With media titans GE and Vivendi still negotiating a deal to bring cable operator Comcast into a mega-media joint venture, a management move at DirecTV is giving dealwatchers a fresh programming alternative.

Yinka Adegoke and Sinead Carew report the appointment of PepsiCo veteran Michael White (pictured below), who has no experience in pay TV, as DirecTV CEO is being read as a sign the company's parent, Liberty Media, just wants a baby-sitter until its sells the operation in the next couple of years.

Telecom leaders Verizon and AT&T approached Liberty earlier this year, they report. Both have cross-marketing deals with DirecTV and would leapfrog the rest of the market with the addition of DirecTV's subscriber base. But fears of insurmountable regulatory resistance put those talks on ice.

Liberty Media shareholders are set to vote this morning on a plan to split DirecTV from Liberty Entertainment -- a move that Wall Street believes could pave the way for a telephone company to put in a bid for DirecTV, leading to a similar bid for smaller rival Dish Network.

If Comcast gets its content pipeline connected to NBC Universal, the pressure on the telcos to boost subscribers could get them to test the regulatory waters again.

Suddenly, after limited news over the past year, Epix has been very much the talk of the town in recent days. A number of publications, including Reuters, have picked up on some announcements out of the pay TV site jointly owned by Paramount, Lions Gate, and MGM.

The key bit of news, of course, was the announcement that it had reached its first distribution deal, with Verizon. Chief Executive Mark Greenberg suggested to us that other deals should be coming soon — that he is talking to everybody and “some are further along than others.”

This is key, in the eyes of Wall Street. Distribution deals are always a bit tricky, and even tougher in the current economic environment. But analysts want to see Epix sign a deal with one of the big players — one with a ton of subscribers. We’re talking about Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV. So far the reaction has been a little lukewarm from some of the big boys but that could just be a negotiating tactic.

That aside, there have been some other relatively significant bit of news. In case you missed…

• Epix will be launching in October, though hasn’t announced an official date. Sounds like they could be planning some sort of “event” or “special” to kickstart the channel

• The epixHD.com web site, which we’ve seen, is going to launch earlier.  It’s currently in beta, and looks good. Has some of the feel of Hulu.com

• Epix, which will be home to some 15,000 films, including titles like “Iron Man” and “Star Trek” and the James Bond movies, just signed a content deal with independently owned Samuel Goldwyn Films.

• Other content deals will likely follow, but Greenberg seemed doubtful that any full, equity partners would be brought on board.

• While most pay-TV channels air films about 12 months after the hit the theaters, Epix is planning to roll its out in 9-1/2 months (helps to be owned by the studios).

Still, none of this matters all the much without distribution. We’ll keep you posted.

Keep an eye on:

• In other news on Monday, Dish Network’s stock is jumping. The reason? For the first time in over a year the company added subscribers — impressive in the current climate. (Reuters)

• Bon Voyage. As expected, Microsoft has sold the Razorfish ad agency to France’s Publicis. (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

How big is “Star Trek” for Viacom?

The movie dominated the box office this weekend, taking in an estimated $72.5 million in North American ticket sales. Combined with $4 million grossed from Thursday evening’s preview screenings, “Star Trek” tallied $76.5 million in U.S. and Canadian receipts through Sunday.

Paramount could use a big hit. Last year, as the economy worsened, Paramount scaled by its film releases and cut costs by about $50 million. And this year’s first quarter didn’t offer a lot of cheer: Viacom’s entire filmed entertainment division posted an operating loss of $123 million.

“The weak economy continued to dampen the home entertainment market and Paramount was not immune to the impact,” Chief Executive Philippe Dauman said on the quarterly conference call. That put it mildly.

“Star Trek” will help the bottom line, if last weekend is any indication. But more is at stake than one quarter’s results. It’s about momentum at Paramount. The movie studio is hoping the big weekend sets up the rest of the year, with the “Transformers” sequel and a film based on “G.I. Joe” heading to the theater.

Or as The Wall Street Journal points out…

The debut of “Trek” may also mark the beginning of a new era for Paramount, which both produced and distributed the picture, which cost between $130 million and $150 million to make. In recent years, Paramount has been in reboot mode itself. In 2005, (Paramount Chief Brad Grey) was brought on board to revamp the studio after a long lackluster period, in which it experienced disappointments like “The Stepford Wives” and “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.”

Keep an eye on:

• The family that controls The New York Times empire has lost more than 86 percent of its fortune and may have sell their controlling stake to get out of debt (NY Post)

• Analysts are predicting that broadcast networks will see a 10 percent to 20 percent decline in this year’s broadcast TV upfront (AdAge.com)

• Satellite TV provider Dish Network Corp posted a better-than-expected profit on Monday as it lost fewer subscribers than most Wall Street analysts had forecast (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

Ah the media, we love a ruckus. We really do. And when the two pugilists are characters as colorful and savvy as Dish Network’s founder Charlie Ergen (left) and Siriux XM Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin (right) we do really get excited.

If you remember, Ergen was widely reported last month to have made a back door bid to take a stake in Sirius XM by quietly buying up some of the satellite radio company’s outstanding debt.  Analysts and experts came up with all kind of theories as to Ergen’s ambitions including taking complete control of Sirius on the cheap, combining various satellite assets, and kicking Mel out.

At the time Ergen ’s official channels at Dish and EchoStar declined to comment on the matter. So today’s Dish earning call was the first time we heard from the man himself on the matter. Well, it turns out the press was right on most things connected with the Sirius bid, according to Ergen. Except for one thing: he does not have bad blood with Sirius CEO Karmazin.

Here’s Ergen from the conference call:

I would take this opportunity to say one thing that clearly was not true is there wasn’t, at least I can speak for my end, there’s no annimosity toward Mel, Parsons [former XM chair] or anything like that.

I don’t know where they got that. Certainly not from our side.

Really?

Maybe the stories of an old feud were overplayed, but there might have something other than pure cold financial logic that influenced Mel’s final decision on this deal. Liberty Media beat Ergen in the bid for a stake in the beleaguered satellite radio business by offering to pay off Sirius’ due loans. In an interview with Reuters shortly after winning the Sirius bid last month, Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei implied there may have been some… ahem, personality issues in its favor.

“There clearly is less enthusiasm for Charlie from some members of Sirius XM,” said Maffei.

We wonder which members those were?

Wall Street sell-side analysts seemed to be unsurprised by AT&T’s decision to pick DirecTV as its video marketing partner for its version of the ‘triple play’ package, in regions where it hasn’t built out its U-verse digital service.

The final decision had seemed obvious to analysts after DISH said earlier this month that AT&T would extend its five-year relationship by just one month to Jan 31.

But what does it mean for the independent DISH and its maverick founder/CEO Charlie Ergen (pictured), with the No. 2 U.S. satellite TV provider already struggling with customer losses in a tough economy?

Here’s what a few analysts say:

Craig Moffett, Sanford Bernstein.

The announcement is a clear negative for Dish Network, and a major win for DirecTV. As a result, we now expect Dish Network to post a sizable (400,000) subscriber loss for full year 2009. We had previously expected approximately flat net growth. For DirecTV, we now expect a gain of 800Kwhere previously we had expected approximately half that.

Ingrid Chung, Goldman Sachs:

While the loss of the AT&T contract should have a positive impact on 2009 free cash flow for DISH (due to subscriber acquisition costs), DISH will be somewhat strapped to do any investing in its own business for the next several months. DISH has $1 billion in debt maturities coming due Oct 1 and has no revolver in place. While DISH can pay down this debt (and $500 million for the AT&T convert) through cash and investments - $1.8 billion at 6/30/08 - DISH will have limited capital to invest in its mobile video initiative or build out its direct sales channel.

But one analyst sees an investment opportunity despite DISH’s troubles.

Todd Mitchell, Kaufman Bros

The net impact of this deal will be to negatively impact DISH’s gross adds while putting greater pressure on churn. However, given DISH’s rather dismal operating performance recently we have already handicapped it pretty heavily. DISH’s performance should improve regardless of AT&T.

(Photo: Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• WPP, the world’s second largest advertising group, has extended its 1.2 billion-pound    ($2.2 billion) offer for market-research company TNS again, TNS said it continued to recommend shareholders reject the bid (Reuters)
• Goldman Sachs cuts European media companies to reflect greater debt concerns and worsening macro economic outlook, especially in the UK and Spain. (Reuters)
• U.S. newspaper publisher McClatchy Co said it amended a credit agreement with its lenders helping it to avoid defaulting on its debt. (Reuters)

You can think what you like about the management of DISH Network Corp, the second largest U.S. satellite TV operator, but they’re nothing if not refreshingly frank about the economy, the state of the market and their competitors’ tactics.

Of course, a lot of that has to do with the disarming candor of founder and Chief Executive Charlie Ergen, whose conference calls tend to avoid the sort of obfuscation and Orwellian double-speak the media and investors have to come expect from C-level executives in corporate America.

Ergen had to be especially blunt today on a day his company announced a loss 0f 25,000 subscribers, which according to Bernstein Research’s Craig Moffett, was its first ever loss of subscribers.

On competition:

 (There are) really competitive offerings in the marketplace, as the biggest being probably the phone companies and FiOS and U-verse, where there are a lot of introductory offers out there that I think they had about close to 350,000 net additions in the second quarter so they’re taking those some from us and some customers from others. Obviously in the Hi-Definition front we haven’t been as competitive as we would have liked in the second quarter, particularly versus DirecTV.

On AT&T ending a joint marketing partnership and calling for the repayment of a $500 million investment:

They contractually were allowed to do that. Our loan from them was at 3 percent interest, probably their (AT&T) CFO looked at that and made a very logical decision to say ‘we can probably do better with that money’. Their operations people probably said that we’re probably in a better position to have flexibility going forward in video, if we want to stay with a satellite partner, it would be better to talk to multiple partners than one and see what the best deal out there is. So we have to be ready as a company.

On on-going litigation between DISH and TiVo which might impact 4 to 6 million DISH subscribers if the satellite company loses:

What we did was we designed around the TiVo patent and patent law encourages people to be innovative and our guys were very innovative and used some very sophisticated algorithms and so fourth to design around the TiVo patent. I believe we’ll prevail but TiVo, we’re going to have conversations with TiVo one way or the other about how we work together, and again, I’m just stubborn. I know this case inside and out. I’ve sat through trials. I’ve sat through the engineering models. I’ve sat and had the best and the brightest explain this to us, and I’m just stubborn. We don’t violate their intellectual property today, and I want to prove that. And so we’re going to go to the September 4th hearing and see who is right and so far, TiVo has been right.

On the management’s role in the subscriber losses:

We really haven’t done as good a job executing for the last year and the second quarter is the first quarter we made progress, and that is kind of the first step, and again it’s all my fault. I really wasn’t on top of this business from an operational point of view as well as I should have been but as I got into it and I traveled around and I saw our operations the first thing was we really had to make sure we had the right people in the right place and that was done pretty much in the end of the first quarter … (In the) third quarter we’ll do a better job and fourth quarter we’ll do a better job.

(Photo: Reuters)

Come Tuesday, all eyes will be on News Corp.

The company’s earnings report should cast some more light on what’s happening in the media world – both in the United States and abroad. This is, after all, a media company with enormous reach and one whose shares have been hammered this year on worries about a slowdown.

For those who are impatient, Rupert Murdoch made some comments today that are worth noting. First and foremost, he said television advertising in the United States was good, despite a slowing economy (it’s easier to say that when your network is home to “American Idol”).

“Our advertisement on television and the Internet is very, very good, except for local television,” he said. “Cable networks are all sold out for 12 months,” he said, adding that Britain was holding up “very well”.

As the Wall Street Journal points out, however, investors will be looking at far more than just advertising from its television assets. In an article today, the paper raises the issue of how News Corp plans to draw advertising bucks from MySpace.

One initiative that could be critical to MySpace’s success, according to media buyers and industry analysts, is a system that lets marketers aim their ads at particular groups of users. As part of this “hypertargeting” system, MySpace has analyzed the profiles of its users to gauge their interests and then categorized them into more than 1,000 “buckets,” including rodeo watchers, scrapbook enthusiasts and “Dancing With the Stars” viewers.

MySpace, which has cheap advertising rates, like other social networks — only a few dollars, at most, for 1,000 displays of an ad, compared with the $50 or $60 per thousand charged by some niche sites — says it can charge roughly double those rates by offering targeting.

There’s more to watch, too, in tomorrow’s earnings. Investors will be keen to hear any discussion of News Corp’s plans for the global expansion of WSJ and integration of parent Dow Jones nearly a year after its acquisition deal was reached, not to mention any view offered on the progress of Fox Business Network. And, of course, the big question: the health of the global economy.

Keep an eye on:

• General Electric has no plans to sell its NBC Universal media unit and is on track to double its China annual revenue to $10 billion by 2010  (Reuters)
• Mainstream news media hope to capitalize on a presidential race that is drawing huge interest from Americans (NY Times)
• Olympic sponsors are launching possibly the largest advertising and marketing campaign ever, aiming to etch their brands in the minds of a new generation of Chinese consumers for far beyond the upcoming Games (Reuters)
• Satellite television operator DISH Network posted disappointing second quarter subscriber defections as it loses ground to cable and phone companies amid a weaker U.S. economy (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

So who’s winning the pay-TV so far this year? With days to go until two of the biggest cable operators (Time Warner Cable on Wednesday and Comcast on Thursday)  report first quarter financial results, Reuters canvassed eight Wall Street analysts for their estimates of subscriber net additions during the period.

At first glance it doesn’t look like it will be a good quarter with these analysts forecasting Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision to lose around 100,000 basic TV subscribers collectively, while satellite TV plays DIRECTV Group and DISH Network will add around 320,000.

Even more worrisome for cable companies?  AT&T and Verizon added around 410,000 new TV subscribers between them during the quarter.

Yet at least one analyst cautions investors  not to read too much into cable’s basic video subscriber losses as this metric is not as important to growth as the addition of other revenue generating units in particular Internet access and phone.

“It would be missing the point to focus on basic video subscriber adds,” says Chris Marangi, an analyst at Gabelli & Co. which holds shares in Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision as well as the two satellite TV companies.

“Voice services and high speed data subscribers is what drives revenue growth,” says Marangi.

(Photo: Reuters/Glenn Britt (l), Brian Roberts (r))