Fast Track
By Staff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/24/2005 8:00:00 PM
Items:
Supreme Court Nominee's Media Stance
CTAM '05 Stakes Its Claim in Philly
Telco-Friendly Bill Passes Texas House
Massive Rereg Bill Introduced
Dow Jones Exits CNBC International
SBC EchoStar Sales Crumble
Meyer Re-Ups With Universal
Media Unite On Parental Control
D.C. Stations Tackled Over “Redskin”
Wisdom TV Is Now Lime
WB Will 'Lord' It Over Emmys
Good News! Your Cable Bill Will Soon Be $100 a Month
NAB Supports Ratings Bill
CNN's Hemmer Heads to Fox
Supreme Court Nominee's Media Stance
As a top Republican lawyer with A-list Washington communications firm Hogan & Hartson for much of his career, Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts has had lots of big media clients.
For example, he worked on the briefs in Fox's successful challenge to the FCC's rationale for preserving the station-ownership cap and cable/broadcast crossownership rules. The case triggered the FCC's 2003 ownership-regulation rewrite (now in limbo).
In 2002, he also helped News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch preserve his station/newspaper crossownership waiver in New York after News Corp. bought the Chris-Craft stations. Arguing for Fox, Roberts helped save the FCC's weak defense of its own waiver.
And when veteran First Amendment attorney and then Hogan partner Robert Corn-Revere was preparing his oral arguments in the U.S. v. Playboy case in fall 1999, fellow partner and veteran Supreme Court practitioner Roberts lent a hand, including sitting in on moot-court prep sessions. Corn-Revere won his case, and Playboy, along with other adult cable channels, won protection from indecency regulations.
Corn-Revere, now a partner with Davis Wright Tremaine, has high praise for his former partner and colleague: “He is a terrifically talented advocate and has tremendous respect for the rule of law and the institution of the court. He is a mainstream conservative and not an ideologue.”
“The biggest media conglomerates are, not surprisingly, popping champagne corks,” says Jeff Chester, of the Center for Digital Democracy.
He wants the Judiciary Committee to make Roberts' views on media ownership an issue. He will reach out to committee allies—Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois, for one—to make sure that happens.—John Eggerton
CTAM '05 Stakes Its Claim in Philly
Upwards of 3,000 cable executives are expected at CTAM's annual conference, which runs through Tuesday in Philadelphia. That's in cable giant Comcast's front yard, so it's not altogether surprising that Comcast Chairman/CEO Brian Roberts will be queried by CNN's Larry King on the last day of the confab. Also on the schedule: Rainbow Media Holdings CEO Josh Sapan and Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Chairman/CEO Shelly Lazarus. The sports/cable connection will be explored in a session featuring Brian France, NASCAR's chairman/CEO, and Jonathan Kraft, vice chairman of the NFL's New England Patriots. —P.J. Bednarski
Telco-Friendly Bill Passes Texas House
The Texas House of Representatives July 17 passed a bill paving the way for SBC and Verizon to apply for statewide franchises to deliver statewide cable-like video franchises.
The bill, similar to one that passed in the Texas Senate the previous week, would relieve the Bells from having to seek municipal franchises from each locality (it would also allow power companies to offer broadband over power lines). Now the House and Senate versions must be reconciled.—J.E.
Massive Rereg Bill Introduced
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) last week introduced a bill that would massively reregulate the media.
Chances for its passage are nearly nil, and it should be seen more as a shot across the bow by liberal Democrats as a Republican Congress takes up the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
Hinchey said his Media Ownership Reform Act of 2005 would fix a “broken media system in the United States in which only a select group of individuals get to determine what information Americans can receive via television, newspaper, radio and other media.”
The sweeping bill, introduced July 14, would: 1) invalidate all of the FCC's 2003 rewrite of its media-ownership rules (an appeals court only remanded the rules for a redo) and reinstate the newspaper/broadcast crossownership rule and the local-TV-ownership rule scrapped in the rewrite; 2) restore the Fairness Doctrine; 3) lower the cap on TV-station ownership from 39% (raised by Congress) back to 25%; 4) reduce the number of radio and TV stations a company can own; 5) increase the number of public-interest obligations on all broadcasters; 6) get rid of the UHF discount “loophole” that counts only half a UHF station's audience reach toward ownership caps.—J.E.
Dow Jones Exits CNBC International
Unwilling to continue sharing in the venture's ongoing losses, Dow Jones is dumping its half of CNBC International, leaving partner NBC Universal with 100% of the venture.
Having flubbed earlier efforts to get into business-news networks, Dow Jones teamed with CNBC in 1998 for its CNBC Asia and CNBC Europe services when the financial markets were roaring.
But even after seven years, the ventures are losing money. Dow Jones' share of the losses is $17 million a year. Now NBC Universal will shoulder the $28 million or so in annual losses by itself.—John M. Higgins
SBC EchoStar Sales Crumble
After bragging mightily about its partnership to bundle EchoStar's DBS service with its telephone products, SBC has dramatically scaled back efforts to sell the satellite service. It had cut an intricate partnership with EchoStar's Dish Network, carefully integrating the sales and customer-service functions into its own operation. The goal was to counter cable operators' bundling of new phone services with their existing video products.
But, for the second quarter ended June, SBC added just 10,000 new Dish customers. That's far fewer than the 65,000 that analysts had expected and the 70,000-100,000 SBC had been adding in recent quarters. The plunge prompted UBS media analyst Aryeh Bourkoff to issue a note on EchoStar to clients titled “Is The Partnership Over?”
SBC had accounted for as much as 12% of EchoStar's growth, so the slowdown will likely hurt the satellite company.—J.M.H.
Meyer Re-Ups With Universal
NBC Universal movie chief Ron Meyer has renewed his deal with the company, signing a new five-year contract.
Meyer, former president of talent agent Creative Artists Agency, will remain president/COO of Universal Studios, in charge of the division's movie and theme parks operation.
The significance of the move extends beyond the movie operation. Ever since NBC bought Universal last year, Meyer has been influential at the company and is an increasingly powerful advisor to NBC Universal Chairman Bob Wright at a time when Wright has plenty of princes jockeying for position, including Jeff Zucker and Randy Falco.—J.M.H.
Media Unite On Parental Control
Veteran media critics Sens. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) are lending their support to a new, broad-based coalition that has formed to push for parental control of TV and other entertainment content.
The Pause Parent Play (PPP) initiative ( www.PauseParentPlay.org) will launch July 20 on Capitol Hill with a display of parental-control tools and technologies for TV, movies, music and videogames.
The new coalition includes the same three network corporate parents—NBC Universal, News Corp. and Viacom—behind the TV Watch online effort promoting the TV ratings and V-chip (Disney is still a no-show).—J.E.
D.C. Stations Tackled Over “Redskin”
Washington attorney John Banzhaf, who helped sue tobacco ads off the airwaves in the late 1960s, is renewing his campaign to remove “Redskin” from the nation's broadcast vernacular, or at least limit its use, by threatening to go after station licenses.
He has sent registered letters to the four biggest stations in Washington—WJLA, WUSA, WTTG and WRC—advising them of a Friday federal appeals court decision that he says puts the Washington Redskin trademarks in jeopardy by “restoring the unanimous finding by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board that the word 'Redskins' was so racially derogatory and offensive that the trademarks should be invalidated.” The stations' renewals come up in seven years.—J.E.
Wisdom TV Is Now Lime
The new owners of Wisdom Television have renamed it Lime TV. CEO C.J. Kettler, a former Oxygen Media exec, says her goal is to steer Wisdom away from its old positioning of “mind, body, spirit” to a broader health and wellness pitch that would woo the organic/yoga crowd. The network, with 6.5 million subscribers, is largely backed by former AOL Chairman Steve Case's private-equity fund, Revolution.—J.M.H.
WB Will 'Lord' It Over Emmys
The WB says it will counterprogram this year's CBS Emmy Awards Show on Sept. 18 by airing the broadcast premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers at the same time.
The WB received only two prime time Emmy nominations this year. —Ben Grossman
Good News! Your Cable Bill Will Soon Be $100 a Month
Kagan Research says the average cable bill will jump from $80 a month in 2005 to $100 by 2008 as consumers sign on for added services. Analyst Renee Shaening says overall cable revenues will double from $66.5 billion today to $139 billion by 2015. —Ken Kerschbaumer
NAB Supports Ratings Bill
The National Association of Broadcasters has come out in support of a bill that would increase government oversight of TV ratings.
“As a matter of principle, NAB generally prefers voluntary inter-industry cooperation to additional government involvement as a solution to these issues. However, in the absence of voluntary resolution, we wish to voice our support for S. 1272,” NAB President Eddie Fritts wrote Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), who introduced it. A hearing on the bill is slated for July 27.
NAB pointed to the “absence of a fully competitive market” in advocating the legislation.
Cable's largest operator, Comcast Corp., opposes the legislation.
The bill would require Nielsen or any other TV-ratings system to get accreditation by the Media Ratings Council (MRC) for its system or any changes to its system. The bill would also mandate accuracy in “all the aspects of audience viewing behavior that it is intended, or is represented, to convey, using accurate statistical methods and social sciences data.” It's a mandate that would appear hard to enforce.
The MRC would also be required to report annually to the FTC, FCC and Congress. The council was created by Congress in the 1960s, but its accreditation is voluntary not mandatory. That accreditation has become an issue lately with the rollout of Nielsen's local people meters, which have drawn criticism from some station groups—including Fox, Tribune and Allbritton—for undercounting minorities and younger viewers.—J.E.
CNN's Hemmer Heads to Fox
Cast-off CNN anchor Bill Hemmer will get a berth at rival Fox News Channel. Hemmer, who most recently co-hosted CNN's morning show, American Morning, with Soledad O'Brien, will be a weekday anchor and correspondent.
He spent 10 years at CNN as an anchor and reporter. He started his TV career as a sports anchor for WCPO Cincinnati.
Fox is solidly out in front of CNN in ratings, but executives and anchors from the networks often swipe at the competition.
Hemmer lost his American Morning post last month when CNN opted to bring in Miles O'Brien. The network offered Hemmer a spot as White House correspondent, which he rejected. —Allison Romano
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