MediaFile

Cablevision also joins Time Warner Cable with HBO Go offer

After months of speculation we now know ad nauseum that cable markets of New York and Los Angeles will soon have HBO Go, HBO’s much acclaimed online video service. New York cable operator Cablevision said on Monday it will start offering HBO Go to its HBO subscribers in the next few months. Time Warner Cable, which dominates the New York City and Los Angeles markets, made a similar announcement late on Friday.

It’s worth repeating that HBO Go’s slick Web service and extensive library of exclusive TV shows and movies is only available to verified paying HBO cable subscribers and not as a standalone service. But even then it is significant for the strategy of HBO parent — Time Warner — to counter Netflix’s rise by offering a more flexible and mobile HBO service wherever and whenever subscribers want it.

The delays to offering the service to Time Warner Cable and Cablevision subscribers, was down to money (Quelle surprise!). While cable operators recognize the importance of offering additional value to programming packages by putting authenticated programming online — beyond the traditional TV package — they don’t always feel they need to pay too much extra over what they already pay.

At the end of the day of course it’s in the interest of both parties to come to terms or customers will indeed ‘cut the cord’ and go to Netflix to watch some of their favorite four-year old shows. But if Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes has his way that won’t include even a five-year old “Entourage” or “True Blood”.

Tech wrap: Verizon feeds hunger for cable spectrum

Lars Paronen

Dec 2, 2011 16:50 EST

Verizon Wireless plans to pay $3.6 billion for wireless airwaves from a venture of cable companies Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Comcast said that the deal represented a 64 percent premium over the $2.2 billion price the cable consortium paid in 2006 for the wireless spectrum being sold to Verizon Wireless.

U.S. Representative Edward Markey asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether software maker Carrier IQ violated millions of mobile phone users’ privacy rights. Carrier IQ makes software that companies including AT&T and Sprint install in mobile devices. It runs in the background, transmitting data that the software maker says its customer companies use to better understand their devices and networks.

Zynga, which plans to go public in two weeks, slashed its value by more than 30 percent to $9 billion, hoping to avoid the fate of other recent Internet IPOs that have disappointed after stock market debuts. Just two weeks ago a filing listed the Facebook game maker’s value, based on a third party assessment, at $14.05 billion. CEO Mark Pincus, a serial entrepreneur before he founded Zynga, will hold a class of shares with 70 times more voting power than the common stock that will be sold in the offering.

RIM booked a huge charge to write down inventories of its underwhelming PlayBook tablet, capping a dismal year with a steep profit warning that sent its shares tumbling. The company said it now no longer expects to meet its full-year earnings forecast, due to weak sales, the PlayBook writedown and a charge related to a damaging service outage in October. RIM’s U.S. traded shares ended the day down almost 10 percent.

Google won approval from U.S. antitrust regulators to buy online advertising company Admeld without any conditions, the Justice Department said.

Britain’s consumer watchdog said it is investigating Groupon UK after receiving complaints about how the daily-deal company was conducting its business. The Office of Fair Trading said it had been investigating Groupon UK, which offers daily deals on products from hotel stays to calendars, in secret since July.

Hard disk drive maker Western Digital, the worst hit by the Thai floods, could recover the market share it has lost to smaller rival Seagate Technology faster-than-anticipated, analysts said. Western Digital said it partly resumed production ahead of schedule and raised its outlook for the December quarter, prompting at least three brokerages to raise their price targets on the stock.

Time Warner Cable’s iPad app runs into trouble: the price of popularity

Time Warner Cable, the No. 2 U.S. cable operator, isn’t a fancy company. Ever since its spin-off from Time Warner Inc it has focused on being a steady-as-she-goes friendly neighborhood telecommunications provider with video just being one of the services it carries through its pipes alongside Internet and voice.

Well, perhaps feeling a bit of cable envy as larger rival Comcast got all the press with its fancy digital businesses and fast growing cable networks — and well, NBC — Time Warner Cable decided to venture a little bit more into the 21st Century with its roll-out of a free iPad app yesterday. The app allowed iPad owners to view 30 channels in their homes, which was well received by most technology bloggers and deemed a success.

However, it just might have been too successful.  The company said the app’s popularity ”unfortunately overwhelmed the system” meaning some customers could not download it Tuesday evening. To make matters worse Time Warner Cable had to “temporarily” reduce the number of channels to just 15 to ease strain on the authentication process used to verify the user as a paying cable subscriber.

Time Warner Cable President Rob Marcus apologized in a press statement. “While we anticipated that the app would be popular, the demand was overwhelming. We are sorry for any frustration and inconvenience our customers experienced.”

By Wednesday afternoon all 32 channels were back up after resolving the technical issue.

But the story doesn’t end there because trade mag Multichannel News points out that not all of Time Warner Cable’s partners are necessarily happy the cable company is allowing users to view content over wifi on their tablet devices without first renegotiating existing licensing deals. We’ve also heard this is true.  For now it remains one of those industry-type debates between Time Warner Cable’s programming team and their counterparts at the cable networks. Things could interesting if someone decides to blink first and get the lawyers involved.

Or as BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield puts it:

Time Warner Cable’s unique ESPN Web deal

Many media business journalists let out a collective sigh of relief at the news that Time Warner Cable had finally inked its deal with Walt Disney to keep carrying its programming, including ABC, Disney channels and various ESPN networks.  The programming fee negotiations had gone late into the night past their Wednesday midnight deadline and hacks, who had seen this movie before, were just starting to tire of waiting for another midnight watch.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the deal is that Time Warner Cable’s ESPN customers will now have access to ESPN3.com, a website ESPN uses to show more than 3,500 live events, including  matches from the World Cup this summer.

This is unlike other ESPN3 deals which have typically been tied to the cable operator’s Internet service provider. In those cases, ESPN3 would only be accessible to ISP customers of the cable operator.

Time Warner Cable’s deal comes under the auspices of TV Everywhere, the project that Time Warner Inc and Comcast Corp have been trying to convince the cable industry to support.

ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU will also be available online to authenticated Time Warner Cable customers as part of this deal.

“We wanted to make sure this was a product available to our video customers who get ESPN, and that they wouldn’t have to pay extra for it,” said Time Warner Cable  spokesman Justin Venech.

(Photo: Reuters)

Telcos are winning the cable TV battle but are they losing the broadband war?

The latest quarterly numbers from AT&T and Verizon Communications points to steady addition of TV customers which they are very likely winning from the cable companies as well as satellite players. AT&T said it posted its first ever billion-dollar revenue quarter for its U-Verse services (which includes Internet).  It added 209,000 U-Verse TV subscribers and now has 2.5 million in total. Meanwhile Verizon said it added 174,000 FiOS TV subscribers and now has 3.2 million in total.

Together the telcos, wh0 only launched their competing services less than five years ago now have a more than 5 percent share of U.S. pay-TV homes.

So well done to the telcos! Or is that the whole story? Analysts at Bernstein Research point out that both phone companies lost a combined 65,000 Internet access subscribers (after netting out additions from U-verse/FiOS and losses of DSL customers).

This comes as Wall Street continues to expect cable companies to continue to grab market share in broadband subscribers even as they lose basic cable TV subscribers. After looking at the telcos’ numbers this week, Collins Stewart analyst Thomas Eagan more than doubled his expectations for cable’s share of broadband additions when they report over the next fortnight in a short analyst note.

“We had expected that the cable operators would take 43% share of the broadband adds in 2Q10. It appears now, however, that the cable operators might take more than 90% of the broadband net adds.”

So as your phone company looks more like your cable operator and your cable company starts to look more like your phone guy who will be the long term winner here? Many analysts expect that more and more video will be distributed via the Internet in the not too distant future via services like Hulu and Apple iTunes. So,  while the operators are busy fighting their corners, maybe being a top US Internet service providers will come back into fashion after all.   We’re not sure, but we’re fairly certain it won’t be AOL.

Soccer goes premium in US with new Fox footie HD channel

Football, sorry, soccer has never quite been a big money maker for the U.S. cable TV industry. But Fox Networks has long wagered that the popularity of the game with the  little leaguers and the changing demographic of the country will eventually translate into the kind of big bucks that parent News Corp is used to in the U.K. with Sky Sports.

Fox said today it’s launching a new high definition soccer channel called Fox Soccer Plus, which is being offered to cable and satellite distributors as a premium channel for a selected tier or as a standalone channel for a monthly fee.

No deals have been struck yet with distributors but one hopes that the Fox programming team included Fox Soccer Plus as part of  its long negotiations with Time Warner Cable into the New Year. But as a premium channel it’s unlikely to reach as many as the 35 million households of its flagship sister network Fox Soccer Channel.

The new channel will kick off on March 1, 2010 and will feature English Premier League and UEFA Champions League games, which Fox had previously sub-licensed to Setanta Sports USA, as well as a bit of calcio from Italy’s Serie A.

(Photo: Reuters)

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.

Fox vs Time Warner Cable retrans dispute could get political

(Photo: Reuters)

Fox Networks went public today in what it said has been a fruitless nine-month-long carriage negotiations with Time Warner Cable, the No.2  U.S. cable company. It said there is the very real possibility that popular shows like American Idol and NFL Football could disappear from the air if you’re one of the Time Warner Cable’s nearly 14 million customers.

Fox wants to get paid for giving Time Warner Cable the right to carry its free-to-air Fox broadcast network for around $1 a subscriber every month. The talks also include negotiations for Fox’s bevy of entertainment cable networks including FX, Speed and Fuel but does not include its news networks. See Fox’s marketing campaign website keepfoxon.com here.

Time Warner Cable executives don’t want to pay a buck for so-called retransmission rights and claims it is has recently agreed to pay affiliate broadcasters  around 25 cents per sub. See Time Warner Cable’s earlier marketing campaign warning customers of programmers plans here.

Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield said in his blog (subscription required) today that in retransmission consent negotiations the side with the most leverage always wins. Usually the weaker side is the cable or satellite company as they get the calls from irate customers if their favorite shows get blacked out. What may be different this time around is that Fox leverage might be hampered by a growing political intervention risk if the Government gets involved, said Greenfield:

While Retrans negotiations are all about leverage, the benefits of leverage to a broadcaster could evaporate if the government chooses to get involved going forward – in turn, a fine line must be walked.  Remember, broadcasters are using public spectrum to broadcast and a now Democratic-majority FCC may not be as willing to let consumers pay the penalty for retrans battles the way prior administrations did (whether it be via higher video pricing and/or signal loss).  We are actually quite surprised at how openly (and aggressively) the senior executives of the four major (owned and operated) station groups are talking about retrans – as we would fear that the government would begin to look at them as a cartel.

from Summit Notebook:

Like the ‘net? Pay your cable bill, says Time Warner’s Britt

Franklin Paul

Dec 1, 2009 12:17 EST

If you want the Internet to keep doing what it does, keep paying your cable bill, and don't get carried away with the idea of free (free! free!) content.

The next big free idea (sort of) is "TV Everywhere", the cable industry's attempt to make cable programming available over the Web -- for no extra charge -- to paying subscribers. It's an important initiative for the industry, since Pay-TV companies are concerned that the recession-resistant subscription revenue of cable television could be undermined if cable shows became widely available over the Web.

We asked Glenn Britt, chief executive of Time Warner Cable, what he thinks about the plan, and while he didn't detail when it will hit the ground, he reminded us that its success is critical. Why? The guys and gals that run the delivery system must be compensated. Think what happens if people (like so many college students I know -- and several journalists) start to depend on "free".

Free doesn't work in the long run. It works great for consumers, but if you took it to the extreme, and all of the networks put all of their content on websites for free, pretty soon consumers will figure out (they) don't need to buy subscription video services.  Because my business has real cost to it, and we and the phone and wireless companies, we underpin this delivery, for this to happen we have to get paid.

We're like the seamly (sic) underside no one wants to talk about. We have trucks and blue collar people and wires, etc. If we didn't get paid, the whole Internet would fall apart. Somehow we are going to get paid. And if the networks don't get paid, new content wont be created.

If we all give our stuff away for free, we're not going to have a business anymore.

End

Time Warner Cable ready to fight high program costs

Time Warner Cable, the normally placid No.2 U.S. cable operator, is getting ready for a fight with its programming partners at the cable networks and broadcasters over rising affiliate fees. In truth, TWC has always been ready for a fight with the programmers. This time, it wants to make the first move and get its 14 million subscribers behind it.

The New York cable operator is launching an ad campaign “on behalf of its customers” to target what it sees as unfair price demands by programmers. It argues that these price demands, which usually come around this time of year at the end of programming contracts, can sometimes be as much as 300 percent increases. TWC says programmers make the demands “secure in the knowledge that video distributors are the ones who have to pass those costs along to customers and take the blame.”

So what’s Time Warner Cable going to do about it? They’re going to launch a website — yes, a website with the catchy URL: www.rolloverorgettough.com. News Corp, Sinclair Broadcasting and cable networks must be quaking in their collective fee-hiking boots.

(For the uninitiated: One way for companies to make money from their shows is to charge cable operators for the privilege of distributing them. Programmers like to raise those fees every so often. When cable operators resist, shows you like have a way of being held for ransom and sometimes disappearing for a while.)

Time Warner Cable’s website will allow customers to give their feedback and will be supported by ads in newspapers, TV and the Web.

“We want them to know why we fight so hard on these issues – if we Roll Over, they pay the price. If we Get Tough, they may lose their favorite shows until we reach a reasonable agreement.” said TWC CEO Glenn Britt in the press release.

It’s not the first time Time Warner Cable has tried to be principled about not overpaying for content. You might remember the great “Why is SpongeBob crying?” campaign of Dec 2008 when Viacom and TWC fell out over rising carriage fees.