Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE
BROADCAST/CABLE
Kevin Martin, head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, is circulating a plan to relax media-ownership rules, including repealing a rule that forbids a company to own a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same city. The rule change could come within the next two months. (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/business/media/18broadcast.html?_r=1&oref=slogin 10/18)
A group of media and Internet companies plans to announce a set of guidelines they have agreed on aimed at protecting copyrights online. The participating companies include Viacom, NBC Universal, Disney, News Corp. and Microsoft. YouTube owner Google is notably absent. (http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119269788721663302.html 10/18)
Nielsen and ESPN are partnering to create a model to measure people’s use of media on platforms including television, the Internet and mobile devices. The panel will also examine how TV promotions bring people online and how online promotions direct people to watch ESPN programming. (http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/10/17/espn-nielsen-form-measurement-partnership 10/17)
The number of DVRs in the US has doubled in the past year exceeding 20% of the Nielsen’s National People Meter sample for the first time. Local tune-in remains strong with the average US household watching an average of 8 hours 14 minutes of TV a day.
Time Warner Cable has begun replacing its Passport interactive program guide with set-top boxes using the OpenCable Platform that supports two-way services such as video on demand. So far, the company has deployed 150,000 OCAP set-tops to new digital-cable subscribers, and it plans to use the new technology in all its divisions by the end of 2008. (Multichannel News 10/17)
Disgruntled Comcast subscriber Mona Shaw, 75, took a hammer to the local office of the cable operator and smashed the computer keyboard and telephone of a customer service rep. “I was just so upset,” she says. A Comcast exec responds: “Nothing justifies this sort of behavior.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/17/AR2007101702359.html 10/18)
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