April 2, 2008

Cox Gets Serious About HD VOD

Concurrent, SeaChange deals to lead VOD system upgrades, Kevin Martin hangs up on Skype, Peabody Madness and more news.

By Steve Goldstein

News briefing for Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Things got ugly in the Cable360 newsroom last night when one staffer switched from the Mets game to Ovation TV, which was showing the Maysles brothers' iconoclastic Meet Marlon Brando. Good day.

Cox has taken steps to transform its video-on-demand service into a high-definition weapon to be aimed at the satellite companies and the telcos. The MSO’s VOD systems will be upgraded to run on Concurrent’s MediaHawk 4500 content delivery platform and will also use SeaChange’s Axiom back-office platform, both of which should pave the way for a heavier load of HD VOD content, according to a Light Reading report. [Light Reading]

FCC chairman Kevin Martin said at the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas that he will not promote new regulations that would open up existing wireless networks to outside devices, the Wall Street Journal reports. Internet phone service Skype had petitioned the FCC to open wireless networks to competing devices and software. Wireless juggernauts Verizon and AT&T have said that they will open their networks eventually. [Wall Street Journal]

AT&T launched its U-verse Internet protocol-based voice service in parts of Austin and central Texas. Resident of those parts of Austin that get the voice service are now able to subscribe to a U-verse triple play of TV, broadband and voice products.

Showtime says that its season premiere of The Tudors was watched by an equal number of TV and Internet viewers, according to Times blog TV Decoder. The premium network posted the episode on various free video-streaming sites, a strategy it has used before. [TV Decoder]

Briefly Noted
Another top executive has defected from Google. VP of engineering Douglas Merrill is moving on to EMI Music, where he will be president of digital, the New York Times reports. [New York Times]

Layoffs in news departments at media companies continue to trail closely behind declines in revenue. The trend continues this week with layoffs in the news departments at CBS local stations. [New York Times]

The WiMAX Forum’s new study, “WiMAX Forum Worldwide Subscriber and User Forecasts,” estimates that there will be more than 133 million WiMAX users globally by 2012.

Lifetime’s How to Look Good Naked is returning for a second season. [Reuters]

Late Stories
Cable did nicely at this morning’s Peabody awards, with nods for AMC’s 1960-based series about ad execs Mad Men, Sundance Channel’s quirky doc series Nimrod Nation, BBC-Discovery Channel’s epic Planet Earth, Comedy’s The Colbert Report, Bravo’s hit reality series Project Runway and Showtime’s black dramedy Dexter. Also wining was a 3-part BBC World News America report, White Horse Village, about economic development in a Chinese village, which was shown during BBC World News America’s first month of telecasts on BBC America.  And speaking of Discovery Channel's Planet Earth, which took five years and 70 cameramen to make, the show also walked off with  a  Golden Beacon from ACC Tuesday night. [See coverage]

Cable cleaned up ratings-wise during the three-month writers strike, as broadcasters ran a slew of re-runs and reality series (not to mention re-runs of re-runs and reality series), USA Today reports. The larger question is can the broadcasters bounce back? [USAT]

Well, it worked for soccer, why not for hockey? As part of an effort to beef up its original series, Soapnet June 19, 11pm, will premiere MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives (working title), a sexy, scandalous soap series about a Canadian hockey team that promises to include plenty of scoring, some of it even on the ice. A release says it all: “The star player dies of an overdose. His pampered wife ends up on the street. Their daughter sleeps with the hot new rookie.... and the season hasn’t even started yet!” The series joins Relative Madness, premiering May 8 at 11pm. 

Got a tip? Contact sarenstein@accessintel.com and sgoldstein@accessintel.com.

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