Latest from Next TV in My-turn

I Got My Peacock TV

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 10:00:51 +0000

Peacock TV has landed in my living room, after some anxious days of wondering if I would be compelled to use a laptop or mobile phone to watch the English Premier League soccer I am paying extra to receive.

It is the latest lesson in leverage. I had none: I complained on Twitter but no one listened. Roku had some. The Comcast NBCUniversal conglomerate had the most.

Author Kent Gibbons is Multichannel News (Image credit: Future)

You probably saw how quickly it came about after weeks of seemingly no progress. Peacock launched nationwide on July 15 as a direct-to-consumer service, with a free ad-supported version and premium (pay) renditions.

It’s delivered on the internet: No video package needed from cable or satellite. Remarkably, though, the little black box near my TV, a Roku 4 device, didn’t have Peacock as a channel. (A few clever free channels sprang up, though, like a Peacock screensaver, to entice customers searching for it.)

Comcast NBCU is seriously committed to Peacock as a vehicle to reach consumers with ads and new monthly subscriptions. NBCU’s EPL matches, shown here on weekend mornings and some weekday afternoons, have bounced around from channel to channel, linear and streamed, but have lately been funneled to the Peacock pay version. That’s a traditional form of leverage: buying sports rights and charging cable companies more to show the games, or charging consumers directly to view them.

Problem for NBCU is that Roku is more than just a sidecar device to deliver internet channels to the TV. It’s the most popular such device in the country, and has its own criteria for enabling that access. Whatever those terms are — they have been reported to be a share of the revenue charged for the channels — they were unacceptable to NBCU. (NBCU still has a standoff with Amazon over Fire TV access.)

Stuck in the Middle

On Sept. 18, with the second day of EPL matches ahead, NBCU pulled another traditional lever programmers use in spats with distributors. It informed Roku that it would soon lose access to the NBC app and “TV Everywhere” extensions of NBCU cable channels like USA, Syfy and CNBC. Those are extensions only available to viewers who have those channels on cable, anyway, so that’s not as potent a threat as, say, pulling CBS or Fox signals ahead of the Super Bowl.

But the ice seemingly broke. By the next day, Roku and NBCU came to terms over the NBC apps, including, crucially, Peacock. A couple of days after that, Peacock strutted onto Roku’s channel lineups.

By now, consumers are used to these kinds of blackouts caused by dollar disputes. Some of them are only for a day or two. Some last for years.

By now, consumers are used to these kinds of blackouts caused by dollar disputes. Some of them are only for a day or two. Some last for years. Los Angeles Dodgers baseball local-TV rights were acquired by Time Warner Cable and the games were put onto a new regional sports network in 2014 that most distributors in the L.A. market (other than TWC, now part of Spectrum) refused to pay for. That persisted until April of this year, when DirecTV parent AT&T signed a carriage contract that also includes the online pay TV service AT&T Now.

Cable companies — which only started paying cash to carry broadcast networks in the early 2000s, believe it or not — feel oppressed by the leverage that broadcasters have to charge them more and more. Broadcasters respond that their programming is valuable and, besides, in many cases, cable is the only real provider
of high-speed internet service that reaps huge profits for cable, so operators can afford to pay.

The best way around these impasses that squeeze the consumers caught in the middle is to have alternatives. If your cable company has lost a local broadcaster, get a digital antenna or switch to an online “virtual MVPD” that still has it. If you’re unhappy with your cable internet, if you can, switch to a competitor. At some point, 5G should provide wireless competition.

It’s a bit galling, maybe even ironic, to see these gatekeeper situations extend to direct-to-consumer services, and to see Roku or Amazon or Apple TV stand in the way of me and English Premier League soccer. I was pleased to see cooler heads prevail in this particular dispute.

Now, about HBO Max …

BCHOF 2019 Moment: Byron Allen's Speech

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 22:48:13 +0000

Byron Allen was the third inductee at the 29th annual Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame, on Tuesday night, and the room had gotten a bit quiet. Allen's arrival to the podium [pictured above] changed all that.

"All right let's hear it, come on, come on," he implored, after the photo stop. "I worked my ass off to get here, let’s hear more! [Cheers.] We’re gonna hear some relentless tonight, let's do this. We’re not at a tax convention, come on! [Cheers.] Really, who died? This is not a wake. I just got the Hall of Fame, what the hell! Yes! Yes!"

Allen, the founder, chairman and CEO of Entertainment Studios, and acquirer of TV stations and The Weather Channel in recent months, was in a celebratory mood and did not need anything loaded into a teleprompter. He was ready to share a story that ended up taking over 10 minutes to tell. I listened to the tape and thought I would share a lot of it here.

"I cannot tell you how happy I am right now," he said. "First of all, Broadcasting & Cable, thank you. I’m going to be a subscriber forever, my kids are going to be subscribers, my grandkids are going to be subscribers. They’re going to be, I’m not even in Broadcasting & Cable. I’m like, I don’t care, read it, read it! Look what they did for granddaddy!"

He said humble thanks and congratulated his fellow honorees. "You are looking at the luckiest man in the world," Allen continued. "In the world. I’m not going to lie, I’m going to take that right there, the luckiest man. I am so fortunate and I am so, so blessed. I cannot even begin to count my blessings. I mean, it is beyond, more than what any human being could ever expect."

He praised his wife, Jennifer Lucas, mother of their three children and bestower of their kids' good looks, he said, and noted it was great to see old colleagues and mentors at the event, including Live With Kelly and Ryan exec Art Moore and Fox TV's Jack Abernethy.

Then the story really got into gear.

"The reason why I say I’m so lucky is because my mother got pregnant with me when she was 17 years old, and she had me 17 days after her 17th birthday. April 22, 1961, in Detroit, Michigan. A little black teenage girl having a little black baby in Detroit in ‘61, I was born without civil rights. And she never, ever stopped believing in me or supporting me.

"April of ‘68 came along and Martin Luther King was assassinated and the military took over my neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan. I was seven years old and I was looking down the barrel of a United States Army tank. Soldiers walking on my lawn with bayonets and dogs, guns pointed at us. And they made it very clear: get in the house or we will shoot and kill you. My mother said, OK, let’s get out of Detroit. Let’s go visit some relatives and friends in L.A. Summer of '68. We never, ever went back to Detroit.

"Went to L.A., slept on a lot of sofas, a lot of floors, for a couple of years. Unfortunately, there was talk about my mother not being able to afford to keep me, because we were struggling. And as a child, that rocked my core. Because I was someone who just lost my father, through a divorce, and now I’m about to lose my mother because she couldn’t afford me. So, I was about nine or 10 years old, I started making money right then and there.

"I went to the supermarket and I asked them, can I have a job, packing groceries. They said, how old are you? I said I’m 10. They said no, you're not old enough to work here, you have to be at least 16. I said, how old is that guy right there packing the groceries? He said he’s 16. I said, well, look at that, he put eggs on the bottom of the bag. I’m 10 years old and I know not to do that! [Laughter.] My grandmother taught me don’t put the eggs at the bottom of the bag.

"He said, I’m sorry son, you can’t have a job. I said, OK sir, I appreciate your time. And I walked out to the parking lot and I saw this lady pushing a grocery basket back into the store. And she put it in a machine and she got a stamp. I said, what is that? She said if you get 100 stamps, you get a dollar’s worth of food. So I worked that parking lot day and night, kept putting baskets in that machine, and I would come home with food for my mother. I'd say, you can afford to keep me, we can stay together.

"My mother ended up going to UCLA and getting her master’s degree in cinema TV production," Allen said, to big applause.

"And because she was at UCLA working on her master’s degree, she was able to go to NBC and get an interview. And she asked for a job, and they said no. And she asked some very important questions. She said do you have an intern program, and they said no, we don’t. And then she asked the question that changed our lives: She said would you start one with me? And they said yes, we will.

Read More: Byron Allen Is Not Kidding Around

"And my mom got a job at NBC, giving tours, and then later in publicity and marketing. And because she could not afford child care, she took me to NBC. And I stayed and I waited for my mama to get off work. And that’s where I stood and I watched Johnny Carson do the Tonight Show, and Bob Hope, and Redd Foxx do Sanford and Son, and Freddie Prinze. And I watched all these great comedians, Flip Wilson, this was in the mid 70s. And I said, that’s what I want to do with my life, I want to make people laugh. I’m going to entertain people, I’m going to bring joy to this world, I’m going to make it a better world. And I started writing and doing standup with Jimmie Walker and Jay Leno and David Letterman and I never looked back. And I quit my paper route and I haven’t worked a day since I quit my paper route. [Applause.]

"They were giving me half a penny a paper and I said, no I don’t need it. Did the Tonight Show with Johnny, never looked back. Got a number of offers. They said, check out this show. I said, what is this? They said, Real People. And I’m very numerical. And I said you know what, out of all the offers I’ve gotten, this is the one I want, Real People. They said why that show? I said there are three networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, 66 hours of primetime television. This is the only hour different from the other 65. This show is going to work. It’ll certainly work long enough to get me through USC Film School. This is the show. That show ended up being the daddy, the granddaddy of reality and changed the face of television.

"But that wasn't enough," Allen continued. "I wanted to learn the business. I said, show business is not the way you get there, it’s business show. So I’m going to share something with you I haven't shared with many. I’m originally from Detroit but I live in L.A. I said, who is the best in the business and how do I learn the business? They said, go to New York, go to NATPE.

"January of '81, I was 19 years old, and I came with my mother and I went to the New York Hilton, right around the corner [from the Ziegfeld Ballroom]. And I walked into the lobby and I said, who’s the best? They said Al Masini. I said, tell me about Al Masini. They said he’s up on the 45th floor, he’s the best. I said, all right.

Meet the B&C Hall of Fame Class of 2019

"I waited a half hour to go up the floors. Elevators were stuck -- some of you were there, Greg Meidel was there. Greg and I have the same birthday, April 22, I love you Greg, we wish each other happy birthday every year. I go up and Al Masini had his back to me and he was pitching some of the very men in this room, some of the very people in this room. And he’s telling you, I’ve got this show with the biggest movie star in the world on it, Burt Reynolds. And I’m going to put this show on the satellite and you’re going to run it the same night. What’s it called? He said Entertainment Tonight. They said, OK Al. And I watched him sell Entertainment Tonight and Star Search and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Solid Gold and a miniseries about Golda Meir, A Woman Called Golda.

"And I introduced myself and I said, 'Mr. Masini, I understand you're the best. My name is Byron Allen and I am hear to learn from you, sir. Where we having dinner tonight?' And he actually said, 'We’re going to have Italian food tonight.' I said save me a seat, I want to check this out.

"And he became a second father to me. He let me be the son he never had. And he loved me and he embraced me and he never judged me. And I’m proud, because he was the first person inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame, 29 years ago. [Applause.]

"And I’m proud because, as a great mentor, he said things to me that weren’t true. He said, 'Byron, you’re special, you’re unstoppable, and you too, one day, will be inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame.' I didn’t believe him. And he’s not here physically, but I know he’s here spiritually. And it’s great people like that that we all need in our lives, to help us be better.

"And that’s my commitment. My commitment to the industry, my commitment to my family, my commitment to my friends is to make a difference. I’m not just here to make money. My wife met me 20 years ago. She said, 'What are you doing with your life?' I was in a one-bedroom condo. I said, 'I’m building the world's biggest media company, that’s what I’m doing. Unstoppable. Do you want to come along?' And she said 'yes,' and thank you.

"But that’s not all I’m doing," Allen said, nearing a conclusion. "I want to make it better for the world. I want to make sure we have more inclusion for women like my mother, and more inclusion for people of color, and I want to have more inclusion for everyone.

"I want to make sure it’s a level playing field," Allen said. "Because that’s why America is great, and that’s why America will always be great. And nothing makes me prouder than being a part of this industry, because you are some of the best Americans to live. Thank you, I love you."

Time to Own the Home

Leslie Jaye Goff — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 11:00:00 +0000

Ask cable providers these days about their top customer-service priorities and the answer is likely to be along the lines of: It’s time to own the wireless space inside the home.

That was a familiar refrain at both The Independent Show, the Indianapolis gathering of small to midsized operators, and at the New England cable convention in Newport, R.I., where Charter Communications executive vice president Tom Adams used that very phrase. Providing 60 Megabits per second of internet speed is great, he noted — but how consumers experience that bandwidth in terms of how WiFi-connected devices perform makes the difference in how happy they are about it.

Jeff Baumgartner points this out in "Whole-Home WiFi Heats Up," the feature that opens this week's issue of MCN. As Philip Nutsugah of Cox said, most consumers will tell you “the internet is WiFi.” Cox also sees it as a revenue opportunity, rolling out the $9.99 monthly Panoramic WiFi product promising “fast WiFi coverage in every single part of your home.”

Importantly, it’s not just Cox and Comcast — which recently launched a WiFi-network management platform dubbed xFi — seizing on this, but also smaller operators such as Atlantic Broadband and Midco. Executives from Wave Broadband and Harron Communications in Indy said it was essential to educate consumers about how to get the best experience from their WiFi-linked gadgets.

How many gadgets? An average of about 10 are connected to Comcast’s gateways at any given time — a number seen as quintupling in the next several years.

When cable operators introduced broadband, it was the product that sold itself and a huge quality of life improvement. Now broadband is a necessity and the most important part of the cable bundle. Providers continue to increase the download and upload speeds that consumers crave. Keeping them happy, though, may depend on delivering the best WiFi experience, too.

Objects of Desire in 'Building Star Trek'

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Fri, 02 Sep 2016 16:00:00 +0000

At lunch the other day a Star Trek fan around my age admired the cool ad in our magazine for the upcoming Building Star Trek special on Smithsonian Channel. All it takes is a photo of a spiffed-up original-model starship Enterprise (I used to have one hanging from my bedroom ceiling) to revive the desire for a phaser, a tricorder or, especially, a clicking communicator (pictured) one felt back in the day. This two-hour special has a lot of that sort of object envy, including by curators at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and at the EMP Museum in Seattle. The special goes close up on the former museum's restoration of the original eight-foot-long U.S.S. Enterprise model, the one used in the 1966-69, three-season series: the 50th anniversary of the premiere is this coming Thursday (Sept. 8) and the aging model was earmarked to hang in Air and Space's front hall, along with Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, the original lunar lander and other pioneering craft. EMP Museum went after other original set pieces, including Captain Kirk's command chair, Ensign Chekov's navigation console from the Enterprise bridge and the aforementioned handheld devices. Make sure to hang on until the big reveals. Also, as my lunch compadre noted, the special touches on the Cold War analogues in the series and important characters and cast members such as Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura, an African-American woman who was a key member of the crew, an unusual role on television in the 1960s.

The show -- while doing its part to promote the latest movie in the series, Star Trek Beyond -- delves into much trivia about the original series and explores the possibilities of faster than light "warp" engines; tractor beams to grab and move distant objects in space; cloaking devices that can make starships invisible and other concepts that might or might not ever become reality. “Science fiction inspires scientists to invent what they see in science fiction,” as EMP Museum curator Brooks Peck notes. There's science here but mostly it's for fun.

Bonus link: this Smithsonian Magazineoral history of Star Trek is a must read for serious fans.

Building Star Trek premieres on Smithsonian Channel on Sunday, Sept. 4, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

Behind the Return of 'Punkin Chunkin'

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 01:30:00 +0000

There were lots of important-sounding initiatives mentioned at the Discovery Communications upfront. Documentaries about planetary missions. Specials about audio pollution in the oceans, water use and wildlife conservation.

What caught my attention? Science Channel is bringing back Punkin Chunkin after a three-year hiatus.

Marc Etkind became general manager of the channel in October 2015. He says he’s always felt the autumn special – covering a Delaware event that’s all about propelling pumpkins a long way using homemade contraptions – epitomizes backyard and everyday science. Engineering teams compete in a variety of technology (cannon, catapult, trebuchet, etc.) and age categories. The overall distance record, by adults using air (cannon), is 4,964.68 feet, set in 2013.

“When I took over the network, one of the first things I said was, ‘I want Punkin Chunkin back,’” Etkind told me. He said he wasn’t sure why the special came off the channel’s fall calendar after airing between 2008 and 2013. It certainly wasn’t a problem regaining the rights to cover the event, he said.

Science Channel will return to the field with more coverage than before: three hours instead of two, with more pre- and post-event close-up coverage of the participating teams.

Expect more drone views of the field, Etkind said. Since 2013, camera technology has improved, too. “We’ll be able to put cameras on the pumpkins in ways we haven’t done before,” the GM added.

Other than that tidbit, Etkind said production details still need working out.

Science had its best primetime year in 2015 and says its first quarter of 2016 was its best quarter ever in terms of L3 viewing in a variety of key demographics. Etkind also is trying to draw a younger audience, the channel notes.

Etkind also recommended the Punkin Chunkin championships as a live in-person event. (Science Channel airs its coverage as a special soon after the event takes place.)

“How often do you get to go and cheer on engineers?”

We Like It Like App

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 14:15:00 +0000

As this week’s cover story and four-page chart by Jeff Baumgartner point out — and you all probably know already — more and more of our “television” consumption is being done via apps instead of via cable or satellite or over the air.

We use them on our mobile devices and on our Internet-connected TV sets. We use them to divorce ourselves from pay TV bundles and to add streaming services into the TV mix. Apps also allow us to enjoy our pay TV services outside the home or in another room, on the smartphone or tablet — for example, by making it possible to watch DVR-recorded shows remotely.

They are part of what makes it so difficult to measure how many people are watching what programs and when, a topic of intense interest to programmers who want to make sure they’re making as much ad revenue as possible.

They do a lot. And they are such a part of our TV viewing that it’s easy to forget they are fairly new, and still evolving.

Jeff ’s story points to some of the continuing improvements — making it easier to sign on and stay signed on; letting you watch other content libraries, such as video-on-demand shows; letting you search by voice command.

“This thing is only just beginning,” Matt Nelson, marketing head for app-platform developer You.i TV, said during a panel at the TV of Tomorrow conference in New York last week. He and others on the panel had been talking about how they were trying to make apps simpler and more like alwayson TV. When you open the Crackle streaming app on Roku, for example, “the video just starts playing when you enter the interface,” he said, and not necessarily at the beginning of a show but “at a really interesting part of the video.”

Clark Pierce, senior vice president of TV Everywhere at Fox Sports, talked about the company first wanting the Fox Sports Go app to open up with lots of stats and graphs and on-demand video options. “Very close to launch, we made a very big pivot and we just focused on the live streaming of video.” Now, he said, a focus is on reducing the delay between what you see from a live event on, say, FS1 and what you see on the app.

Helge Hoibraaten, CEO of Norwegian OTT vendor Vimond, showed an image of the Reuters TV app, which delivers personalized news programs. “Why do I love this? Because it’s so simple. You just open the app, and it hits you with the full-screen TV experience that is guessing what you want to see, and it’s up to date. You don’t have to click anything.”

What we like now, it seems, is only going to keep getting better.

Bouncing Soccer Ball Stays In NBC Net

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 23:45:00 +0000

U.S. fans of England's Premier League have gotten increasingly spoiled by TV providers here. According to this recap by Worldsoccertalk.com, coverage was limited the first few seasons, then gained steam under Fox in the late 1990s, was supplemented for several years by ESPN (which excelled after initially buying a limited slate of games that had been on Setanta Sports USA) and then moved two-plus seasons ago to NBC Sports Network. The league has decided to stick with NBC Sports properties, under a six-year extension announced today. The price tag went up from NBC Sports Group's initial three-year deal, group chairman Mark Lazarus said. The current deal, now in its final season, had NBC paying $83 million per year, according to reports.

The work these programmers have put into promoting the league have helped elevate the games' value as a TV commodity -- at a time when soccer's U.S. TV fortunes are on the rise with the improvements of the USA men's and women's teams in recent FIFA World Cups. One would expect that the bidding this time around for U.S. rights to the wealthy English league were spirited. TV-sports sources indicated there were two other rivals up against NBC this time around. ESPN, interestingly, did not bid. A bit of a surprise, given their executives' interest in the product, their openly expressed disappointment at losing FIFA World Cup rights to Fox (English language) and NBC (Spanish) and their network's recent not-so-hot streak that helped spark a big selloff of media stocks last week. ESPN would not comment but a source said the league would not entertain bids placed jointly by more than one media organization, and ESPN did not have the inventory to commit to showing every game due to its extensive college-football commitments. Fox did bid, according to sources, as did BeIN Sports, the Al Jazeera Media outlet that shows games here from top leagues in Spain and Italy among other soccer properties.

NBC has been a proper steward of the league, both in terms of marketing zeal (the pictured billboard from Times Square promoting the league's arrival being one example) and on-air commitment. Every league match is shown, either on TV by use of virtual overflow channels by some providers or via online streaming. NBC also imported the popular "Match of the Day" recap format from the United Kingdom and picked up the offbeat witty commentary of Roger Bennett and Michael Davies -- the Men In Blazers -- a program that originated on ESPN. NBC's Lazarus told reporters on a call that "our marketing and promotion and that we have emphasized all 20 teams, and that we are not just taking the top three or four" helped impress the Premier League overseers. "We are showing that this is a league of 20 teams and that they all have a chance to get going and that adds value to the league," he said, according to a transcript.

Lazarus said the Premier League helps establish NBCSN as "a destination for live sports," also including the National Hockey League and motor sports (including Formula 1, another weekend morning staple that NBC acquired away from Fox). He said it's growing and has a "very young audience profile, a very affluent audience profile."

I'm a Premier League fan, if you haven't already guessed. I've enjoyed each step of the league's TV progression here. I watched my first pro soccer game at the CTAM Summit in Seattle 12 years ago -- Fox invited some attendees to see Manchester United play an exhibition against Celtic (of Glasgow). I celebrated when ESPN showed its first Sunday match. And I watch Saturdays and Sundays on NBCSN, with the iPad monitoring alternate games. As a fan of the league, I think NBC's performance merited a return, and look for more and better things with this six-year extension.

That was Lazarus's message, too. "Having this now for seven more seasons, gives us the ability to continue to invest," he said. "In a three‑year cycle, the minute you sign, you sort of feel like you’re running for office again. We are in office for a little while now, so we can continue to invest."

Photo credit: NBC Sports Group.

'Red Road' Returns: Is a Casino Inevitable?

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 18:45:00 +0000

Season one of The Red Road on SundanceTV was a murky crime and cultural stew set in the mountains of northern New Jersey, where a Lenape Indian tribe and rural New Jerseyans co-exist uneasily. It introduced Jason Momoa as the dynamic anti-hero Philip Kopus, a repeat offender with an honor code (frequently broken, as in when he kills his best friend) but whose disadvantages include having a depraved criminal father, currently incarcerated, played by Tom Sizemore. The other principals are local police officer Harold Jensen (Martin Henderson), who somehow survived his encounters with the Kopuses in season one, and his wife, Jean (Julianne Nicholson), who learned in season one that she suffers from schizophrenia. Meanwhile, the hills where the local Native American tribe lives (including Kopus, whose mother, played by Tamara Tunie, is a tribe leader) are polluted and the newly-recognized tribe might or might not want to bring in a casino.

That's a brief recap that leaves out a lot but it sets the stage for some interesting developments in season two. Most of the characters are back: even Tamara Tunie's character, Marie, is in remission from her cancer. (Six questions with Law & Order SVU vet Tamara Tunie here.) Philip Kopus is out of jail, with an ankle monitor, and keeping a relatively low profile. He does have some guilt issues, though, and not a lot of luck on his side. Harold Jensen, by contrast, seems to be riding his luck pretty well, including on the job, despite the many corners he has had to cut. Many of them in season one were to protect Jean, and her story in these new episodes offer an interesting exploration of her condition, and whether or not non-traditional approaches might help.

Season two of The Red Road has more of a grown-up feel than the anxious first season, with more time to explore the individual characters when they are not under constant stress. There is a murder in episode one, though, and no doubt there will be more than enough danger ahead. Wes Studi joins the cast as pro-casino tribal chief Levi.

Photo, of slightly bloodied Philip Kopus (Jason Momoa), from SundanceTV by Quantrell D. Colbert.

Honorable Mentions

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 16:15:00 +0000

TV viewers looking for some strong female-driven dramas have two terrific new options this summer, one on Starz and the other on SundanceTV. I say this as my wife and I are midway through screener-disk binges of Outlander and The Honorable Woman, respectively, sometimes forgetting if we are caught between the English and Scots in 1743 or between the Israelis and Palestinians today. Outlander premieres on Aug. 9; The Honorable Woman started on July 31.

Outlander will benefit from fans of Diana Gabaldon’s series of novels. Starz will certainly hope to attract many of them as new premium subscribers, as will distributors such as Time Warner Cable. The companies sponsored a screening and panel session last week at New York’s 92nd Street Y that drew a packed house with shrieks resembling gatherings at Comic-Con International.

The Honorable Woman has stars led by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and bears a resemblance to the Showtime hit Homeland. But, as an otherwise unknown quantity, it needs social support from those who’ve seen the show — including those watching it now in the U.K. on BBC2, where they spell it “Honourable.”

Outlander is a costume drama that gets the period details right and pulls off the nifty trick of leaving a lot of dialogue in untranslated Gaelic, making viewers feel that, like Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe), they’ve been transported to a foreign place and will require all their wits and skills to survive.

The Honorable Woman does a bit of timetraveling — to 29 years ago, eight years ago and back to the present — and places Gyllenhaal’s character, Nessa Stein, in physical danger, too. Both also must keep secrets.

Claire knows she won’t be believed if she says she’s from the future, and already has enough powerful men skeptical about her. Nessa is keeping a life-or-death secret that keeps interfering with her efforts to bring peace and prosperity to Palestine and Israel.

Some 10 O'Clock Show Reviews

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 16:30:00 +0000

A few previews of shows I recommend early on this week:

Longmire, A&E, series 3 premiere, Monday, June 2, at 10 p.m. This show does well with season premieres – the season 2 opener, in which Sheriff Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) stalked an escaped killer on foot up a mountainside in the snow, was especially memorable. Season 3’s opener starts off quiet, for a few seconds, then revs up in a hurry. Walt displays MacGyver-like skill trying to help wounded deputy Branch Connally, who was last seen bleeding on a Wyoming hillside, on the cellphone calling Walt for help. Taylor’s strong, silent-type acting and the intersection of white Western and Indian cultures are the highlights of this series, along with the landscapes and an ace cast that also includes Katee Sackhoff (Deputy Vic Moretti), Lou Diamond Phillips (Henry Standing Bear) and Cassidy Freeman. Freeman, who plays Longmire’s daughter Cady, looks to have a (welcome) bigger role this season as she and Walt defend Henry against charges he killed the man who murdered Walt’s wife, way back before season 1 began. This episode I'd characterize as a good Walt and Branch one, a nice change from their antagonism of seasons past. And maybe even a breakthrough between Walt and his reservation counterpart, Officer Mathias (Zach McClarnon). Let's face it, with Henry locked up, Walt's going to need all the help he can get.

Cry Wolfe, Investigation Discovery, series premiere, Tuesday, June 3, at 10 p.m., with back to back episodes. This engaging new show stars Boston-accented Los Angeles P.I. Brian Wolfe and his investigative assistant, Janine McCarthy (pronounced “McCaahthy”), as they act out dramatized versions of field work from Wolfe’s case files. I stress dramatized and act out because, at least in the review disk, it wasn’t clear to me that the cameras weren’t following Wolfe around during the actual course of his business, which in the first two episodes are investigating suspected cheating spouses. Wolfe comes across as a nice guy, uncynical and sincere when he says things like “hopefully, Todd’s not cheating.” Viewers should stay open to all possible outcomes, too.

Fargo, FX, episode 8, Tuesday, June 3, at 10 p.m. If there’s a better new TV drama this season, I haven’t seen it. It has the spirit of the Coen brothers’ movie and almost, almost makes you believe the claim that it’s a true story, except it’s too funny, sad and sometimes shocking to be true. The acting is terrific all around, especially Allison Tolman as Deputy Molly Solverson (roughly the Frances McDormand role in the movie) and Martin Freeman as Lester Nygaard (roughly the William H. Macy character) but all down the line, including two guests, Key and Peele’s Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele as FBI agents Bill Budge and Webb Pepper. From each installment's first minute, you know you’re watching a new movie, and this episode is probably the most satisfying one yet. Go ahead, start now if you haven't already.

Meet Delaware's New NBC Affiliate

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 02:30:00 +0000

Delaware has its first in-state affiliate of one of the top four broadcast networks, as WRDE-TV in Rehoboth Beach is relaunching as an NBC station branding itself "Coast TV," serving the rural Delmarva Peninsula area.

Channel president Bob Backman (pictured below) obtained the NBC affiliation some two years after first approaching Comcast-owned NBCUniversal about the idea. He then obtained retransmission-consent agreements with Comcast, the biggest multichannel video programming distributor in the Delmarva area, and with Dish Network, according to Matthew Davidge, who has been working with WRDE as a consultant.

Backman wrote directly to Steve Burke, the CEO of NBCUniversal, according to Davidge. "Steve Burke passed the letter on and it made it to Jean Dietze’s desk, the head of affiliate relations at NBC. We then developed a good relationship with Jean and [NBCU's] Gary Ventolo over time and eventually voila! They realized the need was there -- why should someone on the Delaware beach or the Maryland shore be watching NBC 'local' news from a Big 10 city over 100 miles away? It makes no sense."

A Comcast spokesman said the company is still evaluating what changes might be made to the local lineup in the Sussex County, Del., region as a result of WRDE's joining as an NBC affiliate in June. Currently the company imports NBC affiliate signals from Philadelphia (WCAU) and Baltimore (WBAL). Customers will be notified about any possible changes in the coming weeks, the company said.

WRDE, a low-powered digital station, in June will convert from being a retro-programmed MyNetwork TV and COZI TV affiliate and create local news, weather and sports programming for 6 and 11 p.m. on Coast TV.

The "MyNetwork COZI TV" broadcasts will shift to 31.2 and continued on Comcast and over the air. WRDE Coast TV will be over the air on channel 31.1 and shown on Comcast in high definition and standard definition (channel 9) and in standard definition on Dish. Davidge said retransmission carriage talks are under way with other providers in the region, namely DirecTV, Mediacom Communications (which has carried WRDE on channel 99) and Verizon FiOS TV.

Davidge said the Delmarva region is served by stations that air CBS and Fox programming (WBOC-TV) and ABC and CW programming (WMDT-TV), but both of those are based in Salisbury, Md. The Salisbury market area is designated as No. 142 by Nielsen, containing about 162,000 homes.

"I've been privileged to have lived in Rehoboth Beach for six years and to be a member of this wonderful community," Backman said in a statement to be released Thursday. "The people in Rehoboth Beach deserve their own NBC station with in-depth coverage of the concerns of the coastal community. Well, now they have one!"

The release also has laudatory quotes from the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce and Delaware Economic Development Office chiefs.

Davidge said credit goes to Backman for his community efforts and to NBCU and Comcast for recognizing the value in having a local Delaware NBC affiliate and then negotiating a retransmission agreement to put it on the local cable system. The Delmarva area is flat and rural and receives programming from relatively nearby media markets Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., he said, but had local news and concerns of its own that Coast TV will seek to serve.

"It is amazing to me that in all these years of broadcasting this hasn't happened before," Backman told me in an email Wednesday. "We're really excited about bringing a local NBC station to Rehoboth Beach and Delmarva and we're going to make sure it was worth the wait."

Vikings Firmly In The Zeitgeist

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 02:48:00 +0000

Michael Hirst has sympathy for pagans, including eighth-century Vikings, and the fate their religion suffered at the hands of Christianity.

If that turns around the cliché of Norse raiders savaging Christian monasteries in Britain, well, that’s nothing new for the creator and writer of History’s hit series Vikings. After surpassing all other new cable series last year to average 4.3 million total viewers (2 million in the adults 25-54 bracket), the show returns for a 10-episode second season, set in A.D. 796, this coming Thursday, Feb. 27.

Season one was a lot more than swords, sails and a total absence of historically incorrect hornet helmets. It was a deep dive into Dark Ages Scandinavians’ family and religious lives, their technology and their feudal social structures.

Hirst told me a highlight of season two is the conflict between Viking religious beliefs and how “the triumph of Christianity meant the total demise and disappearance of pagan religion.” It’s personified by Athelstan (played by George Blagden), the monk who was taken prisoner by Viking leader Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel) in season one and is now caught between the Saxon and Viking worlds and their gods. “It was a real issue for him, and was a real issue for a lot of people at the time,” Hirst said in a recent telephone interview from his home in, at that time, flood-soaked England.

He mentioned with pride that a Huffington Post review called Vikings the rare television show that takes religion and religious belief seriously. He also took note that "somehow, Vikings is in the Zeitgeist." A major new exhibition, "Viking," is about to open at the British Museum (through June 22) that includes a revelatory Viking ship dug up recently that could carry more than 100 warriors. Another Viking settlement has been found on the coast of Canada, he said, and Viking graves have been dug up in York, England, and of a Viking princess in Russia. "Somehow, the Vikings have come back to us," he said.

I might note here that a new Smithsonian Magazinearticle on the British Museum exhibit is headlined: "Revenge of the Vikings: After decades of scholarship that emphasized their kinder, gentler side, the bad boys of the North are back with a vengeance." History's Vikings has shown both elements all along.

Viewers this season also will see that Vikings, more than merely raiders, were settlers. One of Ragnar’s goals this season is to make a treaty with the English and build communities and farm, not just plunder. As Hirst notes, Vikings founded Dublin in Ireland and York, England, in addition to colonizing North America centuries before Columbus.

There is plenty of violence in season two, no mistake. “No one is denying that they were brutal and the world was brutal,” Hirst said. But bear in mind the tales of their bloodthirsty deeds were written about by the Christian monks who were their victims. And one could also say “they happened to be particularly brilliant fighters.”

We’ll see this season that, unlike in the West at that time, Viking women could divorce their husbands. (We already know Viking women could fight in battle, as shown by the fierce shield maiden Lagertha, played by Katheryn Winnick.)

Not to skip past season two, which Hirst notes has a heftier scale and bigger battles than the first go-round. “It felt like we’d gone up two notches,” was his reaction when he returned to the original village set (in Ireland) to see it had quadrupled in size.

But season three, which he’s writing now, would include one heck of a centerpiece for the historic Ragnar.

“It’s no secret that I want them to attack Paris, because Paris at that time was a very significant city,” the The Tudors writer creator said of the raid in 845 A.D. “The attack on Paris, there were over 100 Viking ships, and it’s a great story I want to tell.”

Vikings season two premieres Thursday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on History. Photo of Michael Hirst with the Tudor king, Henry VIII, by Richard Cannon. A version of this blog post appeared in Through the Wire in the Feb. 24 Multichannel News.

Tom Calderone of VH1's Top CDs of 2013

admin — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 16:45:00 +0000

Wondering what albums to present, in hardware or software form, as a holiday gift? Here's an exclusive list of the top titles of 2013 from VH1 president Tom Calderone, who got his start as an alternative-rock DJ.

“The cool thing about this year was an immense diversity,” Calderone (pictured with one of his favorite acts, Haim) told me recently. “Not everything sounded the same. You could look at Kurt Vile and John Grant as quote-unquote singer-songwriters, but coming with a totally different perspective on how they get their words across. On the other side you have the power of the women this year. Whether it’s MIA, who basically did the album that Gaga should have done. Then you have three sisters from California who started a family band, Haim, and all of a sudden became international superstars and now are starting to take over the United States. That has been fun to watch.”

He also enjoyed seeing established artists such as Arctic Monkeys produce “probably their most seminal, important album in their career.”

Herewith, the list:

1. Arctic Monkeys: AM.

2. M.I.A: Matangi.

3. The 1975: Self-titled debut album. “Very simply produced, but complex lyrics, complex layers of sound.”

4. Jay Z: Magna Carta Holy Grail. “Really edgy. His rhymes are great in this one.”

5. Palma Violets: 180. “When you listen to them they sound more jingle-jangle pop, but they are full on a rock band. They are just disruptive for all the right reasons.”

6. Foals: Holy Fire. “I’m really impressed with the way they have taken on an incredibly complex production style and made it into their own.”

7. Haim: Days Are Gone.

8. The National: Trouble Will Find Me. “For me, it’s all about [Matt Berninger’s] voice. And this album is really, really strong.”

9. Sleigh Bells: Bitter Rivals. “They rock out as hard as Muse does but add a little more hiphop and topicality to their music.”

10. Parquet Courts: Light Up Gold. “Clever is the best way to describe them. I’m just really impressed with them.”

11. Peace: In Love. “If John Hughes was still making movies today, he would be using Peace as one of his bands, particularly this song called ‘Lovesick.’ ”

12. Kurt Vile: Wakin On A Pretty Daze.

13. John Grant: Pale Green Ghosts.

14. Yo La Tengo: Fade.

15. Chvrches: The Bones Of What You Believe. “They’ve had a lot of really great singles but this is the first time they’ve put together a strong, strong record, and I think this one’s going to through for the next year or so.”

(This originally appeared in Multichannel News' Through the Wire.)

Building a Network About Education

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 18:07:00 +0000

A labor of love for three cable-programming veterans – a cable network focused on education – has taken a step toward its goal by launching on-demand video programs on Verizon’s FiOS TV.

American Education Television Network (American ED TV), nearly three years in the works, is the brainchild of former sports-network distribution executive Matt Cacciato and two former Court TV colleagues, producer Fred Cambria and on-air anchor Jack Ford.

“What we aspire to be is sort of the ESPN of the education world,” Ford, a legal analyst for CBS News, told me, as recounted in this week's Multichannel News Through The Wire column (subscription required).

“We’re going to tell all the important stories, and we’ll do all the important features, and we’ll have a lot of the educational news you can use.”

Short-form features now in FiOS’s news and information folder include ones ranking colleges by their entrepreneurial degree programs, by “green” curricula and by how students rank their professors. They’re hosted by Ford and Rob Franek, publisher of The Princeton Review, filmed on the campus of Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.

Future topics will include STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs, test preparation and educational technology.

Cacciato, a longtime YES Network executive before moving full time to the new enterprise, said the model initially relies on sponsors and advertisers. The charter sponsor is Columbus, Ohio-based science and technology research firm Battelle, and VOD technology provider Vubiquity is a strategic partner.

“FiOS TV subscribers have wide viewing interests for live and on-demand video content,” Michelle Webb, executive director of video content and strategy at Verizon, said in a statement. “The addition of American ED TV to our video on demand library enhances the content consumers can access to learn more about education and at a time that is convenient to their schedule.”

Jim Riley, chief revenue officer at VOD encoder and distributor Vubiquity, also said in the statement: “Studies have shown that the Free On Demand category drives a high degree of satisfaction with subscribers. By adding quality programming focused on the education market to the mix, American ED TV is a key part of the movement that continues to drive value from the FOD platform. We’re thrilled that American ED TV recognized our expertise in both delivering and marketing content and chose Vubiquity to help launch the service.”

Ford, a former trial lawyer who teaches law at Yale University and New York University, said the FiOS features will show that American ED TV is going to be entertaining to watch, and not a tutorial for teachers.

When the network reaches full-time status, shows might also include reality series. One in the works already is about “the great drama” parents and kids engage in by visiting campus after campus in the hunt for a college to attend, he said.

Joe Covey, CEO of the Mag Rack how-to VOD service, said he offered to provide American ED TV videos with a launch pad before the network struck its own carriage deal with FiOS.

He called education an underserved category on TV and predicted viewers will find the network, despite the usual challenges posed by navigating through operators’ guides to find VOD fare. FiOS has one of the better navigation systems, he added.

License fees are nearly impossible to get for “free” VOD services, but if American ED can keep finding sponsors “and keep their costs low, they should be able to make it a real business,” Covey said.

Cacciato said affiliate fees are in the plan, but only after the network goes full time. He also pointed out many media and telecommunications companies, including multichannel distributors, have longstanding public commitments to support education. Cambria, Ford and company also have produced specialty videos for Battelle and others, another promising revenue line. You can see some of their work at the web site http://americanedtv.com/.

“At the end of the day, nobody’s going to criticize you for putting more programming on that’s focused on education,” Cacciato said.

Daryl Hall's Expanding His TV Repertoire

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Wed, 22 May 2013 12:13:00 +0000

Daryl Hall is making quite a cottage TV industry out of his love for old houses.

His late 1700s farmhouse in Millerton, N.Y., is the home base for the music show Live From Daryl’s House, which he and his manager, Jonathan Wolfson, created as a Web series six years ago. It’s now carried on MTV Networks-owned Palladia and VH1; Rural Media Group’s RFD-TV and FamilyNet; and on local TV stations via syndication. Hall said he's expecting to start production on what would be a full sixth season of the show this fall.

A circa 1780 sea captain’s house he owns in Connecticut will be the subject of his next show, on Scripps Networks Interactive’s DIY Network — Daryl’s Restoration Over-Hall.

“I’ve always had this passion for old houses,” Hall said in a recent interview.

He, of course, is better known as a musician — the taller half of Hall & Oates, the duo with the most top hits in music history, according to Billboard. His songs with partner John Oates from the 1970s and ’80s include She’s Gone, Sara Smile, Private Eyes, Maneater, I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do), Out of Touch and Rich Girl.

Perhaps you caught them performing for 30,000 at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on May 5, either in person or on AXS TV.

DIY contacted Hall after picking up on his passion for antique architecture and asked what kind of show he’d like to do. The network has had success creating shows around other celebrities, such as actor Bronson Pinchot (who also restores old homes) and 1990s rapperVanilla Ice.

“I said I want to do a show where I would restore an antique house, in a very authentic way, more or less to its original state, with some additions added on for convenience,” Hall said in a phone interview from Charleston, S.C., where he lives about half the year.

He already had a house he wanted to start working on, in northern Fairfield County in Connecticut. That made it easy.

Kathleen Finch, general manager at DIY, loves the Over-Hall concept. And not only because Hall can draw a crowd or that he’s writing the new show’s theme song and incidental music -- though that is a cool plus. "Rarely do we have an opportunity to have talent do that."

“It’s going to make for a great project to follow,” she said. “And it’s just a great story of one of the things that resonates so well on our air, which is: people bringing back important homes.” She described the Connecticut house as “spectacular.”

She noted that another DIY program, Rehab Addict, about a woman who lovingly restores older homes and sells them, is one of the top draws on a network that in 2012 saw its primetime audience in the target 25-54 age demographic rise 22% over 2011. DIY is enjoying another 9% rise in that demo so far in 2013, according to Nielsen.

Over-Hall plans are still being finalized. But the basic outline is Hall will bring in a team of contractors he has worked with over the years, and will bring in competing crews, too. He and Wolfson are executive producers, as they are on Daryl’s House.

Hall also plans to involve experts from the American College of the Building Arts in Charleston. “These guys are extraordinary,” he said after meeting recently with college officials. “They’re really the best at what they do”

I asked him whether this was a renaissance moment for him, with the success of Daryl's House, with the show's having brought new, younger listeners to his concerts and with the new Over-Hall project expanding his TV reach.

"Over the past six years, with the whole experience of Daryl's House, combined with the complete demise of the record industry, I’m looking for different ways," he said. "My way of thinking about it is one thing leads to another and they all affect each other, all the things that I do. It’s an alternative to just the old way of doing it. Where you try to get on the radio, play all the gigs, and you have to worry about program directors and how many records you sell or don’t sell, and that seems to be some standard that you can judge things from, in my opinion wrongly. It’s another way of putting my creativity and my music and my other passions out there, and they all mix together. And it’s really in some ways more fulfilling than just doing things the old way.

“I can do a lot of things – if you want to call that renaissance, I don’t know," he said. "But I’m a person who has talents in a number of areas, so I try to make the most of them.”

He doesn't plan to include a food segment, such as is in Daryl's House. But he does want to include conversation about historic-home preservation in conversations on the show, such as happen around the dinner table at Daryl's House, where the musicians talk about their experiences, their musical likes and dislikes and influences. (Such as in this clip of an episode featuring Butch Walker.)

"It's an important issue," he said. "We have this legacy -- all these old houses that are in America. People are either letting them go, they get torn down because of highways and things like that. They are neglected. And what's even worse, people don't know what they have and they don't know how to restore them properly, and they wind up sort of ruining them architecturally. I think there are a lot of explanations and what I'll call philosophies involved in what this show is all about, and I want to somehow set up teams that will allow that conversation to go on."

The show’s premiere date will depend on when the project is completed, Finch said. "This is a documentary, so we're following what's going on with the build." That might push the start date into early 2014.

Hall and Oates photo, credit Mick Rock. All photos courtesy Daryl Hall.

In 'Treme' Town, Get 'Well-Suited' Fast

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:02:00 +0000

While HBO fans were excited about returning to Westeros via Sunday night’s season-three premiere of Game of Thrones, it was the premium channel’s dramatic series Treme in the spotlight in New Orleans last week.

As a prelude to the show’s concluding, abbreviated, five-hour, fourth season sometime this fall, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art is hosting an exhibition called “Well-Suited: The Costumes of Alonzo Wilson for HBO’s Treme.” The remarkable, life-sized Mardi Gras Indian Suits that played such an important role in season one of the series, set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and in season three, too, make an even greater impact when seen in person.

Sewn-in details on the suits, including hurricane symbols and the familiar spray-painted “X” marks that search-and-rescue crews made on houses in the city after the storm, add an emotional kick to the two automatic responses: How did even a crew of six people make these in less than a year? And Clarke Peters (who plays Big Chief Albert Lambreaux on the show) must be awfully strong and have been awfully hot wearing these.

The exhibition closed at the Ogden on Sunday (March 31) but, according to the Ogden, it is moving soon to the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, N.C., where it will be on view May 18-Aug. 25.

By the way, there are lots of other great things to see at the Ogden beyond the Treme exhibition. Particularly poignant is "Deborah Luster -- Tooth For an Eye: A Chorography of Violence In Orleans Parish." These black-and-white photographs chronicle the sites where homicides have occurred. The victims are gone; the places remain.

P.S. If you can't make it to New Orleans for the upcoming (April 26-May 5) Jazz & Heritage Festival, Mark Cuban's AXS TV plans live nightly telecasts, scheduling details to come in the next few weeks. This from the AXS TV release:

"The network will broadcast live throughout the 7-day festival from April 26 thru May 5, 2013 including live segments in its nightly program AXSLive and with continuous LIVE festival, concert and event coverage from Friday, May 3 through Sunday, May 5, 2013. The ongoing, shared commitment to place music, artists and fans together solidified a first of its kind partnership for both AXS TV and New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Strengthening its position as the premier destination for 100% live music, news and trends, daily coverage from the festival culminating in the 3-day live broadcast of Jazz Fest is a programming commitment not previously made by the network. For Jazz Fest, the AXS TV live television partnership signifies a commitment to bring their dedicated fans and music fans nationwide the highest quality LIVE broadcast available."

(Photo from "Well-Suited" courtesy the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.)

Help Hold Up 'Half the Sky'

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 08:15:00 +0000

The same day last week the WICT executive women’s luncheon talked up the value of women’s voices in making corporate decisions, over at the Ford Foundation, reporter Nick Kristof was talking about even bigger challenges facing women and girls around the world.

Things like being forced into prostitution, dying during childbirth or simply being pressed into marriage as a child instead of going to school.

Kristof, the Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times correspondent, was part of a preview event for Half the Sky, a documentary series adapted from a book he wrote with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, about turning women’s oppression into opportunity.

The scenes that were screened — notably a visit by Kristof and actress Gabrielle Union to Vietnam to visit a 14-year-old girl, Nhi, who bikes 17 miles each way to school under even harder conditions than that implies — were direct, compelling and great television. That’s officially a plug for the show.

But Kristof’s answer when host Ann Curry asked him why he and WuDunn decided to focus on women’s struggles also was worth passing along.

He said he came to realize that if you want to address global poverty, social conflicts, environmental stresses on the planet made worse by overpopulation — “there are no silver bullets, but the best leverage you have is to invest in girls.”

The Vietnam trip also included former Microsoft marketing executive John Wood, who started Room to Read, an organization that supports the school Nhi attends. The opportunity part of Kristof’s message is the worthy groups he and WuDunn highlight. The doc’s success, he said, will be measured not by viewers’ numbers, but by how many take action to support those groups after watching. Half the Sky airs on PBS Oct. 1 and 2 at 9 p.m.

Demanding Viewers Want To Know

MCN Staff — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 18:48:43 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about video on demand lately. I’ve also been using it. Both of which put me in a very committed minority.

Olympics or HD cable shows crowding your DVR? Nuke some recent ones and watch them on demand instead. Get to know where they are, because it’s universally acknowledged that VOD navigation is not very simple or intuitive.

A friend who, like me, is a fan of The Closer missed some recent episodes. My first thought was to email her a link to TNT’s TV-Everywhere app for viewing the show, but we both have Time Warner Cable, and Time Warner Cable doesn’t have a deal to offer it. Next thought was to ask if she’d checked channel 1012, the entertainment on demand site, and see if she had that and could do some catching up on Brenda Leigh Johnson’s end game. Her response: “Holy (deleted), never knew I had it but it appears I do!”

Cox Communications CEO Pat Esser was on an industry panel recently (video of the NECTA session here, via NECN; our coverage here), talking about some detailed customer research the cable firm had done on what people like and don’t like about their multichannel TV. “Video on demand,” he said. “Those who use it love it. Those who don’t use it, don’t understand it. We have more education to do.”

Amen to that.

If you do wander into the VOD territory on Time Warner Cable, it’s had some success getting celebrities (even Robert DeNiro) to pitch their on-demand wares, something IFC Films honcho Jonathan Sehring has lamented happens too infrequently (read this article from our On Demand Summit coverage from June). There was Bob Costas, the face of NBC’s London Games, last week, saying Olympics On Demand would have anything you happened to miss. Look that up, too: the listings are laid out helpfully, event by event.

Be demanding: try it out, and let your provider what you like or don’t. It’s worth a visit.

A version of this post appears in Monday’s Multichannel News.

Shatnerpalooza

MCN Staff — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:18:18 +0000

Capt. Kirk was on deck at the aircraft carrier Intrepid Saturday night.

After working the room at a VIP reception with his wife, Elizabeth, there was William Shatner, in the spotlight, on a walkway above the carrier (now a floating museum in New York City).

“Wow! What a magical moment,” he said to a couple hundred fans who’d gathered on a warm night on the flight deck for a free outdoor screening of The Captains, the new documentary airing on Epix. “We’re aboard an aircraft carrier. Maybe this was the size of the Enterprise, and maybe you’re the crew. And we’re having a little entertainment aboard the Enterprise. And we’re gonna beat the Klingons soon! But it’s better than that — the reality is better. The skyline of New York. This great warship that’s docked in memory of all those sailors who fought in World War II and other wars. And we’re here to see a film that I loved making. It was a happening.”

Epix, the upstart premium movie channel, backed Shatner in making the documentary about the actors who have played captains in the various Star Trek iterations after Shatner created the original role, James T. Kirk, in Star Trek. As Shatner noted, even though the original series was canceled in 1969 after just three seasons, it’s become “the most durable and profitable franchise in the history of entertainment.” Viacom and Paramount Pictures, a co-owner of Epix, has enjoyed those profits. (Epix’s other owners are Lionsgate and MGM).

The Intrepid screening was like a mini Comic-Con. At that San Diego convention, Epix and Shatner had put on a screening on July 22 that drew more than 2,000 fans. Fans came to the Intrepid in costume Saturday, some showing them off to win a prize. (The intrepid winner wore a lit-up model of the original Enterprise as a hat.)

Epix EVP Doug Lee introduced Shatner, saying, “Epix really wants to make a thank you to Bill.”

Besides backing the doc — and Shatner said he hopes to work with Epix on more projects — Epix already has thanked Shatner by promoting the heck out of the film.

Not as a favor to Shatner, mind you, but as the centerpiece of a brand awareness and subscriber acquisition campaign the network calls “Shatnerpalooza.”

Nora Ryan, the network’s chief of staff, said it’s all about tapping into the Star Trek fan base online, getting fans to try the Web version of the movie channel for a two-week trial and then sign as many as possible up as paying subscribers. TV-Everywhere style, the online portion of the multiplatform Epix channel is only available to authenticated subscribers of the linear network.

“Star Trek fans are an amazing fan base, so passionate, and Bill Shatner is emblematic of that and taps that vein in a way, to tell you the truth, took many of us by surprise,” Epix chief of staff Nora Ryan said ahead of the screening. “Shatner embodies everything that the Trekkies are so excited about in terms of the franchise.”

Other elements of the campaign include “The Long Khan,” a stitched-together version of fans’ recreating Kirk’s famous anguished cry in the 1982 movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. (See them at thelongkhan.com.) Epix has been showing hilarious shorts of Shatner in action in other roles, hammy and serious alike, dubbed “Now That’s Sh-Acting!” It aired all six Star Trek movies this past weekend.

Shatner and Avery Brooks (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Capt. Benjamin Sisko) appeared at a Comic-Con panel in San Diego on July 22 that drew 2,200 people, with an unknown number turned away. Epix also premiered the documentary on July 22 and produced an hour-long online Q&A with fans that day that drew 20,000 participants.

EpixHD.com Webcast the Q&A live from the Cox Communications San Diego production facilities with Cox’s help, and Epix affiliate Cox will have that video plus footage of the Comic-Con panel and other material to offer subscribers on video on demand. Cox California SVP and general manager David Bialis is a big Trek fan, Ryan said. About half of the fans who participated in the Q&A signed up for a free two-week trial and are marketing prospects later, she said.

Along the way, through screenings and other fan interactions, the channel has offered fans a two-week free trial of the network online, and affiliates will use that database to do direct marketing of the channel. EpixHD.com tripled its Web traffic the weekend after July 22, the channel said.

Overall, Ryan said, the message was targeted to 10 million people on fan sites and social media. “You tap the online passionate audience, they come to you online, and it’s a very organic way to expand the TV Everywhere proposition because it’s fishing where the fish are,” Ryan said.

The doc is a fun watch, with some signature goofy Shatner moments, including ad libbing a tune with jazz pianist Brooks at Brooks’s home in Princeton, N.J., and getting Kate Mulgrew (Capt. Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager) to volunteer that she snookered her dad into helping her begin an acting career in New York by paying her tuition to NYU.

Pictured below, at Epix Live With William Shatner at Comic-Con in San Diego on July 22, left to right: Sharon Taylor-Huppert, social media specialist, Cox Communications; Andy Hunter, chief marketing officer, Epix; Ceanne Guerra, media and public relations manager, Cox; William Shatner; Nora Ryan, chief of staff, Epix; Dave Bialus, SVP and GM, Cox Communications California; Aaron Wilson (back), media marketing specialist, Cox; Zack Fields (front), competitive & retention specialist, Cox; Ryan Witt, account manager, Epix; Mike Ruggiero, VP, programming planning & strategy, Epix. Photo by: Jonathan Leibson/Wire Image.

A Reader's Guide to The Cable Show

MCN Staff — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:08:22 +0000

Nice to see Comcast take its host city obligations so seriously, providing a huge news story heading into the Cable Show in Chicago by blowing away the competition and securing four more Olympic Games for NBCUniversal.

At the convention, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts is already scheduled to make some news on Thursday (the last day) with a “next-generation video demo” that observers believe will be Xcalibur, the code name for a new service blending TV programming and social media with a new and improved look and feel.

In industry terms, that’s even bigger than Oprah, who’s also speaking Thursday.

Along with all the sessions and the booth celebrities and the parties inside and outside Wrigley Field, the convention will host some significant events honoring notable people.

Turn to this year’s entrants into the Cable TV Pioneers. That event is a dinner Monday night at the Palmer House hotel.

Tuesday night sees the induction of six worthies into the Cable Hall of Fame, 7-9 p.m. at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers.

NAMIC honors Next-Generation Leaders and Luminaries (and a Friend) at its annual awards breakfast Thursday morning, 7-8:45 a.m., at McCormick Place.

Profiles of the Vanguard Award winners will be feted at a luncheon Thursday, 12-2 p.m., at the Grand Ballroom at McCormick Place.

Also, WICT hosts its Signature Luncheon Tuesday, 12:15-2 p.m., at McCormick Place.

And McCormick is the Place to be Wednesday morning for Multichannel News’s newsy Multicultural TV breakfast, 7-9 a.m., featuring among others Comcast’s David Jensen.

Be sure to read MCN’s show daily Tuesday through Thursday. Nearly all of our staff will be in Chicago, gathering all the on-site news for those tidy print publications, and creating content for various electronic newsletters you won’t want to miss, either.

To help set the stage for cable’s centerpiece convention, contributor George Winslow has compiled two pages of vital facts and figures about multichannel-TV and broadband delivery.

And we hear the green-screen demo that co-chairs Jerry Kent and David Zaslav have planned for the welcome ceremony will start things off on the right foot. See you in The Park!

Click here for more coverage of Cable Show 2011.

A Diva Fixing America Targets TV

MCN Staff — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:20:27 +0000

Lynn Tilton has been good to small-town America, buying and rebuilding failed manufacturing businesses and preserving jobs.

The question now is: Will she make good reality TV? Tilton is CEO of Patriarch Partners, which buys distressed companies (150 plus in the last decade), gets them back on their feet and helps retain jobs (250,000 of them by her measure). Its portfolio now has 74 companies with $8 billion in revenue.

“It’s not easy and we aren’t perfect,” she said. ” It often takes us much longer than it should. But we rebuild America.”

The subject of a vivid The Wall Street Journal profile in January - which noted her “platinum blond hair, tight leather skirts and penchant for racy remarks” - Tilton, 52, is headed into production of a reality show for Sundance Channel with a working title Diva of Distressed.

“Up until recently I wasn’t as known as you would think because I haven’t put myself out there,” she said after a Sundance press briefing last week on a new slate of nonfiction shows. Sundance, she said, was impressed by the actual impact of her work. “I wasn’t going to go someplace where they were going to make it silly because I don’t have a life, you can’t follow me around, all I do is work.”

Michael Klein, the head of original programming at Sundance, called her a force of nature, and Sarah Barnett, the channel’s chief, aptly called her “the real deal.”

Barnett also noted the irony that “she looks slightly like a made-for-TV reality character, and yet she’s been doing it for decades.”

A sizzle reel put together ahead of production showed Tilton visiting the Old Town Fuel & Fiber Mill, a Patriarch property in Maine that makes pulp and paper - and also makes bio-butanol jet fuel. The show, though, will direct her turnaround talents at businesses she doesn’t own. “We want to go save company-town companies, so we’re looking at that right now.”

Hopefully, we’ll see if the “fairy tale” turnarounds she engineers in real life also work as reality TV.

Packer Pride On Display

MCN Staff — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 21:16:09 +0000

Time Warner Cable’s Wisconsin operations have close ties with the local National Football League franchise, the Green Bay Packers. Wide receiver Donald Driver has done ads for the system, and defensive back Charles Woodson has participated in local events, reading to kids, according to local communications director Stacy Zaja.

Comcast in Pittsburgh, meanwhile, loves the hometown Steelers, the team playing the Packers Sunday in the Super Bowl.

Before the NFC championship game won by the Packers, TWC gave away green and gold yard signs saying “G Force: Show Your Colors!” with the operator’s logo at the bottom.

The company had 15,000 made up, and demand was so strong it added a second order of 10,000.

Last week, Zaja and company gave out thousands of signs saying “Go Pack Go!” (25,000 were ordered this time.)

The cabler also hung 12-by-20-foot banners of both signs (see at right) on a garage by its Milwaukee offices, hung by facilities and network techs using two bucket trucks during snow and wind, Zaja said. (For a nice local TV piece on the effort, from WFRV-TV (Channel 5), please click here.

Pressed for a prediction, Zaja went with the Pack, 20-17. “I think there’s going to be a lot of defense,” she said.

In Pittsburgh, “Comcast is an avid supporter of its local teams and we were a presenting sponsor for the Steelers’ pep rally at Heinz Field last week,” Bob Grove, director of public relations and community affairs for Comcast’s Keystone Region, said.

Crucially, he said the system was prepared to manage major TV events like the Super Bowl, and will have extra staff on hand to help with last-minute installation and other needs, and will have extra engineers monitoring the network.

“We feel confident most Pittsburgh fans are already well-equipped for the big game — especially since we’ve been to the Super Bowl three times in the past six years,” he said.

My call: I’d like to see the Packers win, but my instinct, were betting legal near me, would be to take the Steelers.

Now as for the over-under on 110 million viewers…

To Absent Friends

MCN Staff — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 22:15:42 +0000

Our last news issue of the year is a time to reflect on what 2010 brought, and what’s been lost.

And who are no longer with us.

The year began with the sad, surprising death of a longtime friend, Donna Garofano, SVP of government and regulatory affairs at Atlantic Broadband. She died on New Year’s Eve of 2009 at age 56 in Salem, N.H.. She had apparently taken ill while on a business trip. A veteran franchise negotiator with Cablevision and Ameritech New Media before ABB, she was funny, fiercely liberal and shared with me a love of the musical Gypsy. She is still very much missed.

In February, Howard Marcantel, VP of educational events at the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, died suddenly after a heart attack, at age 47. The Louisiana native brought 17 years of project and event management experience in broadcast and cable television to CTAM, where he led the development of the content for the annual CTAM Summit and other educational events. He earlier worked at Discovery Communications, the National Association of Broadcasters and the NCTA.

Mike Connors, the first driver of the iconic C-SPAN Bus, died on Feb. 12 at age 61 after a long illness. From Racine, Wisc., he was the bus’s first driver in 1993, and over 17 years he logged more than half a million miles.

Paul Braun, the 30-year cable vet and programming VP at Time Warner Cable’s National Division in Denver, died in March at age 58 after a long battle with cancer. He was best known as the kind-hearted and sharp-witted lyricist (with Erica Stull) of the song parodies performed by the Denver chapter of Cable Positive in an annual revue that, over the years, raised more than $1 million for charity.

Dean Olmstead, the 55-year-old president of EchoStar Satellite Services, died of cancer in October. The longtime satellite industry executive also worked at Loral Space & Communications, DirecTV, NASA and the State Department, joining EchoStar in 2008. He was a member of the Space Technology Hall of Fame.

To these and other absent friends — including Dane Hall, the VH1 Classic and QVC producer — a quiet toast.

Fans Fret 'Terriers,' 'SGU'

MCN Staff — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 19:24:17 +0000

Anxiety exists among fans of Terriers and Stargate: Universe.

I’ve read it, on Alan Sepinwall’s blog about Terriers and on Gateworld.net forums about SGU. I feel it, because TV is an expensive business and shows that aren’t runaway hits are vulnerable, no matter how good they are or how much there quality has improved.

Terriers is a freshman comedy/drama on FX, with impeccable parentage in Shawn Ryan (The Shield) and Ted Griffin (Up In The Air). It’s well written, well acted, has its share of shocking moments (to cite Sepinwall) and to me has a very Rockford Files feel. The numbers are poor: the Nov. 3 episode had 667,000 viewers, according to Nielsen numbers provided by Walt Disney Co. Compare that (unfairly but… ) with FX hit Sons of Anarchy, a top-20 cable show that on Nov. 2 had 3.35 million viewers.

SGU is in its second season on Syfy. It’s the latest series in the Stargate franchise on Syfy and was intended to draw a younger audience than Stargate: Atlantis, which it supplanted. It might be, but it’s a smaller audience. My Nielsen chart has its Nov. 2 episode coming in at 967,000 viewers. More than a half million more viewers on average watched the Atlantis fifth season on a live plus same day basis. The show has suffered since moving to Tuesday night this season, as has been pointed out by many fans and by show co-creator Brad Wright.

Syfy pulled the plug on freshman Caprica due to low ratings, despite high quality. It has greenlit a pilot for another variation on the Battlestar Galactica theme that spawned Caprica. Another critically praised freshman to bite the dust was Rubicon on AMC.

So fans of these two shows — whose most recent episodes, SGU’s “Malice” and “Sins Of The Past” on Terriers, hit series highs for quality, in my view — are watching the news tickers for renewals.

And hoping more people watch the shows.

UPDATE: Sadly for fans, both shows were not renewed. Yesterday, @Syfy’s Craig Engler Tweeted the bad news about SGU. As with Caprica, the network says the final 10 episodes of SGU will be shown in 2011. Terriers is just one and done.

The Hub of All Ratings

MCN Staff — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 23:00:19 +0000

The Hub’s day one bottom line: it’s an upgrade but eighth out of nine kids’ networks.

In persons age 2 and older, for the total day, The Hub averaged 135,000 viewers, which was a 650% improvement over Discovery Kids on Oct. 3, the network said. Discovery Communications teamed with Hasbro to create The Hub because Discovery considered Discovery Kids an underperforming asset.

The Hub’s best-performing show was new original series Family Game Night (7-8 p.m.), which averaged 267,000 total viewers. The Hub said the show — a live-action series in which families of four square off in Hasbro board games such as Cranium and Connect-4 (reviewed here) — outperformed Disney XD, NickToons and TeenNick among kids ages 2-11 and 6-11 in that time slot.

The Hub’s next-best show was a Garfield movie at 12-2 p.m. (225,000 viewers) and an episode of classic Jim Henson series Fraggle Rock (194,000), Nielsen figures show. Strawberry Shortcake’s Berry Bit Adventures, a new animated series based on the fruit-scented dolls, had 179,000. The numbers fall off from there.

Overall, The Hub trailed rival kids networks Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, Nick at Nite, Disney XD, Nicktoons and Nick Jr., according to Nielsen figures supplied by other media organizations. The Hub did outpace TeenNick (the former The N), which targets an older kids’ audience than Hub’s coveted 6-12 set.

Nick and Disney, the kids’ category leaders, averaged close to 2.2 million viewers in the total-day P2+ category on Sunday. Cartoon Network, at No. 4 behind Nick at Nite, averaged more than 1.2 million viewers.

Among kids’ networks that led The Hub, the closest in total-day P2+ viewing Sunday was Disney XD, with an average 230,000 to The Hub’s 135,000.

The Hub also ranked eighth in kids 2-11 and 6-11 in total day.

In a twist that supports its branding, The Hub released “co-viewing” statistics, saying it was the top network among children-targeted cable networks in the kids 2-11 and adults 18-49 categories. It said “36% of kids 2-11 watched with an adult 18-49, out-performing all children-targeted networks, including Nickelodeon (20%), Disney Channel (18%) and Cartoon Network (18%). In addition, 57% of A18-49 watched The Hub with a child aged 2-11, significantly beating all kid cablers, including Nickelodeon (35%), Disney Channel (40%) and Cartoon Network (28%).”

Comparable Nielsen figures for other kids’ networks were not immediately available. One other programmer said the raw numbers should be available more widely tomorrow.

In addition to Hasbro’s resources, which will translate to new originals based on characters such as Transformers and G. I Joe, The Hub starts out with a big subscriber base of 60 million homes.

Kaitz Dinner Raises $1.5M

MCN Staff — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 02:35:43 +0000

The Walter Kaitz Foundation benefit dinner, including sponsorships, delivered $1.5 million that will aid three cable industry organizations devoted to workplace diversity by gender, race and ethnic backgrounds.

Executive director David Porter made that announcement at the New York Hilton Wednesday night. He had said last week the dinner was expected to draw more than 1,000 people, and the ballroom did look full. A year ago, in Denver, about $1 million was raised and 750 attended.

Porter said the return of Diversity Week to New York after a two-year hiatus was a clear success, with the dinner preceded by annual conferences by grantees WICT and NAMIC. He used the phrase “off the chain” to describe the well-attended events, later explaining that he’s an engineer and that’s a technical term.

Discovery Communications was honored as a “Diversity Champion,” and company CEO David Zaslav, in accepting the honor, began by thanking everyone who had sent messages of support after the frightening hostage situation at company headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., on Sept. 2. Discovery was created 25 years ago by John Hendricks, with significant support from key cable investors and believers, on three principles, he said: Quality, integrity and diversity. “And we needed all three of those ideals and more when we dealt with our difficult moment two weeks ago. But it reminded me that ultimately this industry is about people: not headends, not channels, not marketing plans, but it’s about people. The people who work for us, the people who work with us and the people who work beside us. To be our best we need to make sure we are attracting and supporting the best people from all genders, backgrounds and ethnicities.”

U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui (D.-Calif.) also was honored, as a “Diversity Advocate,” for efforts to increase broadband adoption in low-income households. She sent a videotaped thank-you message.

Oprah Winfrey also made a videotaped appearance, cheering Discovery (with whom she is partnering on the new channel, OWN, launching next January). Porter alluded to her announcement Monday, kicking off her last season on broadcast TV, that she would treat everyone in her studio audience that day to a trip to Australia. One of the dinner’s sponsors, Si TV, would provide a giveaway at the dinner, he said, though it wouldn’t be a trip to Australia.

Toward the end of the night, he announced that five chairs had envelopes underneath them, indicating that person had won an Apple iPad. That was definitely enough to get people excited.

Diversity Week continues Thursday and Friday at the Hilton with the Association of Cable Communicators‘ annual conference. Likely highlight: MCN editor in chief Mark Robichaux will interview NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow at the general session at 9 a.m.

So long, Sci Fi Friday

MCN Staff — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 20:33:34 +0000

I never really moved beyond Sci Fi Friday to Syfy Friday, and just as well.

The less-generically-named network built on science fiction has decided to reprogram the 8-10 p.m. portion of Friday’s primetime with a WWE program, Smackdown, starting in October.

The shows fans have come to expect on Friday nights — Stargate, in the latest form, Sanctuary, Caprica– are moving to Tuesdays. Syfy Tuesday isn’t quite as alliterate, but it could catch on. Dave Howe and co. have produced high-rated fare on Tuesdays, notably the surprise hitWarehouse 13. As with the switch to Syfy, I say, it’s their network and they should do what they think best.

I’m sad to see Stargate and Battlestar Galactica Fridays go, though. Space adventure is what soothes my savage synapses after our grueling Fridays in the ink shop, not the historic home of Randy Savage. No Stargate on Friday just doesn’t seem right.

Howe told our Tom Umstead that a move to Tuesdays could well help shows such as Caprica, the well-produced, well-received prequel to Battlestar Galactica. Over nine episodes, it has averaged 1.8 million viewers, even with seven days of DVR playback counted in (the show, and other Friday night fare, is heavily recorded). Syfy touted that the ninth episode, the mid-season finale, on March 26 had more than 1 million viewers in the 18-49 demo, with seven days’ playback. It should really be doing better, in my humble view.

“Friday nights in terms of our originals has become increasingly problematic,” Howe told Tom, “and we’ve been looking over the last two or three years into how we can move off of Friday to an earlier weekday so that we can offset some of the issues with regard to DVRs and time shifting.”

“Warehouse 13, our biggest hit ever on the network, was a Tuesday show,” he said. “We’ve experimented with originals on other nights of the week. The problem with Fridays are that the HUTs are lower, younger viewers in particular are not around on Friday nights and people who are around are mostly playing catch-up with their DVRs. It’s also become more competitive than it used to be, so the opportunity to create more live viewing on a Tuesday is fantastic for us.”

He said Syfy will continue to experiment with launching other nights of the week as well. During its recent upfront presentation, the network announced that it will launch a new Thursday night block of reality programming this summer.

Fridays at 10 p.m. are still available for new originals, Howe said. “What we’re aiming to do is use Smackdown as a springboard to launch new shows on Friday or put in repeats of our scripted shows so that we can continue to grow that Smackdown audience across our schedule.”

Can’t see the WWE audience hanging on for a space drama, though. Pity.

MTV Gets HD Launches on Time Warner

MCN Staff — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:04:46 +0000

It’s a super Sunday for MTV Networks: MTV, Spike TV, BET and Comedy Central high-definition channels have launched on Time Warner Cable in New York City.

Back in July 2009, Pali Capital analyst Rich Greenfield observed that Viacom’s MTV Networks only had the concert music channel, Palladia, launched on the key Time Warner Cable systems in Manhattan and Los Angeles. He observed that TWC and MTVN did a big carriage deal in January 2009, and expanded its HD offerings overall starting in February.

Since then I’ve been watching for other MTVN HD channels to appear, and now they have. I’m not sure when they launched exactly: TWC of NYC and New Jersey’s channel changes page doesn’t mention it. But it had to be very recently. (Update: someone posted an earlier channel change notice on Broadbandreports.com that foretold these additions and mentioned some other shifts, including Palladia and Weather Channel’s SD channel positioning. Posters there said the channels, plus VH1 HD, launched in Columbus, Ohio.)

Maybe the December launches of HD versions of Comedy Central’s must-watch shows, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, were a catalyst. Colbert, in particular, encouraged his fans to urge their cable operators to launch him in HD — and had a funny rejoinder on his program to those distributors that kept him in standard definition.

Maybe it was Jersey Shore, and the prospect of J-WOWW and The Situation in glorious HD, that did the trick. MTV HD is showing a Jersey Shore marathon today, starting at 9 a.m. ET. Spike is showing a bunch of CSIs. Comedy is showing movies on Super Bowl Sunday, mostly.

Most likely it just took TWC a (long) while to get to these launches: it typically adds HD networks in small bunches, I’m told, and if a programmer misses a window, it can have a (long) wait ahead until the next one.

Anyway. That’s the situation.

Miss Ya, Bret and Jemaine

MCN Staff — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:10:39 +0000

It should not go unmentioned by Multichannel News that Flight of the Conchords has ended its run on HBO after two seasons.

So I won’t unmention it.

Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, the stars, posted a comment about it on their Website Friday and you can read it here. They’re happy about the way it ended, with the lads back in New Zealand after their New York City comical musical adventures ended with them getting evicted from their apartment (there was a dispute about currency exchanges.) Their Website has lots of other funny New Zealand news, including a TV interview with a guy who got stuck in a clothes dryer, so I recommend it even if the show isn’t coming back.

In the spirit of promoting New Zealand, a major thread in the episodes I have seen, I also read a story from The New Zealand Herald quoting Reuters quoting Clement saying it was very time consuming to write the scripts plus the songs in the episodes. The video here from HBO has a chat in the recording studio where the guys talk a bit about the writing process — does the story or the song come first?

I was a late comer to the series; fortunately there was a screener disk with the last four episodes on it, which my wife and I watched back to back to back to back one recent weekend. Now I guess I will have to resort to Netflix or iTunes or something for the rest as HBO On Demand’s series schedule doesn’t include Flight of the Conchords at the moment. It does include Sex and the City, though, in case you can’t find those shows in syndication anywhere.

'Stargate' Alums Spice Up Syfy's 'Beyond Sherwood Forest'

MCN Staff — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:21:08 +0000

The Stargate imprint is all over Beyond Sherwood Forest, a Syfy made-for movie airing Saturday night during the Thanksgiving holiday.

Hitfix.com called it the perfect cheesy dessert to wipe away that last turkey taste — and rated it a “must watch,” and it especially is for fans of Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and Sanctuary(a Stargate alumni project now in its second year on the network).

Trying as always to steer clear of spoilers, I will start with some obvious connections.This Robin Hood retelling stars Sanctuary’s Robin Dunne as Robin (who says he might be the only actor ever to play Robin Hood in a movie who actually is named Robin) and Smallville’s Erica Durance as Marian. (Must add that show to my DVR list.)

Beyond Sherwood is directed by Peter DeLuise, ace pilot of many classic SG-1 episodes (among my faves: Serpent’s Song, Enemies and The Tomb). Julian Sands, who played a creepy Ori bad guy in the direct-to-DVD movie Stargate: Ark of Truth plays bad guy Malcolm, who becomes the Sheriff of Nottingham. Beyond Sherwood Forest was filmed in British Columbia.

If anyone looks forward to casting or costume surprises, the following might have some spoilers. Watch out.

The lovely Ms. Durance is married in real life to actor David Palffy, who played not one but two creepy bad guys in SG-1: Sokar and Anubis. In Beyond Sherwood he plays a semi-creepy, semi-bad guy (a Sylvan Elder). In another synergistic move, he gets to wear a big collared costume and carry a staff very similar to the Ori, the Arthurian villains in SG-1’s last two seasons.

Lots of other alums make appearances. Bill Dow, who played a sometimes hapless scientist in many SG-1 and Atlantis episodes, is Tuck. Richard De Klerk (Will Scarlett) was in a couple of SG-1 episodes and Katharine Isabelle made appearances in Sanctuary, SG-1 and, according to imdb.com, even was in an episode of Richard Dean Anderson’s MacGyver. Brent Stait (Guy of Gisbourne) was in the SG-1 pilot, Children of the Gods, and another episode. Robert Lawrenson, who plays young Robin’s father at the start of the film, plays Declan in Sanctuary, the head of the London sanctuary.

“It’s almost like a rep company that we’ve got, and that’s great fun,” Dunne told me today in a phone call from Los Angeles. “It’s a safe environment. You get to work with your friends. We had a good time and hopefully we’ll continue this trend. This season on Sanctuary had some great crossover actors coming from Stargate [Michael Shanks] and Eureka [Christopher Gauthier]. That’s always fun when you have that kind of cross pollination within the network.”

Shooting arrows wasn’t as easy as it might appear, Dunne said, and yes that’s real fire on the end of some of them. “I definitely got the hang of it after a while,” he said, though he won’t be trying out for an Olympic archery team.

I asked if it was fun to work outside when so much of Sanctuary is shot in front of green screens. “It was rainy, it was chilly, but it didn’t take away from the fun,” Dunne said. Peter DeLuise, who worked with Dunne a couple of times on Sanctuary, “is such a passionate guy who’s totally out there as well, and wants everyone to have a good time.” “And to be able to play such an iconic character is such a blast. On top of everything it’s just one name to remember for me!”

How is the movie? Great holiday-weekend escapist fare, with real bow-and-arrow shooting (not like the computer-generated action on BBC America’s Robin Hood). I recommend it, even if you aren’t a Sanctuary-Stargate-Smallville fan.

Sanctuary, by the way, is going to go “haywire” in the second half of the season. “There’s an abnormal that comes into play that could really bring about utter destruction for the gang in Sanctuary,” Dunne said. Everyone is going to go through difficult times. And Will, his character, will have a Bollywood dancing scene in the season finale, he said. Fun but nerve wracking.

Kind of like … shooting flaming arrows.

Assuming the video I tried to embed doesn’t work, here’s a link to a preview.

Adieu, Equalizer

MCN Staff — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:57:59 +0000

Edward Woodward is dead at age 79 and I have three things to praise him for.

The first is ‘Breaker Morant,’ a film that isn’t even mentioned in the obits I’ve seen this morning, including one on the BBC site. It’s about Aussies fighting for the Brits in the Boer War and becoming “scapegoats for the bloody empire,” if dialogue memory serves and, from that film, it usually does. Toward the end, Woodward, playing the title character, a poet and warrior, recites very on-point lines from Byron — and inspires co-star Bryan Brown, as Lt. Peter Handcock, to intone a limerick starting “There once was a man from Australia” that I remember even more vividly. A terrific courtroom drama to boot.

The second is ‘The Equalizer.’ He played an ex-spy who offered his services for free to people in various forms of need. It was a favorite of my buddy Rich Katz because it showed New York City the way it really was in the rundown mid to late 1980s.

The third is EastEnders. You’ll see from the BBC story linked above that he played a character on that longrunning soap last year. I didn’t know that and only watch EastEnders through the time warp of PBS, which locally shows episodes that first aired about nine years ago.

Cheers for that, Edward, and look forward to seeing your work as Tommy Clifford if the show is still on here then.

'WH 13' Remembers Nora O'Brien

MCN Staff — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:57:44 +0000

Fans praised the dedication to late NBC production exec Nora O’Brien at the end of Syfy’s premiere episode of Warehouse 13 last night.

“Dedicated to Nora O’Brien,” the closing credits began, under a photo of the former Sci Fi Channel original programming executive, who left the channel about two years ago to become VP of drama programming for both parent NBC Universal and Universal Entertainment.

In April, she died on the set of NBC show Parenthood, at age 44. Warehouse 13 was one of her shows before she left for the studio job. At Sci Fi, her programming executive credits include both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. “She was intelligent, skilled, highly-focused and, above all, a genuinely kind and caring individual,”Stargate writer-producer Joseph Mallozzi said in a blog post after her death. “She was our champion at Sci-Fi — ever-approachable; always willing to lend a sympathetic ear,” he said.

Nice touch, Syfy.

Setanta On the Ropes

MCN Staff — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:48:27 +0000

The Setanta Sports flameout in the U.K. can’t be good for the U.S. premium channel.

I’m also not sure it helps U.S. soccer fans, even though the rights it holds are used on a channel that’ll cost you $15 or more on satellite TV or, less likely, on Comcast, Cox, RCN, FiOS TV or U-verse.

The update, which you’ll know if you’re a U.S.-based footie fan, is that Ireland-based Setanta TV is in serious financial trouble. In February, it lost the rights to half of the 46 Barclay’s English Premier League games it once had in the United Kingdom, and that crushed its chances of hitting subscriber marks it needed to stay in business. Today it was reported that ESPN had picked up those EPL games for U.K. broadcasting after Setanta failed to meet a payment deadline last week.

In the U.S., EPL matches — featuring teams such as Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal — are the main reason to subscribe to the U.S. Setanta Sports channel. For the longest time Setanta Sports USA was only on DirecTV but is now on Dish, too, and select cable systems such as Cox in Northern Virginia and Comcast in New England, as well as Verizon and AT&T’s video platforms.

It’s not widely available and costs upwards of $15 a month when it is. It has games that aren’t on Fox Soccer Channel, but FSC does have a good selection of games. If you are a diehard and can’t get the channel on satellite, you likely live in a big city, and can catch Setanta matches at a pub that gets the two Setanta channels. I for example saw every Liverpool match this season, on TV, except for the last one, which wasn’t on either Setanta or FSC. And I subscribe to a cable system that doesn’t offer Setanta.

I probably would get the channel if offered — but would certainly be scared by the events in England.

Setanta’s U.S. channel posted an important message to subscribers on its Web site, stating that events over there are separate from the U.S. channel.

Here’s what Setanta posted:

“As has been widely reported in various media channels, Setanta Sports has had its agreement to broadcast 46 Barclays Premier League matches in the UK terminated. This development does not affect our channels and other services in the US. Setanta Sports in the US is a separate operation that has separate agreement to show the Barclay’s Premier League. Our channels and other services in the US continue to broadcast and our subscribers can still enjoy our programming including the Lions Tour of South Africa and the UEFA U21 European Championship. New customers are welcome to subscribe to watch some of the world’s best soccer and rugby either by contacting our cable and satellite partners or online at www.setanta.com. We thank you for your continued interest in Setanta Sports and look forward to bringing you a wealth of sport over the coming months and years.”

Will this continue to be the case? ESPN had bid before on EPL rights, but only for Europe, where it seems to have plans to launch a soccer channel. In the U.S., ESPN divides the soccer matches it has on various channels but doesn’t have a dedicated soccer channel. It doesn’t seem to want one here.

If Setanta went under, would those matches be as available as they are now, to anyone who can subscribe to Setanta as a premium channel or see the games at a friendly pub, such as Kinsale Tavern on the Upper East Side of N.Y.C? Questionable.

Hard to see how FSC, which also shows Italian Serie A matches, could accommodate the extra load. Not clear to me if Fox would set up pub channels. Maybe it would though: ESPN made a deal with News Corp.-owned BSkyB to retail its new EPL games to “residential and commercial customers.”

Is international soccer hot in the U.S.? Yes. The World Cup is returning next year, to South Africa, and that always raises interest in the sport, though the USA squad isn’t doing that well at the moment. (Update: I guess I missed the last match, where USA! USA! USA! beat Egypt 3-0, advancing in the just-for-yucks Confederations Cup only because Italy lost to Brazil 3-0.) ESPN and Gol TV cut a deal that will double the number of matches from Spain’s La Liga shown on U.S. cable and satellite platforms. La Liga and the EPL are considered the top European leagues.

My tilt is to the EPL, which Setanta now presents here in quantity. So I’m hoping, for now at least, that Setanta (named for a mythical Irish hero) hangs onto the U.S. matches.

Caprica Launches -- on iTunes

MCN Staff — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:51:15 +0000

Sci Fi Channel’s Caprica premiere is for sale on iTunes so some early reviews are in.

The Battlestar Galactica followup is also a prequel — it deals with events that come decades before the Cylons attack Caprica and other human-occupied planets, scattering the survivors in spaceships. It got greenlit last year but the series isn’t scheduled to air on the channel soon to be called Syfy until 2010.

Apple says that despite the $14.99 price tag for the 90-minute pilot and an already free trailer, Caprica is No. 20 on the top 100 TV shows sales list on iTunes. The pilot also is on sale via DVD ($17.49 on Amazon.) There are plenty of reviews on iTunes. Others are on blogs, including a 4-star recap by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Rob Owen.

I haven’t coughed up the cash yet so I can’t review it, although the trailer shown at the Sci Fi upfront in March was intriguing and it’s from the same team that brought you BSG. Eric Stolz is starring, which is a good sign.

The average iTunes rating is 4 stars — 55 gave it 5 stars and 13 gave it just 1 star. The 1 star posters seem to be objecting most to the price for a single “2-hour” movie that’s really a little over an hour and a half. Also it’s not in high definition and iTunes labels it a “season pass” though it doesn’t seem as if it will include the 18 hours that will follow the debut.

Anyway, if you need a way to sate that BSG jones this year, Caprica is out there.

Robert Carlyle's New 'Universe'

MCN Staff — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:28:00 +0000

The great Scottish actor Robert Carlyle was standing more or less by himself at the party after Sci Fi Channel’s upfront song and dance last week (March 16). I’m a fan of many of his projects - Hamish Macbeth; Begbie in Trainspotting; The Full Monty and his early, epic U.K. TV appearance as a football fan turned deranged killer in Robbie Coltrane’s Cracker.

I’m also a Stargate follower, still slightly shocked Carlyle was cast in Stargate Universe, the next series in the franchise, now in production in Vancouver.

Last Friday, Sci Fi aired a 30-second promo for SGUduring the finale of Battlestar Galactica. A boyish-looking Carlyle is seen a couple of times, seeming quite concerned (and looking a bit guilty) amid screaming chaos. Other people’s voices are heard saying “we’re not supposed to be here” and “there’s not a chance in hell that we’re going to be able to escape this” and “we’re all going to die out here.”

You can also pick out Lou Diamond Phillips. Otherwise it’s very imagistic, a darkened room filled with panicked people, lit by the blue glow of a stargate’s event horizon. (A shimmering puddle.)

I asked Carlyle about his character and the show and how it was all going.

He said the producers hope to keep the core audiences of Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis and introduce them to “something different.”

Something a bit more of a “character piece,” in his words.

Caution to readers:

There are a couple of plot spoilers ahead.

Skip past the next, asterisked-off section to avoid reading them.

Thanks.

***

“I play a guy called Dr. Nicholas Rush,” Carlyle said with his familiar, crisp Scottish accent. “A scientist. A driven kind of man. You’re never sure what motives this guy has. Never.

“At the beginning of the show, Rush has transported a team through a stargate to what they believe is another world. In fact, when they get there, they realize they’re actually on another ship, a space ship, a massive spaceship. Which has been floating through the universe for hundreds of thousands of years, launched by the Ancients long ago,” he said, using Stargate terminology adeptly. “Unmanned, picking up information, gathering data.

“So once they get there — and they’re relieved to get there because they have a very tricky situation to get there — Rush then tells them: ‘You can’t go back. You can never go home.’

“Then things start to get really, really tense. A battle for leadership takes place on the ship. We have three deaths in the first three hours. A suicide in episode five, I think.

“This is a hearty band,” he continued. “They’re literally billions of light years away, on the very far side of the universe. And the thought of that is quite terrifying. So it has to be character driven. This piece will stand and fall on the characters, for sure.”

OK, that’s the end of any potential spoilers.

***

Carlyle said the first three hours are about finished, and that scripts are being written on the fly. “As soon as you finish a scene another one comes into your hand.”

The Stargate franchise - which teams MGM with “powers that be” Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper - is a TV- and movie-making machine. Two made-for-DVD movies that followed Stargate: SG-1’s run will air on Sci Fi Channel on back to back Friday nights: Stargate: Ark of Truth on March 27 and Stargate: Continuum on April 3. Stargate Atlantis was canceled after five seasons but an SGA movie is in the works.

“The producers, particularly Brad Wright and Robert Cooper, these guys are the main reason why I’m here,” Carlyle said.

“They explained it extremely well when they got in contact with me at first. The first thing I said was: ‘Why do you want me in it?’ The way they put it was very interesting: They said they wanted someone who can ‘make unattractive things seem quite attractive.’ I said: ‘I’m your man.’ ”

Others in the cast include Justin Louis, “who’s another terrific actor,” he continued. “Lou Diamond Phillips is in there as well. David Blue, a good young actor. And there’s a couple of youngsters, a guy called Brian J. Smith, who’s working out extremely well, and a girl called Elyse Levesque, she’s actually from Vancouver, a wonderful young actress, the first thing she’s ever done.”

It’s a nice mix of youth and leadership and trying to fight for survival and leadership aboard this craft for the next 20 episodes.”

The obvious question is: what is Robert Carlyle doing in a Sci Fi Channel series?

“I’m very happy to be here, that’s all I can say,” he said. “I’ve done an awful lot of nitty-gritty type of stuff in my career over the last 15-20 years or so and I felt it was time for a change. I wanted something different. When I came out to Los Angeles about a year ago, I talked to various television people with various ideas. I put it out that I was looking for something that was going to interest me. And I was very fortunate, three or four things came in. This one, for me, was by far and away the best.”

The former Bond villain said he has time during the year to do other projects that come up. There are also lifestyle reasons to be based in Vancouver during production periods. He has three small children - ages 3, 5 and 7 - who live in Glasgow, Scotland, who’ll come over and camp out with us there. It gives me more time to be a dad at the weekend.”

Last plug for the show: Carlyle says within the first hour, you’ll be hooked.

Commercials Make it Better

MCN Staff — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:27:49 +0000

Commercial breaks make TV viewing more enjoyable, says a story in today’s Science Times in the New York Times. It cites research from a University of California at San Diego professor, who calls the conclusion “simultaneously implausible and empirically coherent.” It has something to do with stopping and restarting a pleasurable experience. The opposite being if you interrupt a boring task like vacuuming — interrupting it makes it seem more tedious.

The story also observes that we have gotten used to taking these breaks in the TV action to do other things — go to the kitchen, make a phone call — and that even when replaying shows on the DVR, people often will pause at the break before zipping through the ads. (Some people, I hear, even watch the ads.)

I would add to this the three- or four-act structure that hourlong dramas have written in to lead up to the breaks. Time often elapses between cliffhanger and resumption, and it just works better with an actual pause.

Eve Myles: N.Y.ers Are ‘Cheeky, Cheeky Monkeys'

MCN Staff — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:59:24 +0000

Torchwood star Eve Myles charmed the pants off a Comic Con crowd Saturday.

Not literally, of course, though her character (Gwen Cooper) has had many flirtatious moments with humans and aliens of both genders on the BBC America hit drama, which returns later this year with a five-night, five-episode third season. It hasn’t been scheduled yet, partly because it will coincide with a five-night run in the United Kingdom as well.

Myles - described by the creator of Torchwood and the related, revived Doctor Who, Russell T. Davies, as “one of Wales’s best-kept secrets” - used her wit and Welsh wiles to do something difficult. She pleased a room filled with 500-plus fans of the show while not really revealing anything important about the upcoming season. Now that’s cheeky.

Yet she declared New Yorkers the “cheeky, cheeky monkeys,” after an audience member in New Yorks Jacob Javits Convention Center dropped an F bomb in inviting her and Torchwood director Euros Lyn out for a night of, um, carousing.

Of course she did let a few behind-scenes secrets out, including that co-star John Barrowman (Capt. Jack Harkness) “farts a lot.” That wins a crowd over fast.

A clip of the upcoming season - Torchwood: Children of Earth - shown at the session included a brief shot of Capt. Jack kissing a man. (Update: a commenter says it’s team member Ianto [Gareth David-Lloyd]; I guess my eyes aren’t quick enough to confirm but I stipulate that’s right.] An audience member asked: Is there anyone on Torchwood that Jack doesn’t kiss? Said Myles: “It goes from tables to chairs to curtains,” amid howls of laughter. “There’s an amalgamation this year.”

Moderator Whitney Matheson, of USA Today’s Pop Candy blog, asked whether there’d be any “action” among the cast members in addition to the action (including Myles’s Gwen Cooper flying through the air with a gun in each hand). “Ah, well, it wouldn’t be Torchwood without a little bit of” and snicked her lips.

She also promised: “Everything that you love about Torchwood you’re going to get double times over in this series. You’re going to see why they’re [so] close in this particular series. They really prove themselves to be rightful heroes.”

Amid the entendres and repartee, Myles, garbed in a sleeveless tee and skirt as jet black as her shoulder-length straight hair, imparted serious thanks and plugs for the upcoming season.

“We’re completely overwhelmed by the support that we’ve had in New York,” she said. “It’s been extraordinary, to say the least. You’ve just been so energetic about the show, passionate and loyal, and we can’t thank you enough.”

Lyn - who also directs four Doctor Who specials that will be the last four with David Tennant as The Doctor - said of Children of Earth: “We want to tell a story the way that we haven’t done before … We want to develop characters and their relationships to a deeper, more complex sphere. And we want to build up to something even grander and more epic. I can tell you, by the time you reach the end of the series you’re going to be holding onto the edge of your seats.”

The storyline - which clearly involves all the children of Earth - also clearly is grim. And in the last season, two members of the Torchwood team of alien hunters died. Myles was asked if fans would see anything from the characters that would leaven the mood.

“There’s definitely a lighter side to the characters [this season], because the theme is so dark that somewhere along the line you’ve got to get humor in there. Otherwise the dark stuff doesn’t work.”

One new addition will be “the mysterious Mr. Frobisher,” who’s played by the marvelous British actor Peter Capaldi (of the movie Local Hero and the BBCA series The Thick of It).

“He plays the grayest, middle-ranking civil servant,” Lyn said. “Somebody who’s worked hard all his life, never stuck his head above the parapet, and here he is he winds up in the middle of the biggest terror to face the earth so far. He’s a very brilliant protagonist - antagonist — somewhere in the middle.”

Gwen Cooper’s husband, Rhys (Kai Owen), also plays a bigger role in this season. Myles demurely declared Rhys the best kisser she’s encountered on the show, although she did admit “it was fun” snogging a girl in one of the first episodes in the first season. “She didn’t have stubble — that was nice!”

Finally, Capt. Jack Harkness can’t die - he is “killed” over and over in the series and comes back to life. Lyn was asked if it’s a challenge writing a character like that.

“An interesting thing about a character that can’t die is that death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to him,” Lyn said. “There’s a fate worse than death. And for Jack, there are some terrible sins from his past that we’re going to find out more about this time.”

Myles, who sweetly stepped off stage at one point to accept a gift and offer hugs to the two fans who brought it, responded ever so politely when a female fan called her gorgeous. “I’m so coming back to New York!” she declared.

The welcome mat will be out.

Baghdad Business

MCN Staff — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:28:44 +0000

David Isaac has a challenging business to help establish — but nowhere near as daunting as a previous stint helping restore Iraqi Media Network TV and radio broadcasts in post-invasion Iraq in 2003.

Back then, the one-mile journey out of the fortified “Green Zone” in Baghdad to the tower location necessitated a convoy including two tanks, he says. He told me he was sick in his room at the al-Rashid Hotel when it came under rocket fire in September 2003 — one person was killed and 17 wounded in the incident — and had to walk down from the ninth floor amid the smoke. “I was one of the last people out” in that attack, which destroyed a room across the hall, Isaac says.

“And we thought our jobs were stressful,” a man within earshot of our conversation at the Future TV Show at the New York Hilton remarked on Thursday.

Now Isaac is general manager and CEO of London, England-based United Media Channel, a start-up service aimed at providing news programming to Arabic speakers in the Middle East, Europe, around the world, with an early emphasis on news from Iraq and the Kurdistan region in the north of the country.

Its founder is Hersh M. Al-Tayyar, a Kurdish Iraqi businessman whose aim is to promote “peace and the economy in all of the Arabic world, and especially in Iraq and Kurdistan,” according to Isaac.

The service went live in December on Eutelsat’s satellite network available to over-the-air satellite receivers in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, accessible to all Arabic speaking countries, Isaac says. Currently it is only broadcasting test signals.

He says the company is in the process of establishing three satellite news gathering (SNG) terminals — in Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region; in Baghdad and in Basra — and hopes to launch live programming by April, he says.

The situation in Kurdistan is very stable, he says but less so in Baghdad and especially Basra. ”In Basra we’ll maybe face a lot of problems, but we’ll do it.” UMC plans to establish offices in Tunisia, Kuwait, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain — and have five locations in Iraq.

Al-Tayyar’s also building a studio and uplink complex — United Media City Iraq — in Arbil, according to Isaac, who thinks prospects for economic growth in Kurdistan and Iraq in general are very positive for the next five to 10 years.

As for the new venture, the TV business “is not easy,” Isaac says, especially to break into the U.S. market, where he said UMC has a capacity deal with Galaxy (Intelsat). “But from past experience, I think this time we’ll be successful.”

Traveling to meetings should be quieter, at least.

He's Not a Cop, Or An Actor, Though His Name Is Seamus

MCN Staff — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:40:07 +0000

I was almost out of the room when I thought I spotted Michael Chiklis, and ambled over to chat.

It wasn’t too surprising to see the star of The Shield at last Thursday night’s event, a reception thrown by Fox Cable Networks for local advertisers in the New York City area. Actors, producers and writers of FX’s Damages and Rescue Me were there, and The Shield, FX’s hit cop drama, returns Sept. 2 for a seventh and last season. So of course that was “Vic Mackey” himself, puffing on a stogey at the outdoor rooftop bar in New York’s Hotel Gansevoort.

Being a fan of the show, and remembering how nice he was when he came to our show-daily newsroom at the National Show in New Orleans in 2002, I went over and, after asking if he was Chiklis, asked how he was doing, thanked him for coming by the newsroom that time – and then realized he was putting me on.

He’s not Chiklis. His name is Seamus Warakomski and he’s the owner and sales manager at Tri-City Appliance Heating & Cooling in Milford, Conn. He buys ads on cable networks, including FX, via Comcast Spotlight, and was there with his wife, Phyllis, far right in the enclosed photo; Comcast Spotlight’s Amber Dodge and NCC executive Joe Smyth (far left), among others.

The next day (Friday), he told me 14 people came up to him thinking he was Chiklis, which made me feel better, especially after some FX people told me he was much less than a “dead ringer” which was my description. Taller than Chiklis, and weighs less. Sounds enough like him to pass for at least a few seconds, though, if I’m an accurate judge.

“Some of the times they were doing the Rock Man pose to me and I didn’t know what they were doing,” Warakomski said. Rock Man as in The Thing, whom Chiklis has played in two Fantastic Four movies.

He had snaps taken with Rescue Me and Damages stars. He said he had hoped to meet Denis Leary, who wasn’t there; the rumor (not from Seamus) was Leary isn’t welcome at the hotel after some shenanigans there after a cast party in 2005 that got written up in the New York Post (I can’t find a suitable link).

One other absent star was on his mind, too.

“I was really hoping that Chiklis would be there,” Warakomski said. “I could finally get a picture [with him].”

Updated: 'MCN' Editors Played Guess The Cylon

MCN Staff — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:26:14 +0000

Warning: This post is a group effort by a few Multichannel News editors who watch Sci Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica. The opinions expressed are solely those of the editors; standard spoiler warnings and disclaimers apply.

Midway through the final season of Battlestar, the ever-present tease to reveal the final Cylon was kicked into overdrive during the preview to this week’s episode.

In the teaser, we see the unboxed model No. 3, D’Anna (Lucy Lawless), say to someone, “You know about the final five, but you don’t know you are one of them.” It sounds a lot like tonight’s episode will reveal that missing Cylon. Here’s the promo. (Note to legal department: Sci Fi emailed us the actual file but it’s so huge we decided to use this YouTube posting instead.)

The story so far: We’ve been told since the beginning that there are 12 Cylon models. We’ve known seven models for quite some time. Last season’s stunning finale unveiled that four of the final five were members of the Galactica crew: Saul Tigh, Galen Tyrol, Samuel T. Anders and Tory Foster.

That left fans of the show guessing at who the final Cylon could be – including our own Maria Hernandez, Eric Smith and Tom Umstead, plus me.

Here are some of our theories:

Tom thinks it has to be someone really big. Like Lee “Apollo” Adama. Actually Admiral William Adama, played by Edward J. Olmos, would be even cooler. But Eric and Maria point out a flaw in that theory. The “Last Supper” photo Sci Fi has used to promote the show this season includes both Adamas, and executive producer Ron Moore said in an interview the final Cylon is not depicted in that image.

The empty cup is supposed to represent the last Cylon. You can see the photo (and watch a 10-minute promo of tonight’s episode) here.

Eric has a new theory. The four revealed at the end of season three — Tigh, Tyrol, Tory and Samuel T. Anders — all had a "T" in their names. That could set up Kara Thrace or Tom Zarek as the final Cylon. But Eric thinks that’s actually a weak theory.

Eric and Maria were kicking around some ideas in an earlier email thread. I will set this up by saying the promo video implies D’Anna is telling Laura Roslin, the ailing colonial president played by Mary McDonnell, that she (Roslin) is a Cylon.

Eric: Roslin doesn’t look like she’s reacting to D’Anna. She reacts to something, but I think she would look much more horrified if she was just told she was a Cylon.

Maria: I thought it was (Felix) Gaeta too, but after seeing how manipulative (Romo) Lampkin was, he’s got another vote. Can I get two votes?

Eric: It’s not Romo. Besides, he’s not on the base ship.

Maria: Neither is Tyrol or Tigh.

Eric: Well, if we believe D’Anna is going to out the final Cylon tonight, that person would have to be on the base ship.

Anyway, that’s about where we’ve left it until we actually see what happens tonight, which is the second-to-last episode before the series takes a break. What’s your theory? Please add it to Talkback

UPDATE: As she was unable to add her views to Talkback, due to technical difficulties, herewith are Betsy Smith’s views:

My personal feeling is that it’s Gaeta but I’m intrigued by the idea it’s Cottle. We know that it’s a skin job. Hypothetically, it could be several different characters who have already been killed before the story even began. Hence, the empty place at the "table" of the story of BSG characters.

However, if we take them at their word that the final cylon is not in the picture, only consider "live" characters, believe it is someone of significance, and somewhat known, the choices are narrowed to Felix Gaeta, Dee Dualla, Doc Cottle and Romo Lampkin. I believe it should be someone who has been there since the beginning, which excludes Lampkin. Dee is just too boring. Gaeta and Cottle have both been flying somewhat under the cylon-suspicion radar. Someone I know also pointed out that Cottle is missing from the cast on scifi.com… just like he might be missing from the picture.

UPDATE (includes spoiler): Well, no new Cylon was named. The preview tease remark from D’Anna to Roslin was … a joke! Funny Cylon!

Here’s Eric’s response to the episode:

Wow. What a monumental mind-frak, if I may. I’m glad I threw the remote at the couch instead of the TV. Once again the BSG team has taken us to the brink and left us hanging.

My money is still on Gaeta. Over the past four seasons, he has quietly become a pretty important cast member. The four of the final five that we already know were big players in the resistance on New Caprica, and Gaeta also played a very big role in the anti-Cylon efforts.

Of course, I don’t know why he didn’t hear the funky version of "All Along the Watchtower" in the season three finale…which leads into a crackpot theory I had after that episode: Maybe the final Cylon is already on Earth. Maybe it’s Bob Dylan.

Verizon Offers To Pay Tributes -- Just Like Cable

MCN Staff — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:57:05 +0000

Verizon’s being required to seek a franchise to offer fiber-based cable television service in New York City is likened to “legalized bribery” today by an analyst who follows one of Verizon’s key FiOS TV vendors.

To which the response here is: um, yes, but so is every cable franchise. Should Verizon be any different?

Anton Wahlman, a prominent technology analyst with ThinkPanmure, sent out a note this morning (not posted online so not linkab;e) related to Verizon and vendor BigBand Networks and concerning the telco’s application to provide FiOS TV service throughout the Big Apple. Its headline was “Verizon’s Struggle With Mercantilism And Institutionalized Bribery.”

“We think it is a sad day in America when Verizon has to apply for a permit in order to offer consumers an alternative. This ‘franchising’ process has all the elements of legalized bribery, in our view; otherwise, why would Verizon have to apply for a permit at all?” Wahlman asked.

He cites Apple’s coming to town with a glitzy store, to compete with Microsoft, Dell, Nokia, and even cable TV with its Apple TV – all without need of permit.

The franchise process – in which city committees, the council and state regulators all get to have their say and impose requirements in the way of revenue percentages, free government-agency fiber networks and support for constituents’ producing TV shows on public-access channels – is that has led to cable companies paying their pounds of flesh for decades. It’s well established. Cities control “rights of way,” the way the feds control the “air waves” it’s reclaiming from TV stations and selling off. Congress hasn’t yet agreed to overrule the process.

I credit Verizon for going through the franchise paces and competing on as fair a basis as possible with cable. AT&T has tried to separate itself from such mundane niceties, with mixed results.

Verizon’s commitments, cited in its press release on Monday, include a guarantee to build everywhere in the city (which makes sense as it is upgrading existing phone-line infrastructure) – something geographic duopolist incumbents Time Warner and Cablevision are unlikely to do as their networks don’t overlap.

Verizon also said it would pay the same 5% gross revenue fee that the cablers pay; install an “institutional network” for city government and comply with existing customer-service standards.

All part of being a good neighborhood cable provider.

As for me, I look forward to the day my Upper East Side building is served by Time Warner Cable, RCN and FiOS TV. However long it takes or whatever Verizon has to pay to do it.

Home Stretch For Cable Positive Dinner

MCN Staff — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:07:14 +0000

Can it really almost be time for the Cable Positive dinner? Yes.

The HIV-AIDS information organization, producer of public service announcements and funder of local assistance outfits through six local chapters, will on March 4 host its biggest single fundraiser, a benefit event at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.

This year what they’re calling the Power Awards are going to three honorees (a first): Michael Willner of cabler Insight Communications; Bill Roedy, of MTV International and MTV Networks; and Dr. Helene Gayle, CEO of CARE and former head of the HIV-AIDS initiative at the Gates Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control.

Cable Positive CEO Steve Villano sent a letter out to supporters this week, saying the dinner commitments so far "remain several hundred thousand dollars away from our budgetary goal for this year."

Over the phone, he said yesterday that this year’s committments to the dinner, significantly, has reached the $1-million mark this year. But even with other important sources of revenue — including $200,000 from the Motorola Foundation this year — Cable Positive relies on the dinner as the biggest single source of its $2.5 million budget.

The organization would like to see the dinner bring in $1.4 million.

"Reaching that goal is imperative if we are to continue producing our award-winning, attention-getting PSAs and documentaries," Villano said in the letter.

But it’s coming a bit slower this year. Villano says an obvious reason is uncertainty about the economy. Also, for whatever reason, time seems to be compressed this year. "I think the year has just snuck up on people," Villano said. He noted that other events — including, disclosure here, the Multichannel News and New York WICT "Wonder Women" luncheon earlier on March 4 — are having a hard time making their numbers.

Board members and the dinner’s five co-chairs — Bob Miron, Angela Wong, Kyle McSlarrow, Gerry Laybourne and Judy McGrath — and their staffs are working the phones to help Cable Positive hit its goal, Villano said.

Well, I said, at least the MTV connections (Roedy and McGrath) should help make the event entertaining. Will Kanye West be on hand, I asked, using the first big name that came to mind?

Villano wouldn’t say. "You’ll have to wait and be surprised."

And a short wait it is: even with 29 days in endless February, the dinner is only 19 days away.

***
Update, update:Wyclef Jean is scheduled as a presenter, as is CCH Pounder of FX’s The Shield.

Mea Culpa on Reporting Error

MCN Staff — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:55:31 +0000

Hallmark Channel HD will be available to affiliates on April 2 but it won’t be on DirecTV, as I mistakenly reported elsewhere on this Web site and in print.

Multichannel News corrections typically don’t lay blame on how these mistakes happen, so let me use this blog post to explain to our readers that I made the mistake. It wasn’t bad information from anyone, it was just a mistake that I made and didn’t confirm with DirecTV, much as it pains me to write that. There was a portion of the story that appeared to paraphrase a Hallmark executive as discussing affiliates in addition to DirecTV, but that was an extension of the original mistake, not the words of that Hallmark executive.

DirecTV rightly points out this is a mistake that costs them time and money, and that it could have been avoided with a phone call, and they’re right. I apologize to DirecTV, to Hallmark channel and to our readers and anyone who might have picked up this incorrect report.

What Tonight's 'Stargate Atlantis' Episode Spawned

MCN Staff — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:56:15 +0000

Would you watch Stargate Titanic: The Musical? Of course you would, if you’re a Stargate fan like me.

Unfortunately, it exists only in the frenzied creative imaginations of the Stargate Atlantis cast members who feature prominently in tonight’s episode on Sci Fi Channel, called "Trio."

In a media call back in September, Amanda Tapping (Col. Samantha Carter) and Jewel Staite (Dr. Jennifer Keller) talked about the giddiness that set in when they and David Hewlett (Rodney McKay) were filming the episode, under difficult conditions. The scenario: they’re trapped in a collapsing mine (video preview here).

The Web site TVaholic printed a transcript of the whole session (including my own dopey contribution) and asked the key question that elicited the anecdote:

TVaholic: Thanks, and for both of you it seems like there’s a lot of fun that happens on the set, and if you guys could share any stories that maybe will make that blooper reel?

Amanda: Well on the last episode Jewel and David and I were stuck in a, you know, really quite hideous set covered in dirt and on angle in this little metal box, and so we decided to come up with a new show. Should I reveal?

Jewel: Please!

Amanda: It’s called Stargate Titanic: The Musical. And it’s specifically for small town dinner theater and we just started writing and singing and dancing about the set. I hope some of it appeared on camera because it was really quite hilarious. David singing a song about the wraith, the wraith, they’re a very bad race.

It sounds really silly, but it got us through the day.

I think most of the blooper reels I think will be us cracking each other up the entire cast. Everyone on the cast has a really good sense of humor, so generally it’s just people making each other laugh. And of course the Stargate Titanic: The Musical.

Jewel: Oh my God. I hope somebody gets that and it’s not just me and you that think that’s really hilarious because that would be really embarrassing. Anyway.

***

Oh we get it Jewel. Now all we need is a barn, a few costumes, maybe a large ice bucket and we’ve got a hit!

***

Update, update, 11:43 p.m.: After viewing Trio, I declare it a hit and recommend the midnight replay. Great Martin Gero script and Martin Wood direction. Great physical comedy by the three troupers — it’s a classic Carter-McKay episode, with the new girl Keller thrown in to mix it up. Or maybe it’s a McKay-Keller episode with Carter along as chaperone.

Don't Touch That CableCard! Oops, Too Late

MCN Staff — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 09:21:48 +0000

Woke up Saturday morning, toddled to the TV to see what English football matches were on Fox Soccer Channel, only to see the error message: “CableCard failure. Please remove and reinsert CableCard to continue.”

Knowing, from my reading of Todd Spangler, that CableCards are firmly secured in the box, I got my screwdriver out and proceeded to remove the two screws on the plate securing the little darling in the back of the Scientific Atlanta HD DVR. I also had to remove a piece of green colored tape that covered the bottom screw.

The card was in snugly, with a little cap holding it in place. It was hard to get out, so I called Time Warner Cable customer service to make sure I was doing it the right way. In the meantime I used needle nosed pliers to remove and reinsert the card. The TV screen went a shade of maroon, then went through the set-top’s all-too-familiar several-minutes rebooting phases. (It happens spontaneously or by manual command quite frequently.) After booting up, my cable was back in business.

By this point, Time Warner Cable customer service was on the line. And finally got to the trouble. I explained what I had done.

“No, don’t remove that CableCard,” the person on the other end of the line was saying. If you touch it, it’ll likely short out and there won’t be anything more we can do until a technician arrives, he said.

Then your error message should have said call customer service, not remove the CableCard and reinsert to continue, I replied.

What you’re supposed to do is what you get used to doing with these HD DVRs: push three buttons (select, volume up and volume down) on the front of the box to re-boot it.

Gee, I said, this box needs to re-boot a lot. We realize the HD boxes have issues such as that, the technician replied, and we’re working on a software solution.

That’s good news. Hope it works and soon. And don’t worry, next time the box tells me to remove its CableCard, I’ll do something else instead.

Poking Sticks or Waving Carrots

MCN Staff — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 09:43:05 +0000

There are lots of ways programmers attempt to get carriage on cable companies. Often they don’t succeed, a major frustration to a company with a business plan built on reaching millions of TV homes.

These days, a tactic more networks are trying is to go on the attack against potential affiliates for not carrying them.

These aggrieved networks range from the well-connected and powerful (the Fox-backed Big Ten Network and the National Football League-backed NFL Network) to independent services that haven’t even launched yet (The America Channel, or TAC).

Some cable companies are so big and own so many of the networks on their cable systems that non-affiliated programmers understandably see conflicts of interest when they don’t get carriage deals that similar-looking affiliated services get.

Some programmers see government intervention as their last recourse or at least a point of leverage.

TAC, denied a berth on Comcast and Time Warner, lobbied against their buying Adelphia’s 2 million subscribers. It ended up getting a Comcast carriage deal via a provision of the Federal Communications Commission’s Adelphia-sale approval. Basically, TAC became a regional sports network and rode an arbitration process into a carriage deal.

Programmers including Hallmark Channel hoped in vain the FCC last month would force cable operators into arbitration when carriage talks break down and the programmer can demonstrate the operator acted unfairly.

An independent programmer called WealthTV was one of them. It hired former FCC official Kathleen Wallman to make the case at the commission, citing WealthTV’s difficulties getting carriage on Time Warner Cable as an example of problems indie programmers face.

Last week, WealthTV went further. It lashed out at Time Warner after network CEO Robert Herring Sr. heard disparaging references to WealthTV during an audio podcast published Dec. 6 on the Web site Engadget.

Engadget is owned by America Online, which is owned by Time Warner, which also controls Time Warner Cable.

WealthTV’s broadside – headlined “BIG BUSINESS AT ITS UGLIEST: Time Warner’s Media Might Punishes Small Family Owned Business After it Speaks Out to the FCC” – came from sheer frustration, Herring and company president Charles Herring say.

The Herrings see the In Demand channel Mojo, which relaunched this year as a male-targeted high-definition service, as “a WealthTV knock-off.” Time Warner Cable owns part of In Demand.

WealthTV said it provided HD on-demand programming for free to Time Warner Cable this year, anticipating a carriage contract for its 24-hour service, but a deal couldn’t be reached, ending WealthTV’s time on Time Warner Cable.

The Engadget commentary – which the site says was not an attempt to aid TWC — was the last straw, the Herrings said.

They said they didn’t want to attack Time Warner. “It would have been nice to stay in the back room and kept quiet and kept negotiating,” Robert said. Added Charles: “We won’t be popular within our own industry — and I say our own industry because we consider ourselves part of it.”

They say it’s time for measures that help independent programmers gain a “level playing field,” adding that independent services like theirs help push TV technology forward.

Time Warner Cable’s response: “We have reached mutually beneficial agreements with hundreds of networks, large and small, over the years. We reach agreements through successful private negotiations, and we are always willing to look at new programming options, if the programming is of value to our customers. With regards to the recent Wealth TV press release, we have been negotiating with them but have no interest in participating in a public negotiation. We’re not going to comment on that release other than to say that it’s inaccurate.”

While Wealth TV is hoping that its offense will prove to be the best defense, Retirement Living TV president Brad Knight thinks his Baby Boomer-targeted service, backed by retirement-community mogul John Erickson, is better served using carrots not sticks to gain carriage for its 24-hour service.

“You’ve got to be careful when you hit a monopoly with a stick,” Knight said. “So we’re keeping our swords sheathed.”

RLTV has paid for carriage on Comcast’s CN8 network and on DirecTV during the day, demonstrating its seriousness, and is signing deals with small operators, notably Bend Broadband last week.

Knight said RLTV’s business plan assumes it costs about $200 million to establish a new network, and RLTV has spent about $75 million so far, mostly on a programming library. “And there’s launch-support coming because nobody launches you for free. But John [Erickson] plays long ball.”

One carrot RLTV’s offering affiliates are public-service announcements about the coming transition to digital TV. It even recorded one with FCC chairman Kevin Martin.

Different situations, different approaches. A stick worked for The America Channel. Maybe a carrot will work for RLTV.

Words Worth Remembering

MCN Staff — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 05:43:04 +0000

New York — There were lots of things John Higgins would’ve liked about the B&C Hall of Fame dinner here last night.

Everyone wearing black tie, for one. He liked black and white clothes.

The fast-moving nature of the program would have pleased him. A baker’s dozen honorees and still the event was over around 10 p.m. In this blog age, particularly, John always had a deadline.

Most of all, he’d have been proud of his wife, Debbie.

Higgins was on many minds last night, partly because he was so associated with B&C magazine and partly because it was around this time a year ago when he died, of a heart attack, at age 45.

I’d been thinking of him over the weekend, as I mentioned to his close friend, Paul Rodriguez. It came up as it often does for me: after I’d done a calculated act of consideration to a stranger. "That would do it," Paul replied by email. John was well known for acts of kindness.

At last year’s B&C event, he was equal parts host and reporter, as Debbie was with him and she had finally moved up to New Jersey after working in Washington, D.C., as a lawyer at the FTC.

This year, his good friend Mark Robicheaux, B&C’s editor, inducted Higgins into the Hall of Fame in a special tribute before the scheduled program.

He reminded us of one of John’s favorite sayings, "Life is an Adventure," words now carved on his gravestone.

Debbie accepted the award. She gave heartfelt thanks and reminded everyone how much he loved events like this dinner, and in fact had been at a television awards event hours before he died last November.

She saluted the newsmakers, news gatherers and the entertainers in the room, saying how much comfort she’d drawn over the past months with a quiet respite in front of the TV.

Then she went a step further.

She bravely pointed out something many in the room didn’t know, about John’s final hours.

At the hospital, she said, he wasn’t treated with the kind of emergency care that should have been given a man who’d had a prior heart attack a few years earlier and who knew he was experiencing the symptoms. In fact, she said, at one point he fell to the floor and was left lying there for several minutes.

It’s important for the media to report not just on the best hospitals in the area, but to warn people about the worst hospitals, too, she said.

It’s also important, she said, for people to know that in an emergency situation, it’s best if at all possible to wait for an ambulance. That way critical care starts right away and continues at the hospital. John was, understandably, agitated and took the quickest means at hand, which was a taxicab.

She also said it’s important for people experiencing heart attack symptoms to take an aspirin, which is something they weren’t aware of at the time.

These weren’t the typical remarks one hears at a hall of fame event.

It took a lot of courage for her make her points so strongly, and yet turn them into positive advice.

John couldn’t have asked for more.

Another Weir Rides the Bus

MCN Staff — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:12:34 +0000

Stargate Atlantis has the Stargate spotlight all to itself on Sci Fi Fridays, so no more comparisons from reviewers like moi privy to the first two episodes of season four.

But the new setup isn’t all good for all cast members, as fans of the Sci Fi Channel drama already know – and as has been nagging at me since seeing the review disk. Torri Higginson’s character, Dr. Elizabeth Weir, the civilian leader of a key U.S. Air Force installation in another galaxy in the ancient city of Atlantis, has been reduced to a “recurring” role.

Taking Weir’s place in the star firmament of Atlantis is Amanda Tapping, who was the female lead in Stargate SG-1, the MGM show originally starring Richard Dean Anderson that premiered on Showtime in 1997 and spent its last five seasons on Sci Fi Channel. Sci Fi didn’t renew SG-1 for season 11, so MGM is producing SG-1 movies for DVD instead.

Sci Fi tried to promote Higginson, showing off her humor in interviews and behind-scenes videos and showing off her figure a little more in costume on the show. Tapping remains a bigger star, though, even after taking maternity leave in 2005.

My opinion: Tapping’s character of Samantha Carter, the brainy and weapons-trained astrophysicist and Air Force officer, deserves her continued service on Sci Fi in Atlantis’s Pegasus galaxy. Carter’s been tough, brilliant and gorgeous in Stargate roles longer than Weir, and has a big following.

But it would seem there ought to be room for both Carter and Weir, who was badly injured in an explosion during last season’s cliff-hanger ending.

Accommodating Carter is something that’s happened to Weir, before, too.

Stargate SG-1 two-part episode Lost City, at the end of the seventh season, introduced Dr. Elizabeth Weir as the new civilian commander of SG-1’s Stargate Command, in Colorado. Placed in a very difficult position, Weir backed the SG-1 team at the right moments, while fending off attempts to influence her by the nasty vice president who put her in that job.

That Elizabeth Weir was played by Jessica Steen, a blonde actress who might be best known for being in the show Earth2 and who, in my opinion, shone in the role on SG-1.

Why didn’t the same actress play the role when it shifted to the new spinoff Stargate Atlantis?

Possibly because she looked a little too much like Tapping, also a blonde Canadian-born actress.

Steen’s Web site doesn’t even list her Stargate SG-1 guest stint in her resume and filmography. And here’s how the FAQ section of the site ends:

Q: Jessica played the character of Dr. Elizabeth Weir in the season 7 finale of Stargate SG-1. Why did they hire another actress to play that same character in the spinoff series Stargate: Atlantis?

A: We don’t know why. When Jessica was hired for the two-part Season 7 finale (Lost City) she was told that her character might be in a possible Stargate spinoff series. Jessica was even paid not to take any other work until it was decided if they were going to do the spinoff. Stargate: Atlantis was eventually given the green light, but for whatever reason, "the powers that be" decided to go with another actress.

Now, the powers that be have downgraded what About.com reviewer Mark Wilsoncalled “the brunette version of Dr. Weir," too, in deference to Tapping’s Samantha Carter.

I remain a Stargate fan, and Higginson has some shining moments in the first two episodes of Atlantis’s Season Four, returning on Sept. 28. There’s still a nice photo of her on Sci Fi’s Atlantis home page. And the long-established (on SG-1 and Atlantis), often adversarial relationship between Carter and Atlantis brainiac Dr. Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) always leads to fun dialogue.

But I’m forced to agree with Wilson on this point: “Dr. Weir, as interpreted by either actor, is a great character and it’s a shame that she has to fade into the background just so that Atlantis [can] pull a Worf.”

(Translation installing a character from an earlier hit in the franchise, like the Klingon character Worf who was first in Star Trek: The Next Generation then in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.)

Higginson is expected to return for Atlantis’s midseason finale on Dec. 7.

Fox Movie Channel’s Family Ties

MCN Staff — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:58:52 +0000

Los Angeles – On the next episode of Fox Movie Channel’s series Life After Film School, we find aspiring filmmakers interviewing… Fox Broadcasting entertainment chairman Peter Liguori.

Now that’s synergy.

The episode premieres Sunday, Sept. 2, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern as the Fox-owned commercial-free movie channel expands its originals slate. Other originals include behind-scenes show Making a Scene, Casting Session and red-carpet glimpser World Premiere.

Liguori does have a lot to talk about. On the Life After Film School episode, he gets into the creation of such programming as TheShield, RescueMe and Nip/Tuck at FX and delves into his goals, strategy and scheduling of the Fox broadcast network, the channel said in a release.

Maybe the interviewers will also think to ask about his associate producer role on the beloved 1996 foodie flick, Big Night.

Fox Movie Channel, launched in 1994 (and called fXm Movies From Fox until 2000) with a library of 20th Century Fox films, in competition with Turner Classic Movies, has tapped many Fox connections on Life After Film School, judging by a list of recent interview subjects.

Recent episodes featured actor Kevin Bacon (Death Sentence, distributed by Fox), producer Seth MacFarlane (Fox’s Family Guy and American Dad), actor Michael Chiklis (The Shield), writer/producer Wes Craven (The Hills Have Eyes II), director Len Wiseman (Live Free or Die Hard), director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum), TV showrunner Jon Cassar (Fox’s 24) and TV showrunner Rob McElhenney (FX’s It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia), the channel said.

On Palaces and Castles

MCN Staff — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 04:38:23 +0000

There’s a way to enjoy the view from the 55th-floor at Comcast’s under-construction headquarters in downtown Philly without getting vertigo. Check it out here.

The blogger, freelance photographer Albert Yee, got a tour on Aug. 7 of Philadelphia’s newest and biggest skyscraper. The views from the windowless 55th floor are pretty spectacular. Having once joined in an interview with Comcast co-founder Ralph Roberts in his office and admiring the “Billy Penn” statue atop City Hall, I can attest that vista has nothing on what’s coming when the Comcast Center opens next spring. Or I can now that I’ve seen the Dragonballyee Web site.

According to a Wikipedia entry, Philadelphia City Hall is 548 feet tall including the William Penn statue. The Comcast Center will be 975 feet tall when completed at its location at 1701 John F. Kennedy Boulevard.

Vendors, prepare to be even more intimidated when you come calling on the country’s biggest cable operator.

One feature might look familiar to folks who’ve visited Comcast’s current executive offices on the upper floors of 1500 Market St. The photos of the “grand stairway” that leads into the building reminds me of the reception area at Comcast’s current HQ that links the 34th and 35th floors. A carryover motif? Probably not but we’re checking into it with Comcast.

So much for corporate palaces. Now for castles. For that I turn to an interview in Barron’s magazine that landed in a Google News compilation of stories on Cablevision Systems.

In it, Gifford Combs, managing director and portfolio manager of Dalton Investments (of Los Angeles), draws a distinction between what John Malone is up to these days and what Charles and James Dolan are doing. In his words, “two companies in the same industry, where one company is behaving properly and one company is behaving improperly.”

Malone’s Liberty Global, Combs says, is doing right by shareholders by following traditional Malone approaches: minimizing taxes, creating tracking stocks for different business lines and buying back stock as cash flow increases.

Combs adds: “Now contrast Liberty Global with another cable TV company, Cablevision, where the modus operandi of the Dolan family seems to be: how to steal the company at as low a price as possible by maximizing our position and using the asymmetries of information flow available to us versus the public.”

Instead of taking the company private at as low a price as possible, Combs says, the Dolans should put money back into the business, add debt where appropriate, buy back stock when possible and sell some assets over time. In five years, he says, Cablevision’s stock price could be 6 to 7 times what it is today, or $250-$300 a share.

Combs puts Malone in the category of a “benevolent ruler” dwelling in a shining castle on the hill. And he hopes the Dolans will “see the way of truth and righteousness” and be more like Malone.

On the other hand, Chuck Dolan got a big shout-out in USA Today from his old cable buddy John Rigas.

In an interview with USAT’s Leslie Cauley before heading off to the federal pokey, Rigas points out not many of his cable chieftain pals have made the trek to remote Coudersport, Pa., to visit him while he was out on appeal. A notable exception was Dolan pere. "I thought that was really nice," Rigas says.

Benevolent, one might even say.