Here are some of the day’s stories about the media industry:

Amazon Patents Detail Kindle Advertising Model (Mediapost)
Laurie Sullivan writes: “The patents clearly note that Amazon would insert advertisements throughout the ebooks, from the beginning to the end, between chapters or following every 10 pages, as well as in the margins.”

> In-Book Ads Coming to the Amazon Kindle? (Fast Company)
> 6 Reasons Why Ads On The Kindle Don’t Work (Business Insider)

Deadline for Globe bids postponed (Boston Globe)
“The New York Times Co. has postponed tomorrow’s deadline for prospective buyers of The Boston Globe to submit preliminary bids for the newspaper, people briefed on the sales process said. No new date has been set for the bids,” writes Robert Weisman.

ESPN to relaunch UK channel in August (Reuters)
“The Walt Disney-owned (DIS.N) sports network ESPN said on Tuesday it would launch a new channel in Britain in August to show its 46 Premier League soccer matches and other international sports programming.”

NYC announces initiatives aimed at strengthening media industry (Romenesko)
“One of Mayor Bloomberg’s eight initiatives: Establishing a Media and Tech Fellowship to be awarded to approximately 20 “rising star” media and technology entrepreneurs on an annual basis.”

Google’s Gmail says bye-bye beta (Reuters)
Alexei Oreskovic writes: “The change is part of a broader move that Google announced on Tuesday involving Google Apps, the company’s suite of online software products that includes Google Docs and Google Calendar, among others.”

In other news:

• Pittsburgh Clears Way For FiOS TV (Multichannel News)
• Michael Jackson Funeral: 500,000+ Facebook Updates Posted (Mashable)
• Music Labels Reach Royalty Deal With Online Stations (NYT)

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)

It’s been a rough few weeks for cable operator Comcast Corp. U.S. regulator FCC is on the verge of punishing it for allegedly fiddling with subscribers’ use of peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent while New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is threatening to sue if Comcast doesn’t agree to join other Internet service providers to block access to child pornography.

But the largest U.S. cable operator is hoping to win over its customers by offering a free Nintendo Wii to new subscribers to its Triple Play package of video, Internet and phone.

The national free Wii offer runs from Monday till August 17th for new subscribers who have to agree to sign up for two years to one of Comcast’s premium Triple Play packages: Preferred Plus (at $129 a month) and Premier Triple Play ($159 a month).

Comcast seems to be adopting the tactics of a major rival. Earlier on Monday we posted about Verizon’s drop-off in FiOS TV subscriber growth last quarter after it stopped giving away flatscreen high-def TVs. The expensive marketing push certainly helped Verizon establish the FiOS TV brand in the minds of consumers in areas where it markets such as New York.

Maybe the Wii, which still can’t be found on some store shelves, will help Comcast regain some of that customer love. Or perhaps that’s money better spent on improving customer service .

(Photo: Reuters)

Verizon’s new fiber optic (FiOS) TV service added fewer subscribers this quarter with just 176,000 compared with 263,000 in the first quarter. This  surprised some analysts who had expected FiOS to continue its same rapid pace of growth, backed by Verizon’s huge marketing spend and aggressive push.

But Verizon Chief Operating Officer Denny Strigl (pictured)  told analysts the slowdown in FiOS TV growth was explained by the end of Verizon’s popular promotion giving away free high definition television sets.

On the plus side, not giving away TV sets helped keep mounting subscriber acquisition costs under control thereby boosting its bottom line, the No. 2 U.S. phone company told Wall Street.

Several Wall Street analysts and cable executives have derided Verizon for the billions of dollars it is spending on acquiring FiOS customers saying it will never make a return on its investment. 

But Collins Stewart analyst Tom Eagan says cable operators can’t relax just yet especially Time Warner Cable and Cablevision who have New York cable systems - an area Verizon is very focused on.

“We expect higher net adds in the third quarter with the roll out into Manhattan. Verizon stated this morning that it plans to aggressively promote the NYC roll out of its FiOS TV service and offer 100 HD channels., which is currently above the TWC offering,” said Eagan in a note to clients on Monday.

(Photo: Reuters)

Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield downgraded Time Warner Cable on Monday with one eye on Verizon’s launch of FiOS TV in New York (You have to register to read the link).

Verizon got approval to roll out FiOS TV just last week and is expected to begin installations as soon as August. Reuters ran an analysis last week that showed that Verizon’s roll-out of FiOS will be expensive for the phone company and its cable competitors, particularly Time Warner Cable.

Greenfield said New York City represents only 10 percent of Time Warner Cable’s subscriber base, but its average revenue per user is well above average.

Here’s where he sees Verizon earning points:

- His own anecdotal research found many TWC customer service reps hadn’t even heard of FiOS.

- Verizon’s customer service reps indicated early demand for FiOS is robust. (Greenfield accepts they might have been biased.)

- Triple Play pricing pressure could come to New York with Verizon offering a six-month promotional offer as low as $70 a month for TV, phone and high speed Internet compared with $120 a month for TWC.

Greenfield’s decision to downgrade TWC to “sell” from “neutral” is not just about Verizon — there’s the economy to consider as well. He still feels TWC’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) will grow by up to 10 percent, but said that requires strong performance in the second half of the year.

“TWC’s margins generally ramp in the back half of the year and political advertising should accelerate as the year progresses, however, the weakening economy does make our 2008 estimates feel aggressive.”