Hulu soared to popularity by offering free online viewing of popular TV shows. Now that free ride may soon end.
The Internet-video site is weighing plans to charge users to watch episodes of “30 Rock,” “Modern Family” and “House.” The move would mark a sharp change of course for the venture, which was launched nearly two years ago by a consortium of studios to distribute without charge TV shows and movies over the Internet.
NEW YORK TIMES DEALBOOK BLOG (Sorkin)
November 30, 2009, 8:17 pm <!– — Updated: 8:33 pm –>
Update | 8:28 p.m. General Electric has reached a tentative agreement to buy Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in NBC Universal for about $5.8 billion, helping clear the path to a sale of the television and movie company to Comcast, people briefed on the matter told DealBook.
But much remains to be negotiated, these people warned. The Vivendi agreement values NBC Universal at $29 billion, less than the $30 billion or so that G.E. and Comcast had agreed to last month.
Harmonizing the two values, as in so much of the talks over NBC Universal, may take days to do, and these people cautioned that a deal may not be reached.
Still, many analysts and people close to the talks expect a deal to be forged soon, and with it a reshaping of the entertainment industry.
The groundwork for the tentative pact between G.E. and Vivendi was laid out last week, when G.E.’s chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, met in person with his counterpart at Vivendi, Jean-Bernard Lévy, in Paris, these people said.
If it holds, the agreement would conclude weeks of hardball negotiations between G.E. and Vivendi over an alliance first forged in 2004. Resolving the issue of Vivendi’s stake is crucial to completing the G.E.-Comcast deal. But the French company took a tough stance, brandishing its option of holding an initial public offering for its stake rather than selling it back to G.E.
Under the current outlines of the agreement between G.E. and Comcast, NBC Universal would be put into a new joint venture, between the two giants. Comcast would pour billions of dollars in cash and its own cable channels for a 51 percent stake, while G.E. would hold an initial 49 percent and contribute about $12 billion in debt.
G.E., which has owned NBC for more than two decades, is expected to eventually sell its ownership interest to Comcast over the next several years.
– Michael J. de la Merced and Bill Carter
(11-02) 20:56 PST —
The Raiders quite possibly are setting up Tom Cable to walk the plank.
That would fall into the category of zany Raiders’ hijinks, like the kind in which coaches get fired by the light of an overhead projector and assistant coaches attack filing cabinets with their jaws.
But we have entered a new territory: Creepyland.
The Raiders released two statements Monday in the wake of an ESPN report in which two women accuse Cable of physical abuse.
One statement declares that the Raiders will “undertake a serious evaluation of this matter.” Ominously (for Cable), the statement immediately notes that the Raiders have dismissed employees in the past for “inappropriate conduct” and have kept the reasons confidential.
The other statement is where matters get creepy.
“ESPN’s role in this matter must be carefully examined,” the statement reads. “ESPN routinely disseminates falsehoods about the Raiders. During the last year, ESPN (working with someone who was in this organization) engaged in a calculated effort to distort the truth about the Raiders, utilizing lies and innuendo.”
The Raiders imply that the recent Cable report on ESPN just might be more of these falsehoods, lies and/or innuendo.
A couple of things here.
One, Raiders, may we please see a list of the falsehoods routinely disseminated by ESPN? And I don’t mean rumors that didn’t prove true, or crazy speculation, or mean-spirited remarks. Give the public a list of actual ESPN lies about the Raiders, several of them, or shut the darn heck up.
Two, when you use the terms “falsehoods,” “lies” and “innuendo” in referring to the ESPN report in which two women accuse your head coach of striking them, you have vaulted out of paranoia and into slime.
To be crystal clear, there is no charge in this column that the Raiders, from Al Davis down, take a casual attitude toward male-on-female abuse. The Raiders’ family will never fully recover from the 1999 strangulation murder of Tracey Biletnikoff, daughter of the Raiders’ great wide receiver, Fred Biletnikoff.
All the more reason the Raiders erred with colossal insensitivity in urging an examination of whether two women who claim Cable physically assaulted them might be part of ESPN’s so-called dissemination of lies and innuendo.
Cable’s former wife claims he punched her in the jaw two decades ago, and abused her throughout their marriage. A recent girlfriend claims Cable slapped her. We know this: Cable admits he slapped his wife 21 years ago, and she did take out a restraining order against him. No innuendo there.
The Raiders’ owner and top executives wallow in paranoia. The media is out to get them. For instance, the media dwells on the Raiders’ NFL-record run of six seasons of losing 11 or more games, while ignoring the team’s true identity, stamped in bold black letters on the cover of the media guide and on the bottom of each news release: “THE TEAM OF THE DECADES.”
Still, it’s shocking and dismaying that in the Raiders’ anger over the systematic attack from ESPN, Davis and his people can’t resist making the connection between lies/innuendo and a report of the alleged abuse of two women.
Why are the women going public now? Not that the timing matters. Some will suspect a connection with Randy Hanson and a civil suit he may file against Cable and the Raiders. It would seem to strengthen Hanson’s case if his attorney can paint Cable as a man with a history of anger and violence issues, tossed into the public arena by ESPN.
It might help persuade a jury that Randy Hanson wasn’t merely a victim of his own clumsiness.
Speaking of which: Cable shouldn’t be coaching right now. He should be on NFL suspension, because even the Napa County district attorney concedes that at some point during Hanson’s mysterious mishap in that hotel room, Cable had his hands on Hanson’s shirt, seemingly a violation of NFL rules. But that’s another matter.
What’s really bizarre in Monday’s two news releases is the juxtaposition of warnings.
In one statement, the Raiders say they’re evaluating the matter, and alert us that they have fired employees in the past for inappropriate conduct. In the other statement, they call into question the validity of ESPN’s report.
So the Raiders might wind up firing their coach over charges they suggest might be nothing but phony-baloney smears in ESPN’s attacks on the Raiders.
Creepy.
David Ho
Cox News
via SF GATE
January 28 New York —
From an Obama administration plan to give all Americans broadband to the nation’s looming switch to digital television, the communications landscape is expected to see big shifts in 2009.
At the heart of much of the change is the Federal Communications Commission, which soon faces its own shake-up as at least one commissioner departs and Democrats take charge.
That could mean policy changes at an agency that oversees everything from cable providers and radio airwaves to public safety communications and broadcast indecency rules.
Overall, experts say, President-elect Barack Obama’s tech-savvy team will be more involved in telecommunications issues than the Bush administration was.
“Obama looks at these issues as part of the solution to unemployment challenges and as an economic stimulant,” said Andy Lipman, who leads the telecom-media practice at the Bingham McCutchen law firm in Washington.
The new FCC will begin taking shape in early January as the term of Republican Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate ends. The president appoints commissioners for limited terms, with the party in power getting three of five spots, including the chairmanship.
Republican Chairman Kevin Martin will likely leave the agency when the new administration takes office, and Obama is expected to appoint one of the commission’s two Democrats – Michael Copps or Jonathan Adelstein – as interim chairman. One of them could get the long-term job, but many names have circulated as potential candidates.
While Senate confirmation could take months, Obama’s FCC chairman will arrive with a well-defined agenda, said Ben Scott, policy director for the advocacy group Free Press.
“The president-elect has been so clear and detailed about what he wants to do in telecom and media policy, whoever becomes chairman is going to inherit that set of expectations,” he said.
Perhaps the biggest expectation involves improving the availability of high-speed Internet access. That goal is likely to be a part of the huge stimulus package that Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress ambitiously want to enact soon after he takes office Jan. 20.
“It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption,” Obama said this month. “Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online. … That’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world.”
Figuring out how to make that happen has prompted considerable debate, with lawmakers, consumer groups and tech companies chiming in.
“They need to create some kind of mechanism that encourages industry to quickly start deploying faster and farther,” said David Kaut, an analyst with the Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. investment firm. “There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny that it produces jobs in the near term and not just jobs already scheduled.”
The Telecommunications Industry Association and other players favor tax breaks and grants to encourage network building.
One floated proposal involves supporting a broadband rollout through a $7 billion fund that draws on monthly phone bill fees to subsidize calling service in rural and poor communities.
As wrangling over broadband plays out, another mammoth change takes center stage on Feb. 17 as the nation’s TV broadcasters cut off analog signals. The goal is to offer new digital channels with improved picture and sound quality while freeing up radio airwaves for uses such as wireless broadband.
To watch digital programming on older analog sets, consumers need converter boxes. The government is offering coupons to help pay for them.
But when the digital deadline comes, “inevitably you’re going to have lots of people with problems,” Scott said. Recent surveys indicate many consumers remain confused about how it will work.
Key lawmakers told the FCC’s Martin this month that his agency should make smoothing the digital transition the No. 1 priority in the weeks before the inauguration. Martin promptly canceled a meeting on other issues.
The digital changeover has “sucked the oxygen” out of every other telecom topic before the FCC and will dwarf everything else in the first few months of 2009, Lipman said.
One issue facing a priority shift is net neutrality, or the idea of an open Internet where network providers don’t interfere with Web content and treat all traffic the same.
In August, a precedent-setting FCC decision found that cable giant Comcast Corp. violated federal policies when it blocked customers from sharing online videos and other large files.
Obama has made net neutrality a top communications priority and some lawmakers would like it to be part of a national broadband strategy.
However, the urgency behind government action has faded in recent months as the online content and network sides have come closer together, Lipman said.
He said the issue could flare up if Comcast wins a legal challenge to the FCC ruling, but that decision is a year or two away.
The Obama FCC also is expected to apply more scrutiny to mergers while resisting telecom deregulation and weaker media ownership rules.
The new commission may swing back toward President Bill Clinton’s FCC, which exerted tighter control over industry, said Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst in Atlanta. He said companies complained then that regulations could not keep pace with changing technology.
“When the Bush administration took over, the pendulum swung all the way to other side,” resulting in enormous consolidation, Kagan said. He said the challenge for the Obama administration is finding a middle ground.
One industry looking forward to change at the FCC is cable, which has battled with Martin over a variety of issues including ownership limits and his push for “a la carte” programming, where cable subscribers buy only the individual channels they want.
Some in the industry worry about new net neutrality restrictions, but many FCC watchers expect pressure on cable to ease and the a la carte issue to fade as broadband becomes the top priority.
Lipman said cable companies typically do better with Republicans in power, but without Martin “paradoxically cable will probably end up doing better in the Obama administration.”
The New York Herald Sun 