’
Neighborhood America (http://www.neighborhoodamerica.com) will create a new online community for Home &Garden Television’s Web site (http://www.hgtv.com) under terms of an agreement with HGTV parent Scripps Networks. The new community, Rate My Room, “will provide individuals with the ability to interact with like-minded design enthusiasts and share ideas and design concepts through the publishing of images that showcase their homes,” Scripps Networks said in a prepared statement. click to read more...
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CTAM U Accepting Applications
The Cable &Telecommunications Association for Marketing is accepting applications for diversity fellowships to its Executive Management Program, to be held at Harvard Business School June 10-15. National Association for Minorities in Communications platinum-level members may apply for the four available fellowships to the program. The fellowships cover tuition, room, meals, copies of case studies and up to $1,000 in transportation costs. The program, also known as CTAM U, is taught by Harvard professors and addresses engineering and finance, in addition to marketing. click to read more...
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