Standard General’s long-haul effort to get Federal Communications Commission approval for its proposed purchase of Tegna and its TV stations is getting ugly.

Soo Kim, founding partner of Standard General, hit back hard at critics in a press release issued on BusinessWire Monday (Oct. 17).

Standard General said it was responding to “fact-free” and “repeated ad hominem attacks,” calling out criticisms from representatives of The NewsGuild-CWA, the union that has petitioned to block the deal, and saying they were racially charged and sexist.

Standard General said those attacks included that the deal represented an “anonymous foreign investment” in U.S. newsrooms; that the deal deserved extra scrutiny due to “China['s] increased tensions in the Taiwan Strait;” that the deal “does not promote ownership diversity as it is understood by the public interest and civil rights community, and by commission policy;” and that “Mr. Kim is not barred by his race from becoming a successful entrepreneur” and “Ms. McDermott [Standard Media CEO Deb McDermott, who would head up the combined media group] is not barred by her gender to be selected to run a large corporation.”

“To be clear, I am ethnically Korean. And I am a proud American citizen,” Kim said, adding that his critics were trying to define what constitutes a minority and diversity. As to the intimation he could be an agent of a foreign government, he said, “These fact-free statements are careless given that even a cursory inspection of the documents we have provided would show that I am currently the attributable owner of multiple radio and television stations today.”

Also: Frank Washington Pushes Diversity Argument for Standard General-Tegna Merger

Andrew Schwartzman, one of those representing the guild, said he would not respond to the press release and “whatever we have to say will be in what we file at the Commission.”

The NewsGuild-CWA has already made it clear it sees the deal as reducing jobs — McDermott has said there are no plans to do so — and increasing consumer prices by increasing the retransmission-consent fees multichannel video programming providers (MVPDs) pay for carriage of Standard General TV stations, an increase passed on to MVPD subscribers.

The FCC, which is currently on day 179 of its 180-day deal review shot clock, has twice asked for more information from Standard General about the deal, including its impact on retransmission consent and jobs.

“[W]e have submitted 3 million documents and over 12 million pages of records and have nothing but respect for the regulatory process,” Kim said in a statement. “We will continue to work collaboratively with FCC staff in their review of the facts of the proposed transaction.” ■

Gray Television has reached an agreement with Capital Media Group to acquire WKTB Atlanta, which is known as Telemundo Atlanta. The purchase also includes sister company Surge Digital Media, a boutique digital agency. 

The price was not divulged. 

Gray is based in Atlanta. Late last year, Gray acquired WGCL-WPCH Atlanta, which had been part of Meredith. 

“We are very excited to add Telemundo Atlanta and Surge Digital to our growing local presence in our hometown,” said Gray Chairman and CEO Hilton Howell. “Together, our Atlanta media properties will be better able to grow their local audiences, serve local community groups and provide unparalleled opportunities for local businesses to reach consumers. Moreover, our Telemundo operations in other markets will benefit from the experiences, expertise and talent that Telemundo Atlanta has developed over the past 13 years as a successful family-owned start-up in a very large and competitive media market.”

Co-owned by Susan Sim Oh and Coline Sim, Capital launched the Telemundo operation in 2009. 

“Telemundo Atlanta and Surge Digital Media are looking forward to taking the station and digital agency’s offerings and initiatives to the next level through Gray’s expansive resources,” Susan Sim Oh said. “We know that Gray shares our deep commitment of moving the community forward and we are excited for the opportunities that Gray will bring to our employees and audiences.”

The parties anticipate that both Sim Oh and Sim will join Gray at the closing. Sim will oversee the station’s operations. Sim Oh will assume a new role guiding strategy, multiplatform operations and expansion across the nation for Gray’s Telemundo stations. ■

OpenVault, the Hoboken, N.J.-based broadband technology company, said Wednesday that it has purchased VelociData for an undisclosed sum, a move it says will help it expand into new markets and product lines. 

OpenVault helps broadband service providers better optimize and monetize their networks. With VelociData’s research and development capabilities and list of top-tier customers in the U.S. and Latin America, the company claims it will be able to serve cable, fiber and wireless broadband operators better. 

“The broadband environment is changing so quickly that it seems like each time we help our customers solve one data problem, a new one crops up,” OpenVault founder and CEO Mark Trudeau said in a press release. “VelociData’s focus on engineering and R&D gives us the resources and the synergies that will enable our product and sales teams at any scale to provide even more advanced solutions that will keep the broadband industry ahead of the fast pace of technology, consumer demand, and the competition.”

In an interview, Trudeau said VelociData provides his company with the missing pieces to attract larger Tier 1 providers.

“Certainly having cut or teeth on the small operators, it’s very hard to move upmarket and get that kind of credibility. VelociData has already been in at some Tier 1’s, and that right overnight gives us credibility,” Trudeau said. Because not only are these Tier 1’s long-term customers, but their referenceable customers as well. It does allow us to tell the Tier 1 story. And it’s very complementary to what we do.”

Trudeau explained that OpenVault has taken a different approach to the market originally, less about the data collection and data science and scalability side, but focused more on use cases. That made sense for Tier 2 and Tier 3 clients because they needed that kind of help. VelociData was more about solving the big data problem, making it available and staging it to be able to be used. 

“The beauty of what we’re doing by combining is they were solving the data problem, we were solving the domain and the use case problem. Now we have both,” Trudeau added.   

The VelociData purchase is the first major purchase for Open Vault since it attracted investment from three existing customers -- Service Electric Cablevision, Service Electric Cable TV & Communications, and Blue Ridge Communications -- in October. That investment was targeted at driving expansion via mergers and acquisitions, organic growth, and increased visibility – most notably increased market activity in Europe and Latin America. 

Trudeau said that OpenVault will continue to look for M&A opportunities in the data business. 

“The idea behind the funding was to step on the gas as a company,” Trudeau said, adding that the company is also looking to grow organically, expanding its sales reach especially in Latin America. “...Our eyes are wide open. We’ve got a set of investors that are willing to fund additional acquisitions, and we’re going to do it in an opportunistic way. But we’re going to continue to grow organically as much as we can too.” 

According to OpenVault, the VelociData  purchase immediately increases its size and scale in the U.S. and Latin America; gives it access to more than 120 patents worldwide in the area of data science; brings a proven world-class R&D team to the company to develop new products specifically for the broadband industry; accelerates its strategy to provide additional Closed Loop Automation solutions, including Profile Management Application and enhanced data collection functionality like Streaming Telemetry; and offers more diverse deployment options, including the public cloud, private cloud, on-premises and appliances, for operators. 

Trudeau said OpenVault, which currently has about 50 employees, will bring on VelociData’s 12 workers as part of the deal.  

“Whether it’s better performance or subscriber usage insights, real-time data is the key to unlocking more value from broadband networks,” VelociData CEO Barry Rudolph said in a press release. “As part of the OpenVault organization, we will be able to help broadband providers not only to collect network data, but also to make that data actionable in ways that will immediately improve bottom line results while enabling future shifts to more highly automated intelligent networks.”

Nexstar Media said it acquired the political media publication The Hill for about $130 million.

The company said The Hill will complement its local and national news operations and beef up its digital presence.

The Hill averages 48 million monthly users and had 2.2 billion total pageviews in 2020, according to Nexstar, citing Comscore figures.

"The accretive acquisition of The Hill's independent, political digital media platform marks continued progress with Nexstar's 'content-first strategy' and reflects our organization-wide commitment to deliver trusted, unbiased, fact-based journalism that engages and informs our audiences across all screens and devices," said Nexstar president and COO Tom Carter.

"The Hill acquisition presents the company with a fast-growing and profitable political digital news platform. Jimmy Finkelstein, owner and chairman of The Hill, has done a truly excellent job in creating a national brand with strong profitability," Carter said.

Last year Nexstar bought BestReviews, a digital product review site. The company said it will continue to make strategic, accretive digital investments to scale its digital offerings.

Nexstar owns or manages 199 television stations in 116 markets. It also owns NewsNation, the cable network formerly known as WGN America.

Amazon is in talks to buy MGM, according to numerous published reports.

Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the 97-year-old studio home to film franchises including James Bond, Rocky, RoboCop, The Pink Panther and Chucky the killer doll, has been on the block since December. Apple and Comcast have already kicked the tires and valued the company at around $6 billion. MGM also owns the Epix premium programmer.

Now, MGM’s majority owner, New York investment firm Anchorage Capital, reportedly wants around $9 billion, and that’s the price Amazon is said to be negotiating around.

Amazon’s ties to an MGM purchase have been rumored for several months, but The Information reported on Monday that Mike Hopkins, senior VP of Amazon Studios and Prime Video, is indeed leading an acquisition discussion. The New York Times and Variety, among several other publications, subsequently confirmed these talks themselves. 

According to The NYT, Michael De Luca, MGM’s chairman, presented the studio’s coming slate to Amazon’s team on Friday.

With AT&T agreeing to divest its WarnerMedia division and have it merge with Discovery Inc., media consolidation is certainly top of mind. Much of the discussion around that deal revolves around the opportunity for WarnerMedia and Discovery to jointly compete with the runaway likes of Disney and Netflix, which have more global scale than anyone right now. 

But with 175 million Amazon Prime members worldwide using Amazon Prime Video, according to a recent company disclosure, Amazon’s scale is pretty impressive, too. 

MGM, which has a library of around 4,000 films, would add heft to Amazon Studios at a time when it’s not only programming the subscription Prime Video service, but also is trying to expand the ad-supported IMDb TV platform. 

MGM’s pending film slate includes Ridley Scott's House of Gucci, starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver; an untitled ‘70s-era film directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights) and starring Bradley Cooper; and the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect starring Jennifer Hudson.

Cinedigm said it agreed to acquire FoundationTV, a company with direct-to-consumer streaming, artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics technologies.

FoundationTV, founded by computer and data scientists from Apple, Oracle, NEC and Yahoo, co-developed the Matchpoint technology platform that runs Cinedigm’s streaming channels.

Cinedigm said it plans to integrate the FoundationTV and Matchpoint platforms, and their software engineering teams, into a new division, Cinedigm India, which will be based in Kolkata, India.

Also Read: Cinedigm Adds Content to Refresh Streaming Channels

“As the media business rapidly shifts to highly personalized, direct relationships with consumers, the acquisition of FoundationTV’s comprehensive streaming technology platform gives Cinedigm the end-to-end technological capabilities to compete with anyone in the industry,” said Chris McGurk, chairman and CEO of Cinedigm.

Cinedigm India will begin developing a new branded global umbrella service that will showcase Cinedigm’s portfolio of more than 20 branded streaming channels.

Also Read: Cinedigm Taps Team Whistle to Sell Ads on OTT Networks

Cinedigm India will also build new experiences for the South Asian Market.

“We are excited to become a part of Cinedigm in taking the next leap redefining and transforming the streaming experience for consumers, scaling on a global footprint with Cinedigm content and building on our intelligence driven cloud-native streaming technology platform,” said Samrat Ganguly, founder of FoundationTV.

With its nearly $4 billion bid to acquire Atlantic Broadband all but a memory, Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei told analysts Wednesday that the company still wants to grow via acquisitions, and has its eye on a handful of potential “bite-sized” deals. 

“We definitely want to go out there and find attractive MVPDs to acquire,” Goei said on a conference call to discuss Q4 results. He added that while there are a handful of smaller operators to acquire, that field is narrowed, due to geographic and competitive reasons, is further narrowed down to “a couple.” 

Altice USA teamed up with Canadian telecom company Rogers Communications to launch an unsolicited bid for Atlantic Broadband parent Cogeco in a deal valued at about $7.8 billion. Altice USA originally said it would spend $3.6 billion for Atlantic Broadband, upping that bid to about $3.9 billion, but was continuously rebuffed by Cogeco’s controlling shareholder. After several attempts to get a deal done, Altice USA officially abandoned the effort in November.  

Also Read: Altice and Cogeco: He’s Just Not That Into You 

Goei echoed his Q3 comments concerning future M&A, in that small deals, like its July purchase of Service Electric Cable TV of NJ for $150 million, are just as appealing as the bigger transactions.

“The bite-sized, Service Electric-type acquisitions are very attractive for us,” Goei said. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to unlock one of those this year. But we’ll continue to try to unlock as many of those as possible.”

Goei said that in the absence of M&A, Altice USA would use those resources to buy back its stock. But he added he wouldn’t turn down a large deal if it came along.

“If something like an Atlantic Broadband comes up for sale, or even a larger size than that, we definitely continue to believe that M&A is the best use of our capital if anything is available,” Goei said.

Nexstar said it agreed to acquire BestReviews from Tribune Publishing Co. for $160 million.

Nextstar last year bought Tribune Media’s TV stations.

BestReviews provides consumers with information about products and services and draws a monthly audience of 9 million visitors. 

Also Read: FuboTV to Carry Nexstar’s WGN America Channel

“The planned accretive acquisition of BestReviews diversifies our digital content portfolio while presenting the company with new and significant revenue channels by leveraging our media content, national reach and significant consumer digital usage across multiple platforms,” said Tom Carter, COO and CFO at Nexstar.

“We are acquiring a fast-growing digital product review company with a profitable and scalable business model at an attractive pro forma EBITDA multiple,” Carter said. 

Acquiring BestReviews reflects a broader content monetization strategy at Nexstar.

“BestReviews also provides unique consumer insights to drive higher-margin advertising revenues for local and national advertisers across Nexstar’s digital assets,” said Karen Brophy, president of digital at Nexstar. “Nexstar is committed to developing and executing the company’s strategic local content and viewer engagement initiatives while developing new marketing solutions for advertisers.”

After COVID-19 slowed merger and acquisition activity in the media and telecommunication sector during 2019, deals will be driven by a shift to streaming, according to a new report from PwC.

As big entertainment companies followed consumers’ new consumption patterns, the will want to acquire or develop content, particularly as they expand internationally and require more localized content to compete.

The report noted that cloud and app-based services, digital publishers, podcasting and video game publishers have all become more attractive acquisition targets as advertising budgets became focused on digital mediums and consumers turned to at-home.

Also Read: AT&T Sells Crunchyroll to Sony for $1.175 Billion

On the other hand, businesses that rely on in-person audiences or production and traditional advertising could become takeover targets as their need for funding grows.

“While the Media & Telecom sector was able to pivot to a virtual marketplace during COVID with relative ease, there is no doubt that people miss the personal experiences generated through live events, and we anticipate a full recovery post-COVID. We wouldn’t be surprised to see legislation, regulations and depressed valuations assist in this recovery,” said Bart Spiegel, US Media & Telecom Deals leader.

There were 612 announced deals in the media and telecommunication sector worth $99 billion over the past 12 months, according to the PwC report. 

Also Read: Scripps Goes National By Buying Ion for $2.65 Billion

“Broadly speaking, the sector was one of the most resilient ones during the pandemic, with deal activity remaining largely flat when compared to 2019,” PwC said. The year was off to a fast start, but slowed when the pandemic hit.

The pandemic forced companies to reconsider their core strategies. Large companies pushed their digital strategies, including streaming, data driven advertising and building 5G networks. Those companies also divested non-core assets to generate cash.

Virtual MVPD service FuboTV agreed to be acquired by tech company FaceBank Group.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

The deal is the latest in a series of acquisitions of streaming services. Pluto TV was acquired last year by Viacom. More recently Xumo agreed to be acquired by Comcast and Fox agreed to buy Tubi.

FaceBank said that after the merger, FuboTV will become a wholly owned subsidiary of FaceBank. The combined company will be called fuboTV Inc.

Fubu TV CEO David Gandler is expected to be the CEO of the combined company.

The companies said the combination creates a leading digital entertainment entity combining fubo’s live streaming with FaceBank’s technology driven intellectual property in sports, movies and live performances. The company plans to continue to expand globally, using FaceBank’s Nexway AG eCommerce platform to accept payments.

“The business combination of FaceBank Group and fuboTV accelerates our ability to build a category defining company and supports our goal to provide consumers with a technology-driven cable TV replacement service for the whole family,” said Gandler. “With our growing businesses in the U.S., and recent beta launches in Canada and Europe, fuboTV is well-positioned to achieve its goal of becoming a world-leading live TV streaming platform for premium sports, news and entertainment content. In the current COVID-19 environment, stay-at-home stocks make perfect sense - we plan to accelerate our timing to uplist to a major exchange as soon as practicable. We look forward to working with John and his team of creative visionaries."

Fubo started as a soccer streaming service and has expanded into other sports and entertainment channels.

Fubo had raised more than $150 million in funding. Investors included 21st Century Fox, AMC Networks, Luminari Capital, Northzone, Sky, Discovery, Waverly Capital, DCM Ventures, i2bf, LionTree Partners, Univision, Edgar Bronfman Jr., Chris Silbermann and the late NBA commissioner David Stern.

FaceBank develops digital likeness assets of celebrities and consumers for used in artificial intelligence, entertainment, personal productivity and social networking.

“As a tech-driven IP company, FaceBank was looking to find the perfect delivery platform for its celebrity and consumer driven content, with a dynamic user interface that could support the global consumers’ rapidly evolving practices of content consumption,” said FaceBank founders John Textor and Alex Bafer. “David and his team have a clear vision of the future and fuboTV’s technology is second to none among the disruptor class of content delivery – a perfect match for FaceBank Group.”

For more stories like this, visit our sister website Next TV. 

Cable One said it has completed its $735 million purchase of NewWave Communications, a deal that adds about 214,000 residential primary service units (PSUs, a measure of video, voice and broadband customers) in seven states to the cable company fold.

Cable One first announced the all-cash NewWave deal back in January. NewWave has operations in Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas.

“Our acquisition of NewWave is extremely positive for our customers, our associates and our shareholders,” Cable One CEO Julie Laulis said in a statement “I am pleased to welcome the NewWave teams from around the country to Cable One as we work together to integrate and deliver on our financial objectives.”

Although the mergers & acquisitions market is on a pace to exceed $3 trillion in worldwide deal value in 2015 -- its best year since 2007 -- some leading U.S. dealmakers are beginning to doubt if that pace is sustainable, according to research from law firm Dykema Gossett PLLC.

According to Dykema’s 11th Annual M&A Outlook Survey, only 37% of  respondents to the survey said they believed the M&A market would strengthen in the next 12 months down from 59% in 2014. About 20% said they expected the market to weaken, compared to 9% in 2014.

 While the majority of respondents expected no change in M&A next year, the concern is the most dealmakers have shown in the survey in years, according to Dykema.

In the U.S., the law firm said M&A concerns reflected those for the overall U.S. economy – just 48% of all respondents has a positive outlook for the overall U.S. economy over the next 12 months, the lowest level since 2012.

Pockets of intense deal activity remain – healthcare and technology were at the top of the list, while media ranked No. 12. According to Dykema, healthcare M&A reached $484.2 billion through early September, up from $274.5 billion for the same period in 2014.

Technology deals experienced a similar jump, rising from $268.3 billion in early September 2014 to $356.2 billion through the same point this year.

"M&A activity in 2015 surged for much of the year, but respondents clearly are wondering how long it can last,” co-leader of Dykema’s M&A practice Tom Vaughn said in a statement. “Many of the strong overall results were driven by megadeals, but we agree with the findings that while the outlook for the next year is not as strong as it was a year ago, there is still a great deal of positive momentum in the M&A market.”

Dykema distributed its M&A Outlook Survey via email during August and September to a group of senior executives and advisers including CEOs, CFOs and other company officers. The 147 respondents to this survey represent a cross-section of M&A professionals and advisers with a diverse group of professions and more than a dozen sectors represented, including healthcare, technology, industrial/manufacturing and financial services. Respondents represent companies whose annual revenues range from under $1 million to more than $1 billion

Mergers and acquisitions, fueled by a drive to consolidate mobile communications operators, surged in 2014 in Europe, as big and small names vied to capture the last leg in a quadruple play offering for consumers.

Total deal volume in Europe last year was about $901.4 billion, up 40.5% from $641.4 billion in the prior year, according to Mergermarket. It was the highest value since 2008, the company said.

Dominating the sector were deals involving telecommunications companies. Telecom, Media and Technology deals accounted for about $168.2 billion in volume in 2014, up 24% from the prior year and representing the largest sector in terms of M&A.

While mobile aspirations fueled European deal-making, consolidation and the search for scale economics were the sparks that sent transactions in the United States to record highs. Led by Comcast’s pending deal to acquire Time Warner Cable (which Mergermarket valued at $68.5 billion but Comcast places at more like $67 billion) and AT&T’s $66 billion purchase of No. 1 satellite-TV service provider DirecTV, U.S. TMT deals were worth a collective $302.2 billion, up 24% from 2013, when total deal value was about $284.9 billion.

U.K. DEAL LEADS PACK

Leading the European TMT charge was BT’s (formerly British Telecom) $18.8 billion acquisition of mobile carrier EE (formerly Everything, Everywhere). The acquisition was seen by many as an effort by BT, already the largest telephone carrier in Britain, to further solidify its wireless position in the country.

In its report, Mergermarket said ongoing consolidation in the telecom industry helped the TMT sector account for the biggest chunk of M&A activity.

“One of the trends currently shaping the sector is the convergence toward the ‘quad’ model, with operators bundling together Internet, TV, landline and mobile services,” Mergermarket said.

Pivotal Research Group principal and senior media & communications analyst Jeff Wlodarczak said recently that consolidation in the European telecom sector is well underway, adding that competition in the sector is “brutal.”

“The European wireless [companies] would love to consolidate,” Wlodarczak said in a recent email message. That was obvious in the top five deals in the sector, three of which were mobile-capacity plays — BT’s; Numericable’s $15.9 billion buy of Vivendi SFR; and Spanish carrier Telefonica’s $11.6 billion purchase of E-plus.

Even the non-mobile deals had a quad play feel to them. European wireless behemoth Vodafone, flush with the $130 billion it received from its sale of its 45% interest in Verizon Wireless back to the U.S.-based carrier, continued its quest to snap up cable properties, agreeing last March to buy Spain’s Ono for about $10 billion. That deal built on Vodafone’s other big cable buy — German cable giant Kabel Deutschland in 2013 for $10.1 billion.

German cable has been a hotbed of M&A activity over the past few years, and another player could enter the deal fray later this year. Tele-Columbus, the third largest German cable operator, behind Kabel Deutschland and Liberty Global, is slated to launch an initial public offering in the next month or so, raising about $300 million to pay debt.

Tele-Columbus, which has been an acquisition target in the past — its 2013 deal to be acquired by Kabel Deutschland was rejected by regulators — has said it is not pursuing a sale in line with the IPO. Whether that means it will be an acquirer remains to be seen. It has said the IPO will help fuel its growth strategy as well as pay down debt. But already the company has said it is planning to offer its own mobile service later this year.

LIBERTY LOOKS FOR CONTENT

Liberty Global made a widely anticipated play for the remaining interest in Dutch cable operator Ziggo for $13.7 billion. But the Denver-based international cable powerhouse has been said to be on the hunt for programming and production assets (it purchased U.K. producer All3Media for $930 million in a joint deal with Discovery Communications last year) even as it sold programmer Chellomedia to AMC Networks for about $1 billion.

At a recent industry conference, Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries said any content deals the company engages in are a means to one end — driving distribution.

It’s been speculated that is Liberty eyeing German over-the-top service Maxdome, and in March it announced plans to launch its own wireless product in partnership with other carriers (so-called mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs) that should help give it a quad play. Outside the continent, Liberty is gearing up to launch a tracking stock, Liberty Latin America and Caribbean Group, which could serve as a deal currency in that part of the world.

Wlodarczak said recently that he expects Liberty Global to continue to seek out deals in what he sees as a still favorable regulatory climate.

“I still see lots of little deals for [Liberty Global] and the euro regulators seem to be keeping deal approval at the EU [European Union] level, which as we saw with the Ziggo deal, is beneficial if LGI wants to, say, buy more cable assets in Germany, rather than the local level which tends to be far more difficult,” Wlodarczak said.

Vyve Broadband said it has completed a handful of deals that will fill out existing clusters in its Oklahoma region, adding about 7,000 homes to its footprint.

The deals are for small systems in Eufaula, Cache, Pecan Valley and the surrounding communities. With these transactions – terms of which were not disclosed – Vyve passes about 310,000 homes.

In a statement, Vyve said it would upgrade the systems to deliver broadband speeds up to 105 Megabits per second and voice service.

Vyve was formed in 2013 as BCI Broadband  by former Bresnan Communications executives and is led by CEO Jeffrey DeMond and EVP and chief financial officer Andrew Kober. It changed its name to Vyve in January of this year. The company has already launched its 105 Mbps high-speed Internet service in several markets -- Shawnee, McAlester and Durant, Okla.; Waycross and Douglas, Ga.; New Boston, Texas; and Ottawa and Ft. Riley (Kans.). By year-end, the company said network upgrades will be complete in additional communities in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Colorado and Wyoming.

“Vyve is laser-focused on creating customer experiences that are unequaled in broadband speed and entertainment value,” DeMond said in a statement. “With a Vyve Broadband connection, customers will have access to the wide array of content choices they deserve.”

The increased Internet speeds are coordinated with other Vyve offerings like Watch TV Everywhere and its new Vyve HD Guide, powered by TiVo.