Inside these posts: Satellite TV

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Personalized TV ads coming to your living room

Data-gathering firms and technology companies are aggressively matching people’s TV-viewing behavior with other personal data — in some cases, prescription-drug records obtained from insurers — and using it to help advertisers buy ads targeted to shows watched by certain kinds of people.

At the same time, cable and satellite companies are testing and deploying new systems designed to show households highly targeted ads. The goal: Emulate the sophisticated tracking widely used on people’s personal computers with new technology that reaches the living room. Get the full story »

Illinois shares in DirecTV settlement

DirecTV Group Inc. has agreed to pay $13.3 million in civil penalties and costs, including $185,000 to the state of Illinois, to settle allegations that the satellite-TV service provider used misleading sales and marketing practices. Get the full story »

California Dish fight could affect Blackhawks fans

Chicago sports fans who subscribe to Dish Network better keep an eye on a West Coast carriage dispute in which Dish customers have not had Comcast SportsNet California since Nov. 24.

Potentially at stake is the access of roughly 360,000 Chicago-area homes — about 10 percent of the market — to Blackhawks hockey, Bulls basketball and Cubs and White Sox baseball.

Comcast presents iPad app for mobile video

Comcast Corp. has unveiled an application for Apple Inc.’s iPad that allows its customers to watch videos, program their digital video recorders and more, as pay-television providers look to keep eyeballs on their offerings, whether in the home or not.

The cable- and satellite-TV business appears to have suffered its second consecutive quarterly subscriber decline during the summer, fueling concerns about the prospect of online video disrupting the media and entertainment industry’s most lucrative and dependable revenue model.

With its iPad application, Comcast joins a growing list of video streaming products from big-name media companies, including Dish Network Corp., Netflix Inc., Hulu and ABC, trying to catch the attention of a new generation of consumers, looking for content they can stream from the Internet to their new portable media devices. Get the full story »

Dish Network profit, sales beat estimates

Dish Network Corp, the second-biggest U.S. TV satellite operator, posted higher-than-expected quarterly profit and sales as its existing customers spent more on its services. Get the full story »

FX, NatGeo off Dish amid haggling over fees

Dish Network’s 14.3 million customers nationwide will have to make do without FX, National Geographic Channel and some other cable channels while the satellite service and News Corp. haggle in the latest corporate struggle over carriage fees.