Free Republic

Online video chips away at TV (Cable Networks DeathWatch™) IBM: New media may be affecting 'couch-potato behavior' Nov 17, 2008, 03:01 AM ET More evidence that online video is cannibalizing television consumption is due Monday, courtesy of an IBM study. Plus, online viewers don't mind the commercials too much. After polling 2,800 people in six countries, IBM says 76% have viewed video online and 45% do so regularly. Of those who have watched online video, 15% say that as a result they watch "slightly less" TV, while 36% said they watch "significantly less" TV. "Place-shifting alternatives may be changing consumer...

Conventional wisdom dictates that Hollywood could always shrug off economic downturns because worried consumers spend more on entertainment when times are tough. Not this time. Everywhere one looks, the entertainment business is in a world of hurt. The downturn is slamming the balance sheets and stocks of major media companies. Banks and hedge funds are cutting or eliminating movie financing, putting projects at studios and independents in peril. TV networks, reeling from an advertising decline, are slashing costs and trimming staffs. "Every single source of capital has suffered a seismic shock that we haven't seen in our lifetimes," said Nigel...

Will Shari and Sumner Redstone Split? (Cable Networks DeathWatch™) By Ronald Grover BW Exclusives Redstone's 80% stake gives him clout in any deal Shari offers Sean Gallup/Getty Images Shari may seek an equity infusion from private investors Phelan M. Ebenhack/National Amusements/AP Photo Story Tools As family feuds go, few have been more intractable than the one that has simmered between media mogul Sumner M. Redstone and his daughter, Shari. For two years the pair has battled over the direction of National Amusements, the family company that owns a national chain of movie theaters and controls the media giants CBS (CBS)...

By Heidi Dawley Nov 13, 2008 As in the U.S., so in Britain. As the weather turns cold, the economy here turns even colder, with yet more news of sinking revenues and cutbacks, and the cost is being felt directly by UK media. Just yesterday, it was reported that unemployment has reached an 11-year high, that Virgin Media, a major cable operator, was axing 2,200 jobs, that Yell, a yellow pages company, was chopping jobs as well, and that a string of regional newspapers was reporting a 15.5 percent falloff in ad revenue through the first 10 months of the...

A Hulu for Cable Networks? Not Any Time Soon How Free Online Video Threatens Pay-TV Model By Andrew Hampp BOSTON (AdAge.com) -- Now that Hulu is an out-of-the-box success story for broadcast TV, when will cable get its one-stop online video site? If two panels at the Cable Telecommunications Association of Marketing Summit in Boston on Tuesday are any indication, not any time soon. he prospect of major cable groups such as Viacom, Discovery and NBC Universal following the likes of NBC, Fox, ABC and CBS to streaming full-length episodes of current shows online has always seemed like a long...

For years, it's been one of those speculative staple questions of consumer-media research: If you could only keep one thing out of a list that included your phone, your TV or your computer and internet connection, what would it be? But with the recession looming, it's no longer such an academic question. Agencies, media, telecoms and other marketers are pondering the implications of an impending shakeout where, after years of piling on one subscription fee after another, consumers take a harder look at what they really need. Their decisions in what look to be lean years ahead could play a...

At almost exactly 10 PM Eastern, my Brighthouse cable went completely black. My dad, who lives on the other side of town, called and said that he's having the same problem. I've tried calling Brighthouse and their line is constantly busy, so it must be affecting a large number of people. My dad and I, of course, smell something fishy, especially since my Internet service, which is also provided by Brighthouse on the same cable, is working just fine.

I do believe that liberals in this country have their tin foils hats on way too tight these days. At least, it's easy to think that over the new national conspiracy theory that lefties are all balled up over lately. You see, it is being imagined in the dim, dark recesses of the left's collective consciousness that cable company Comcast is out to silence them. Apparently, Comcast has come down from their circling black helicopters and decided to target the left by moving MSNBC from their basic cable package to their more expensive premium services. This will, you see, "marginalize...

Dish Network today announced that it will add 17 national HDTV channels on August 1, saying the additions will give it 100 national HD channels overall. The satcaster promised in January that it would offer 100 national HD channels by year's end. DIRECTV, Dish's top satellite rival, now offers around 95 national HD channels, but has promised to deliver up to 150 national HD channels by year's end. “In January, we promised our customers that DISH Network would boost our national HD channel lineup to 100 by year’s end. Today, we are proud to say that in less than one...

Sisters protest high gas prices Mom had to cancel cable to pay for commute By Katie Drake The Salt Lake Tribune Article Last Updated: 06/24/2008 12:31:32 AM MDT When a daily dose of Hannah Montana became impossible, the Vance sisters knew it was time to take to the streets. Sadie, 9, and her sister Pyper, 7, marched around downtown Salt Lake City chanting, "Lower the gas prices," while carrying homemade signs. The sisters decided to protest after losing their favorite cable TV shows when their mother, Michelle, had to sacrifice cable TV to pay for her daily commute.

I have one of those cable boxes for my Comcast cable TV (had to get it to be able to record on my DVD recorder). Now that they're moving to all-digital, they want people to get these boxes ($4/month) and are moving some channels to higher tiers which will require cable boxes (not sure if there will be a higher price for these channels). Channels ranging from MSNBC to TruTV (formerly Court TV) to Boston Catholic Television are affected. Anyway, now I'm getting periodic interruptions in service. Screen goes black, sound goes out--it still tells you what channel you're on...

NEW YORK (AP) — You're used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance? Time Warner Cable Inc. customers — and, later, others — may have to, if the company's test of metered Internet access is successful. On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable executive told the Associated Press....

WASHINGTON - The set-top box, a necessary appendage for millions of cable television customers for decades, is moving toward extinction. A leading television manufacturer, Sony Electronics Inc., and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said Tuesday they signed an agreement that will allow viewers to rid themselves of set-top boxes, yet still receive advanced "two-way" cable services, such as pay-per-view movies. In most cases, cable viewers also could dispose of another remote control since they could use their TV's control rather than one tied to the set-top box. The agreement marks a significant meeting of the minds between cable companies...

In the very real war on terror, a nosy squabble over “fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here” clouds a simple truth: namely, that “they” are here already. Indeed, Islamists are busy constructing a wing of jihad in America’s backyard. A potential audience of one million Arab-speaking cable subscribers of Time Warner in the greater New York area can feast on the Arabic Channel known as TAC to choose a menu that includes: A daily dose of Islamic jurisprudence from a sheik — most often Egyptian Amr Khaled, who wears a suit instead of a robe,...

Not long ago we reported that Monster Cable had issued a cease and desist letter to Blue Jeans Cable about their Tartan cables. Little did the lawyer drones over at Monster know that Kurt Denke, the president of Blue Jeans was, in a former life, a lawyer by trade. Oops! Someone pushed around the wrong "small" company! While we are no legal experts, we recognize humor when we see it. And this is funny. With Blue Jeans Cable's permission, we've included their full response to Monster's letter below. Kurt wants to keep this entire process completely open to the public...

WASHINGTON (AP) - For months, TV viewers have been told by government, by industry and by the media that if they already subscribe to cable, there's no need to worry about the coming transition to digital broadcasting. So cable customer Doris Spurk was surprised to learn that thanks to the transition, she would have to rent a converter box for $5.95 per month, per television set, plus pay for a $60 service call to install it. With five televisions in her home, the conversion would increase her bill by 75 percent. "It really ticks us off," the 63-year-old central Florida...

You'd think that in a slowing economy, companies would be trying to hold on to every potential customer. Not DirecTV. The satellite operator is weeding out customers, and it has no problem with fewer people signing up. In a conference call with analysts this week, CEO Chase Carey said the company has a new focus on "quality subscribers" (read: ones with money). It finds these subscribers by analyzing their income, age, home ownership, education and other metrics, Carey said in an earnings call with analysts. (Transcript here). DirecTV puts those customers into different categories to figure out who's valuable and...

MUMBAI, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Services on two of three broken undersea cables providing Internet services to parts of the Middle East and Asia have been restored after both cables were repaired, an Indian-owned cable operator said on Sunday. FLAG Telecom, a subsidiary of India's No. 2 mobile operator Reliance Communications (RLCM.BO: Quote, Profile, Research), said in a statement the breaks in its FLAG Europe-Asia (FEA) and FALCON cables had been repaired and services routed back through these cables. Web access in south Asia and parts of the Middle East was disrupted after breaks occurred in segments of two cables...

NEW DELHI: Internet users in India struggled with slow surfing speeds and companies tapped redundancy systems to overcome a disruption to international connectivity. The problem was caused due to the breakdown of two undersea cables in the Mediterranean. An anchoring ship off Egypt's Alexandria coast damaged Indian-owned FLAG cable and also SEA-ME-WE on Wednesday morning and urgent repair teams had set sail for the location. An official of Reliance group, which owns FLAG, said the repair will take about 10 days. But some mission-critical operations can sometimes suffer. Wednesday's disruption in SEA-ME-WE and Indian-owned FLAG cables had not been resolved...

Time Warner Cable Tests Data-Usage Rate StructureThursday, January 17, 2008 NEW YORK — Time Warner Cable will experiment with a new pricing structure for high-speed Internet access later this year, charging customers based on how much data they download, a company spokesman said Wednesday. The company, the second-largest cable provider in the United States, will start a trial in Beaumont, Texas, in which it will sell new Internet customers tiered levels of service based on how much data they download per month, rather than the usual fixed-price packages with unlimited downloads. Company spokesman Alex Dudley said the trial was aimed...

The U.S. government eagerly reached out to Venezuelan presidential candidate Hugo Chavez in 1998 and moved quickly to denounce a rumored coup plot against the man who's become one of the Bush administration's archenemies, newly declassified State Department documents obtained by McClatchy Newspapers reveal. State Department officials initially appeared dazzled by Chavez's oversized persona and his promise for sweeping reforms, and seemed sincere in their efforts to help him, the documents show. Some of those overtures drew positive responses from Chavez, who said he wanted U.S. help in fighting corruption and drug trafficking.... ...A Jan. 20, 1999, cable setting the...

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. and the Rainbow/Push Coalition have joined with the League of Rural Voters and the Hispanic Federation in opposition of the Federal Communications Commission's plans to overhaul cable TV regulations. The FCC is considering revising its cable TV regulations, using the so-called 70/70 rule as justification. The 70/70 rule states that when 70% of American homes can access cable and 70% of those with access subscribe, the FCC can impose new regulations to ensure competition. Many groups, including cable and telecommunications companies, dispute whether the threshold has been met. While the disputed rule was adopted to...

CSPAN2 has been removed from my cable (comcast) lineup. I was wondering if this is happening exclusively here in my area. I went to the Comcast home page and I was unable to find any mention of this change.

The Federal Communications Commission, hoping to reduce the rising costs of cable television, is preparing to strike down thousands of contracts this week that gave individual cable companies exclusive rights to provide service to an apartment building, the agency’s chairman says. The new rule could open markets across the country to far-ranging competition. It would also be a huge victory for Verizon Communications and AT&T, which have challenged the cable industry by offering their own video services. The two companies have lobbied aggressively for the provision. They have been supported in their fight by consumer groups, satellite television companies and...

Internet users take for granted the free flow of information that has made the Net such a vibrant and innovative communications medium. But Comcast cable-modem users have discovered that certain types of information don't flow so well, and the company has been less than forthcoming as to why. Recent investigations by the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and blogger Kevin Kanarski uncovered surreptitious efforts by Comcast to interfere with at least three types of traffic: packets sent via the BitTorrent and Gnutella protocols, which are forms of file-sharing software, and through Lotus Notes, an electronic messaging program....

Fox Challenges CNBC With New Biz Channel Oct 15, 9:15 AM (ET) By JEREMY HERRON NEW YORK (AP) - Rupert Murdoch has entered a dark horse in high-stakes races before, and won. On Monday, the News Corp. (NWS) (NWS) media titan trots out the Fox Business Network. Two years in the making, the channel will challenge General Electric Co. (GE) (GE)'s highly profitable CNBC network as it seeks to redefine business news for average Americans faced with increasingly complex decisions about their financial futures. Murdoch already has knocked CNN off the cable news throne with Fox News Channel. Can he...

Mona Shaw had heard and seen enough from Comcast, her local cable television provider. After repeated attempts to change her phone service from Verizon to Comcast's Triple Play during a week in August, the 75-year-old Bristow resident with a heart condition took out her frustrations at the Manassas payment center on Center Street. Shaw was arrested for disorderly conduct after she took a hammer to several items in the office - all the while saying, "Have I got your attention now?" While Shaw's actions Aug. 20 were extreme, the inability of the cable company to finish the job they started...

It appears that at least some of DirecTV's promised "100 HD channels by year's end" went live around 6AMEST this morning, according to the company's website and some DirecTV users. Twenty-one new channels showed up last night in total, and the company insists eighteen more are coming next month. One catch, of course, is that users will need to be upgraded to the company's MPEG-4 capable gear. The HR-20 will be the centerpiece of the company's new broadband-based on-demand service.

An antitrust lawsuit filed Thursday accuses leading programming, cable and satellite TV firms of colluding to only offer prepackaged tiers of bundled programs and refusing to sell programming a la carte. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California’s Western Division, seeks damages and an end to the bundling practices. The plaintiffs are named individual subscribers of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, EchoStar and DirecTV, seeking to establish a class consisting of “expanded-basic” customers of those companies and Charter and Cablevision Systems over the past four years. In the complaint, filed by Maxwell M. Blecher...

The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday plans to begin considering banning programmers from "tying" — making cable systems take less-popular or new channels to get must-haves, such as ESPN DIS or CBS CBS. Programmers have used the practice to launch scores of channels. That's why you see all those spinoffs of Walt Disney's ESPN on basic and digital cable. Operators didn't necessarily want them — they just couldn't see a cheaper way to get the flagship channel. Each extra channel adds a fee to customers' bills. "The problem for consumers is that they have to pay higher rates for a...

Bosoms and things: That's not exactly a plot summary of "Tell Me," but it's not a bad place to start. Because that's where many viewers will start. Whatever else it may or may not be, "Tell Me," at least in its current form, will set a new precedent for prime-time TV when it has its premiere Sept. 9: No previous series, on pay cable or anywhere else, has dared show anything even close to this much skin; the climax, if you will, of the first episode finds a woman (Sonya Walger) in her 30s masturbating her husband (Adam Scott) to...

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association is holding its annual convention in Las Vegas (where else?) and this year, super-high-speed cable service is finally moving into the limelight. Announcements from hardware providers like Motorola and Texas Instruments suggest that we're finally moving closer to the promised land of DOCSIS 3.0. DOCSIS 3.0 offers two immediate benefits over what cable ISP subscribers are currently stuck with (DOCSIS 1.1): faster speeds and support for IPv6. The technology has the potential to bump download speeds to 160Mbps and upload speeds to 120Mbps, although that bandwidth will be divided up between households attached to a single...

Time Warner 1st-Quarter Profit Slips 18 Percent, but Results Beat Forecast on Cable TV Growth NEW YORK (AP) -- Media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. said Wednesday its first-quarter profit slipped 18 percent, but beat Wall Street expectations as growth in its cable segment helped lift revenue by 9 percent. Net income slipped to $1.20 billion, or 31 cents per share, from $1.46 billion, or 32 cents per share, a year ago. Excluding one-time gains, profit from continuing operations totaled 22 cents per share in the latest period, ahead of the 20 cents per share that analysts polled by Thomson Financial...

CLEVELAND — Buying an antenna for a high-definition television seems as out of place as using a rotary phone to make a call. But some consumers are spending thousands of dollars on LCD or plasma TVs and hooking them up to $50 antennas that don't look much different from what grandpa had on top of his black-and-white picture tube. They're not doing it for the nostalgia. Local TV channels, broadcast in HD over-the-air, offer superior picture quality over the often-compressed signals sent by cable and satellite TV companies. And the best part? Over-the-air HD is free.

Cable network, TV LAND, has committed to hosting a movie night. After 11 years on the air the inclusion of movies is an attempt to save the channel from failure. On April 29th 1996 a new cable channel aired named TV LAND. TV Land, owned by MTV Networks, is programmed with re-run shows mainly from the 50's, 60's, 70's and a few from the 80's. Such shows consist of classics like: I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, The Andy Griffith Show, Green Acres, The Aadams Family, Knight Rider, and many more. However what was once an interesting concept quickly became a consistent...

Washington -- House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) took shots at the Bush administration’s oversight of the digital-TV transition Tuesday, especially the converter-box program designed to keep old analog-TV sets running when only digital signals are available from local TV stations after early 2009. ... Under the digital-TV-transition law enacted one year ago, each household may apply for two $40 government coupons to help defray the cost of digital-to-analog converter boxes. Although the NTIA has $1.5 billion to spend, the program would need nearly $3 billion to fund the 73 million analog TVs that currently rely exclusively...

The Atlanta's area's biggest cable television provider is raising rates by about 4.7 percent, marking the fourth straight year of increases. Comcast's standard cable service will cost an additional $2.24 per month starting in March, for a new total of $49.99. The company won't be changing rates for high-speed Internet or Comcast Digital Voice phone services. Comcast hasn't raised Internet prices the past four years, while voice service is relatively new. The next year or two could be eventful in the television business, as cable providers such as Comcast face the rise of competition from phone companies. AT&T, which just...

I have a few questions about living in Alaska...

In a spate of deals that could undercut the role of cable and satellite companies, several TV networks including Nickelodeon, Showtime and Starz have reached agreements with Microsoft Corp. to let people watch their Web programming on TV sets. Starz, a cable-movie service owned by Liberty Media Corp., has struck a deal giving viewers TV access to its movie-download services on the Web. Showtime, a premium-movie channel owned by CBS Corp., has agreed to a similar arrangement for its Showtime Interactive Web site. As with those two deals, Viacom's Nickelodeon cable channel has made arrangements with Microsoft to let people...

Des Moines, Iowa -- Time is up on the dispute between Mediacom Communications and Sinclair Broadcast Group. Now Mediacom cable subscribers in Cedar Rapids can't watch CBS, and subscribers in Des Moines can't watch Fox. In Des Moines shortly after midnight, Mediacom pulled the plug on KDSM-TV, the Sinclair-owned Fox affiliate which is normally carried on cable channel 6. Mediacom ran ESPN News in its place overnight, a duplication of a cable outlet already carried on channel 22. Mediacom may substitute other programming on channel 6 during the duration of KDSM's absence. The timing could not be worse for sports...

Here's my question for all the tech wizards in FreeperNation: Several of the broadband providers I have spoken with over the phone have told me that they will install broadband for $500 down and about $60 a month. WHAT'S THE $500 FOR? Does that pay for the modem or something? What if I already had the proper modem, that met their specifications...would they waive that fee, or what? I smell something funny, and it ain't carp...or flounder. Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Dial-up bites.

NEW YORK - Vonage tanked after its IPO. It's not entirely clear anymore why eBay paid $2.6 billion for Skype. And the long-awaited rollout of advanced TV services based on Internet technologies has resembled the drip of a faucet. It wasn't a banner year for some of the biggest names in Internet Protocol, the technical standard that makes the Web hum. But the technology itself continued to blossom, with newer innovations picking away at every corner of the telecommunications business, from voice to video to wireless. No doubt the main event for 2007 will be the impending smack-down between the...

Discovery has laid off nearly a third of its Discovery Education division, cutting some 80 people. The cuts were a result of redundancies and inefficiencies created within the division after Discovery acquired some seven companies in the last 18 months, according to a Discovery Communications spokesperson. Discovery Education, whose main product is a school-based video educational service, will employ about 200 staffers going forward. The division, whose products are distributed in about 70,000 schools, has expanded over the past year and a half, launching new products including broadband homework help site Cosmeo. As a result, the division has bought up...

SILVER SPRING, Md. -- Discovery Communications Inc. has a camera crew prowling the waters off Japan in search of giant squid and producers toiling on a $65 million TV series that will chronicle life in 30 countries. But it is another initiative that is occupying Discovery executives -- one that doesn't involve television at all. - snip - For a quarter century, cable-television networks enjoyed a boom as service spread across the nation and viewers and advertisers flocked to cable programs. Now those days are over. The new watchword among some networks is diversification -- even if it means departing...

CAMP TAQADDUM, Iraq (Nov. 21, 2006) -- When his mother passed away, he turned feelings of grief and loss into a motivation for higher service. Now whether it's at Taqaddum Surgical or during his weekly appearances at TQ's main side chapel, people here recognize Cpl. Damon D. Mulazzi as a 'hook up' for higher morale. "We call him 'corporal angel'," said Cmdr. Tracy R. Bilski, a trauma surgeon at TQ Surgical, 1st Marine Logistics Group (Forward). Bilski, 38, from Bellmawr, N.J. said that Mulazzi once went above and beyond to fulfill the request of an Iraqi girl. The girl returned...

While thinking of ways I can save a little bit of money, is it really worth it to switch from Cox Expanded Cable which costs $40 per month to DISH for about $25 per month? We watch very few channels and feel that we might be able to get a better deal than what we currently have. Your opinions on DISH would be appreciated.

In a statement that likely caused shudders among some Fox News employees, Roger Ailes said Thursday that News Corp Chairman Rupert "Murdoch didn't invest a billion dollars in this company so people can have jobs. ... He did it to WIN. ... He wants to win and so do I." Ailes made the statement in a company State of the Business Address, in which he also remarked, "We cannot rest on our accomplishments, and I will continue to make changes." Separately Ailes told the Associated Press on Thursday that he intends to be "dogmatic" in pursuing rate increases from cable...

For many television executives, particularly at cable channels that carry a lot of commercials, Nov. 18 might be a good day to be out of the office. That is the day Nielsen Media Research is scheduled to release, for the first time, formal ratings for commercial breaks. The ratings will show advertisers how many people watch their ads, as opposed to the programs that carry them. As the date approaches, nervousness is increasing in the TV industry as executives ponder what the data might show about their particular networks. The industry expects Nielsen's data to show a noticeable ratings decline,...

Fox News and Cablevision are headed for a showdown over the network’s campaign to secure substantial increases in its license fees to cable and satellite TV companies. The news network is taking a characteristic hardball approach to the negotiations, with News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch personally calling out Chuck Dolan for a fight. Fox News says it is looking to boost its license fees from around 30 cents per subscriber monthly to $1, arguing that if its audience is double that of rival news network CNN, its license fees should be as well. That’s a massive hike, especially at a...

Commentary: Cable companies need to rethink their models BERKELEY (MarketWatch) -- This week the French-based Holersoft announced the release of Free Internet TV. This is a simple and downloadable Windows application that allows you to watch more than 1,200 live television channels from 100 countries by streaming media. While this isn't pure IPTV where these streams can be sent to the TV set in high definition, it does show you some of the potential of accessing TV stations on a global basis. Last night I watched a Cuban station (with a mysterious English translation), a game show on Vietnam TV...