Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE | Tags: Merrill Lynch, New York, New York City, Starz Entertainment, Staten Island, Television, Wall Street Journal, West Wing
King of the Hill will not be renewed on Fox for another season, but ABC may be interested in picking up the animated sitcom. The proposed plan is to pair the Mike Judge King of the Hill series with the ABC sitcom, also from Judge, The Goode Family. (Cynopsis 11/4)
FOX unveils the new unscripted series Secret Millionaire December 3 at 8p where undercover millionaires will leave their posh lifestyles to live among needy people in impoverished areas of the U.S. The millionaires will work together with community members, learning how to live on a minimum wage salary. In the end, the millionaires will decide who should receive gifts of at least $100,000 of their own money. (Cynopsis 11/4)
FX is developing Staten Island, a New York-based police drama with Lawrence O’Donnell (The West Wing) and Mandalay Television, reports THR. A co-production of FX Productions and Fox 21, Staten Island is about a compromised police chief based in this borough. FX may introduce this drama to replace The Shield which ends its run on November 25. (Cynopsis 11/4)
Disney shares fell 3.4% in New York trading after Merrill Lynch said the slowing economy would reduce its theme park and broadcasting income. “We still do not see our current estimates as a worst-case scenario.” Disney is scheduled to report quarterly earnings Thursday. (Iwantmedia 11/3, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aAofMff4gsZU 11/3)
Starz Entertainment has announced a raft of licensing deals with movie companies such as Hallmark, Lions Gate, IFC and Fremantle for a slew of first-run and classic titles. Among the movies that will be available on Starz’s linear and VOD platforms are IFC’s “After the Wedding,” which was nominated for an Oscar last year, and the Hitchcock masterpiece “Rear Window.” Variety (11/3)
Higher affiliate fees and the continued success of its “Guitar Hero” video game helped Viacom bring in $3.4 billion in third-quarter revenue, a 4.2% increase over the comparable period in 2007. But lagging revenue from the box office and TV advertising held the diversified media company’s profit to $401 million, a 37% drop year to year. ClipSyndicate/Bloomberg (11/3) , The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) (11/4) , OneTRAK (11/3)
Charter Communications and Maximus Multimedia, under the terms of a new deal, will provide bundled Internet, video and VOD services for hotels in the cable provider’s service area. Charter will provide Internet and video while Peoria, Ill.-based Maximus, a hospitality media network, will offer on-demand entertainment. Multichannel News (11/3)
AT&T introduced in Reno, Nev., on Saturday a tiered broadband model in which users would be charged $1 for each gigabyte they go beyond a certain predetermined limit. The move follows similar network-management initiatives taken recently by several Internet providers, including Time Warner Cable. CNNmoney.com/Fortune/Giagom (11/3)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Amazon.com, Facebook, Facebook News Feed, Flickr, Google, Myspace, Netflix, Yahoo
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
This morning you likely woke up to a flurry of nearly identical messages in your Facebook News Feed prompting you to get out and vote – the result of what may have been largest unified online statement ever as nearly 1 million Facebook members simultaneously changed their status messages. The effort was put together by Causes
, the altruistic Facebook and MySpace application, which asked Facebook users to “donate” their status messages in the hopes of getting more of their friends to the polls. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/04/causes-holds-largest-online-rally-ever-to-get-you-to-the-polls 11/4)
Amazon.com is partnering with retailers on an effort to cut down on the packaging required to ship goods. The online retailer will ship products in plain brown cardboard boxes and without extraneous boxes or plastically-sealed packaging inside.
ClipSyndicate/KING-TV (Seattle) (11/3) , CNET (11/3) , The New York Times/Bits blog (11/3)

Netflix has decided to stop selling used DVDs to its customer base, instead deciding to focus its attention on its rental by mail and Watch Instantly services. “As you know, our core business is delivering great movie rentals to you on DVD by mail and instantly to the computer and TV, so we’ve decided it makes sense for us to focus exclusively on that,” the company stated in a Netflix blog post. CNET (11/3)

Trying to push through their search advertising deal, Google and Yahoo have revised the terms of the deal to satisfy antitrust objections by the Department of Justice, reports the WSJ
(article behind the pay wall). The main concessions are putting 25 percent cap on the revenues that Yahoo can generate from the partnership and making it a two-year deal instead of a ten-year deal. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/03/google-and-yahoo-revise-deal-to-get-government-approval 11/4)
A Flickr
user named Garrett Ryan Smith uploaded the 3 billionth
photo to the site today. The last big milestone was 2 billion photos, a year ago.They’re well behind Facebook, with 10 billion
. And they’re falling further behind – a year ago Facebook had just 4.1 billion photos. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/03/three-billion-photos-at-flickr 11/3)
Filed under: WIRELESS | Tags: Alltel, Election Day, FCC, Federal Communication Commission, Google, United States, Verizon, Verizon Communications
Google and other tech companies won a big battle in Washington today. In an Election Day meeting, the FCC approved the unlicensed use of “white spaces” spectrum newly freed up as a result of TV broadcasters going from analog to digital broadcasts. Google has long been leading the lobbying effort to turn this spectrum into a sort of WiFi 2.0. Telecom companies and sports leagues opposed opening up the spectrum, claiming that it would interfere with wireless headsets and other devices that use nearby licensed airwaves. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/04/googles-election-day-victory-fcc-approves-unlicensed-use-of-white-spaces-spectrum 11/4)
It’s been nearly five months since Verizon announced their plans
to buy out Alltel, but they’ve finally leaped the last hurdle. Just minutes ago, the FCC signed off on the $28.1 billion dollar deal (Verizon is paying $5.9 billion, and assuming $22.2 billion of Alltel’s debt.), clearing the way for its finalization. (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2008/11/04/fcc-gives-verizonalltel-buyout-the-greenlight 11/4)
According to the “Mobile Market View
” study released today by The Kelsey Group
, 18.9% of mobile consumers in the United States are now toting smartphones, with 49.2% planning to pick one up within the next two years. (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2008/11/03/19-of-us-mobile-consumers-now-using-smartphones-according-to-study 11/3)
Filed under: TECHNOLOGY | Tags: Apple, Apple Store, AppleInsider, Microsoft, Netflix, Roku, Western Digital, XBox
TECHNOLOGY
Roku intends to introduce its streaming HD from Netflix before next year. Roku plans to make use of Advanced Profile encoding that will enable it to offer consumers HD content at lower bit rates, compared with the Xbox offering, according to Electronista. Electronista (11/3)
Western Digital has debuted its WD TV Media Player, a device that lets viewers save large amounts of entertainment content on an external USB storage drive. The device plays video and music, displays photos and does not require networking equipment to link a computer to a TV. InformationWeek (11/3)

Microsoft reportedly has placed a branded kiosk outside an Apple Store in Birmingham, England, to fend off recent jabs Apple has taken at the company’s products, according to an AppleInsider report. Pocket-lint.co.uk (11/3)




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