Daily Marauder

BROADCAST/CABLE by Marauder

BROADCAST/CABLE

The NBC drama “ER” will air its series finale Thursday after 15 seasons, leaving behind a splintered prime-time landscape as the networks struggle to compete in a digital world. Executive producer Neal Baer admits: “I doubt we will ever see the likes of a show like ‘ER’ again.” (Iwantmedia 3/30, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-er28-2009mar28,0,1083134.story 3/28)

Time Warner’s CNN is set to finish March third in prime-time ratings behind Fox News Channel and MSNBC, the first time this has ever happened for the channel that pioneered the cable news genre. CNN is suffering more audience erosion than its rivals. (Iwantmedia 3/30, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090328/ap_on_en_tv/tv_cnn_in_third 3/27)

NBC sliced the cooking competition series Chopping Block from its primetime schedule after airing episodes for only three weeks. NBC told affiliates last Thursday night the series will be off Wednesday nights as of next week, replaced with reruns of Law & Order: Criminal Intent previously seen on NBC. Chopping Block, featuring Chef Marco Pierre premiered March 12 and NBC will likely air the remaining episodes at a later date. (Cynopsis 3/30)

MTV is adding more music videos to its schedule — at 3 a.m. The Viacom network is launching “AMTV,” a six-hour block for music videos and related programming, harking back to MTV’s origins as a 24-hour home for music videos. The new schedule gives MTV a “palette to experiment.” (Iwantmedia 3/30, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/business/media/30mtv.html 3/29)

Tiffany “New York” Pollard returns to reality TV in a new series for VH1 titled New York Goes to Work opening May 4 at 10p. Viewers will vote via their mobile phones each week on three possible job opportunities for Tiffany. If she does well and impresses her employers, she gets a $5,000 weekly bonus, but if she quits, gets fired or messes up, she gets nothing. Episodes will be available at VH1.com the day after each air on the network. (Cynopsis 3/30)

CBS dropped the most in four months in New York trading Monday after UBS analyst Michael Morris recommended selling the shares because the advertising slump may be deeper and longer than expected. Industry-wide ad sales in 2010 will be “very similar” to this year. (Iwantmedia 3/30, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=awY0atdMmecA 3/30)

As expected, Charter Communications has filed for bankruptcy as a way of restructuring its debt. As a result of the move, the country’s fourth-largest cable company will gain about $3 billion through refinancing and new equity investment and pare back its debt load by about $8 billion. The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Newswires (3/28) , Light Reading (3/27)

Comcast is reconfiguring its video-on-demand architecture and, according to this article, is developing two centralized libraries for its VOD assets, one in West Chester, Pa., and the other in Denver. The initiative apparently will enable the cable firm to offer more than 100,000 VOD titles and a platform for serving personalized ads on a national basis. Comcast officials declined to comment. Multichannel News (3/30)

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