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By Steve Cavendish | AT&T’s U-verse service dropped Food Network, HGTV, Cooking Channel and other Scripps networks from its lineup Friday morning after the two sides could not reach a carriage agreement.
The channels were immediately replaced on thousands of U-verse customers’ receivers in the Chicago area.
Food Network and HGTV are among the most popular niche networks on cable, with their most popular shows reaching millions of viewers. Get the full story »
Cable companies have been losing TV subscribers at an ever faster rate in the last few months, and satellite TV isn’t picking up the slack. That could be a sign that Internet TV services such as Netflix and Hulu are finally starting to entice people to cancel cable, though company executives are pointing to the weak economy and housing market for now.
Third-quarter results reported by major cable TV companies show major losses, but don’t settle the question of what’s causing them. Get the full story »
United Airline's plane painted for Oprah Winfrey's final season. (United Airlines)
Look up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s Oprah. Actually, it’s a plane sporting Oprah Winfrey’s logo with the familiar big looping “O.”
On Thursday, United Airlines unveiled a newly painted plane at O’Hare International Airport commemorating the 25th and final season of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” The Boeing 757’s tail is blue with Winfrey’s signature, with the words “The Farewell Season” painted on the fuselage. Get the full story »
A group of hedge funds sued the four banks that funded Tribune Co.’s 2007 leveraged buyout, alleging that the lenders knowingly rendered the company insolvent and precipitated its 2008 bankruptcy.
The suit, filed on Friday in New York state court, charges JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch Capital Corp., Citicorp North America Inc. and Bank of America with breach of contract, breach of good faith and negligence. It asks the court to set damages. Get the full story »
Tower Ticker | Dish Network and News Corp. announced an agreement on carriage fees Friday. This averts removal of Fox-owned broadcast stations. It also restores cable channels FX and National Geographic, as well as 19 Fox regional sports networks, that were taken off the satellite service four weeks ago as negotiations dragged on.
Dish’s contract to carry the cable channels had expired at the end of September. Its contract to carry Fox-owned broadcast stations such as Chicago’s WFLD-Ch. 32 and WPWR-Ch. 50 was set to expire at the end of this month, which put Dish subscribers at risk of losing World Series baseball, Chicago Bears football and shows such as “Glee,” “House” and “Family Guy” as of Monday.
For TV viewers, this cutthroat election year is a riot of attack ads and media saturation made possible by big-money donors. For TV stations, it’s a stimulus package.
One research group expects TV political spending to hit a record $3 billion. The windfall may continue well past Election Day because regular advertisers are getting squeezed out of the schedule and could spend their ad budgets later.
Business Insider | Lee Abrams tells online video studio My Damn Channel that the stories of the “frat boy” atmosphere at Tribune Co., which ultimately cost him his job as chief innovation officer at the media giant, were “blown out of proportion.”
And now, a word from our sponsors. A very brief word. TV commercials are shrinking along with attention spans and advertising budgets. The 15-second ad is increasingly common, gradually supplanting the 30-second spot just as it knocked off the full-minute pitch decades ago.
For viewers, it means more commercials in a more rapid-fire format. For advertisers, shorter commercials are a way to save some money, and research shows they hold on to more eyeballs than the longer format. Get the full story »
Todd Ricketts (Jose M. Osorio/Tribune)
By Phil Rosenthal | Todd Ricketts apparently got himself fired from a Chicago Cubs maintenance job when he attempted to secretly work for the ballclub his family owns for the CBS show “Undercover Boss.”
CBS, which announced Monday that it plans to air the Ricketts episode Nov. 7, said he fights for the chance to redeem himself after getting canned on his second day on the job.
Playboy Enterprises Inc. said Thursday that it expects to book a non-cash charge in excess of $20 million related to its television programming inventory in the third quarter that ended Sept. 30. Get the full story »
Three of the biggest U.S. television broadcasters have blocked their shows from Google Inc.’s new Web TV service, throwing a wrench into the company’s plans to expand from computers to the living room.
Spokespeople from Walt Disney Co. and NBC Universal confirmed Thursday that they blocked access to its broadcast TV shows from Google TV. Disney owns network and cable TV businesses ABC and ESPN. Get the full story »
James Tyree, the Mesirow Financial chief executive who nearly four years ago had a kidney and pancreas transplant, has been diagnosed with stomach cancer.
Tyree said he doesn’t know the stage of the cancer yet.
“I’ll find that out over the next few days,” he told the Tribune in a phone interview from his office, where he continues to work every day. “They did more tests to find out if it has spread anywhere else,” he said, noting that it’s currently in his stomach and one lymph node. Get the full story »
Killer jellyfish, ghost towns and a cartoon weathergirl will be among the stars of a new 3-D television network under development by Discovery Communications Inc., Sony Corp. and Imax Corp., the companies said Monday. Get the full story »
Lee Abrams. (Handout)
Tribune Co. Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams, who began the work week by sending a companywide e-mail that contained content deemed inappropriate, resigned Friday.
The e-mail, the latest in a weekly series of free-form observations and exhortations Abrams sent to all Tribune Co. employees in hopes of inspiring them to reconsider print and broadcast conventions, included links to video newscast parodies. One, which contained profanity and nudity, he labeled “Sluts.” Get the full story »
Jen Patterson, a contributor to Comcast SportsNet Chicago and its Web site, is out at the local cable sports channel.
