MediaFile

Fox vs Time Warner Cable: Soccer channels go dark for a bit, coincidence?

We were not completely surprised when Fox Soccer Channel went dark on Sunday afternoon while we were watching West Ham take on Chelsea. (It’s not that the cable bills hadn’t been paid). Seemed the most likely cause was the  really bad snowstorm here in New York and the rest of the U.S. northeast.

But when we noticed that Fox Soccer Espanol, Speed Channel and, for a short while, FX were also down…  well, we couldn’t help wonder if the ruckus between Time Warner Cable and Fox Networks had come to a head and that the great dark screen battle of 2010 had started early.  (Adding to our conspiracy theory: Fox’s news channels were unaffected yesterday, and neither Fox News nor Fox Business are part of the current carriage fisticuffs between TWC and Fox. Hmmmm).

After all, Fox said last week that TWC might pull its broadcast network and entertainment channels because they’ve been unable to reach agreement on fees. TWC for its part thinks Fox wants too much money. And both sides are running marketing campaigns slamming the other. So the idea that everything went black because of a their dispute wasn’t all that farfetched.

But our suspicions were wrong:  We’ve been assured by a TWC spokesman that it was a small and temporary problem with the Fox channels was indeed weather-related and not a test-run of what a blackout would look like.

It could still go all dark on Dec 31st when the Fox contracts expire. But neither side wants that to happen and they’ll likely come to agreement in the early hours of 2010 as TWC did with Viacom last year.

By the way: We found out later the West Ham – Chelsea match ended 1 – 1, unfortunately we missed the goals due to the blackout.

Look out: US online advertising seen down 5 percent

Paul Thomasch

Apr 9, 2009 10:37 EDT

From the bearish forecast department: Screen Digest, a media research firm, issued an outlook today predicting a 5 percent decline in online advertising in 2009. Folks, we’re not talking about newspapers or network television or radio here. We’re talking about the Web.

Screen Digest put out the forecast in response to the IAB’s recent report on 2008, which showed Web advertising rose 10 percent. But the number that turned heads over at Screen Digest was IAB’s fourth quarter figure, which put online growth at a mere 2.6 percent.

Here’s what Screen Digest says:

Following the fourth quarter 2008 tipping-point, Screen Digest has revised its 2009-2010 forecasts for online advertising in the US. We now predict that all categories and subcategories except video will decline in 2009. Banner advertising (-8.8 per cent) will not be fully compensated by the double digit growth of online video, so that the Display category will be down 3.6 per cent. Search will shrink by two per cent and non-Display categories such as Classifieds will experience double digit falls. Overall, the total internet advertising market will shrink by five per cent (-4.8) in 2009 and only stabilize (+0.4 per cent) in 2010.

Still, some perspective… Screen Digest figures that even with a slump in Web advertising, it will still fare better than the broader market. It seen total US advertising spending down in double-digits this year, and some areas (like local TV) dropping by up to 20 percent.

Keep an eye on:

• Boston Globe employees reacted with a mix of resignation and anger on learning of the pay and benefit cuts and the lost job security that The New York Times Company wants them to accept as the price of keeping the money-losing Globe in business (NY Times)
• Nintendo Co Ltd said sales of its Wii game console have lost some steam in Japan, but it aims to boost demand again by launching a new version of its blockbuster “Wii Sports” software in June (Reuters)
• Three months after Democratic Presidential contender Barack Obama took the White House, Fox News is beating its rival cable news networks, General Electric Co’s MSNBC and Time Warner Inc’s CNN in the ratings game (Reuters)

News Corp’s Chernin gets Supreme Court warm-up

Robert MacMillan

Oct 21, 2008 21:18 EDT

News Corp’s U.S. television network Fox is going to the Supreme Court to fight for its right to broadcast freely — whatever the Federal Communications Commission has to say about it.

Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin will offer a preview of the network’s thinking tonight when he addresses the Media Institute, which is honoring him for his leadership on free speech. This comes in advance of the Nov. 4 court date in FCC v. Fox Television Stations.

Here’s the gist of the case, as The New York Times described it:

When Cher appeared on the Billboard Music Awards in 2002, she used a four-letter word connoting sex. The next year, on the same show, banter between Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie included that word and another obscenity. In Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, No. 07-582, the court will decide whether the F.C.C. has the power to punish broadcasters for airing “fleeting expletives.”

And here’s a bit of what Chernin plans to say (We presented the excerpts in consecutive order. Spaces indicate where we cut things out for the sake of space):

And for creators of content, if we’re doing our jobs right, we sometimes offend people. It’s that simple. And, believe me, we wrestle with that fact. We struggle with complex issues every day. Are we guilty of contributing to the vulgarization of our society or simply of mirroring it? Is it our responsibility to be the arbiters of good taste, or is it our duty to push boundaries? Is it even possible to create innovative programming for a mass audience that is diverse on every level – from age, to religious affiliation, to ethnicity?

If we are found in violation, just think about the radical ramifications for live programming – from news, to politics, to sports. In fact, to every live broadcast television event. The effect would be appalling.

But the truth is, people don’t think about defending broadcasters’ right to utter expletives in the same way they think about defending one’s right to speak critically of our government. But they should. The First Amendment is at stake in both cases.

I’ll admit: some of the content we are defending is not particularly tasteful: the expletives, the brief nudity, the carefully placed whipped cream and, of course, the pixels. I would not have allowed my own children, when they were younger, to watch some of these shows. But, I vow to fight to the end our ability to put occasionally controversial, offensive, and even tasteless content on the air.

Why? Because, if the government gets its foot in the censorship door with respect to unpopular entertainment content, it is the beginning of the steep slide toward censoring unpopular political content.

The job of protecting children lies with PARENTS. The job of the GOVERNMENT is to resist the views of interest groups with particular agendas and instead to enforce the law in a way that is consistent, fair and constitutional.

Chernin adds one other argument, like a dollop of practicality, and one that we suspect will come up in court:

Murdoch strikes again, this time in Esquire

Robert MacMillan

Sep 11, 2008 14:25 EDT

Esquire magazine is running a Q&A with News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch, in which in the international media tycoon talks about his upbringing, what makes Murdoch Murdoch, his new crown jewel The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and a host of other subjects. Without further ado (warning: look out for some inappropriate language):

Murdoch on his political ideology and the crisis blowing through multiple financial institutions:

I’m not a knee-jerk conservative. I passionately believe in free markets and less government, but not to the point of being a libertarian. After this financial crisis, there are going to be some restrictions. I’m frightened they’ll go too far, but certainly there should be something.

On News Corp’s MySpace social network and competitor Facebook:

When we bought MySpace, we thought it had great possibilities. We didn’t realize it would grow as fast as it has, and of course it has given birth to imitators, which I guess they’re calling Web 3.0, or whatever, and given rise to what you’d call social networking.

We got a big wake-up call from Facebook last year. We put a lot of new things in this year. You can’t write off MySpace. It is a genuine social network where people go to look for friends, to make friends, to look for people with common interests. Facebook — I don’t want to put it down. It does interesting things and has some very able people there, but it is fundamentally a sort of directory. It’s opened up recently to let people bring in new applications. A huge number have tried to do this, but not that many have succeeded.

On The Wall Street Journal:

It’s bullshit to say we’re going to dumb down The Wall Street Journal. We didn’t dumb down the London Times — we made the London Times.The Sunday Times, too. Are they a little more popular than they were? Yes. They are populist papers. You’ve got to listen to readers.