Google has asked federal regulators for permission to sell pay TV in Kansas City, where it has been working on a broadband/fiber buildout, and the WSJ thinks it could launch in a couple months.

It would be awesome if Google could use this as an opportunity to break up the cable bundle, and let people buy individual channels instead of big expensive blocks of programming they mostly ignore.

But that’s very unlikely to happen, because the cable programmers love the bundle, and don’t have any incentive to break it up (see: Viacom’s Philippe Dauman and ESPN’s John Skipper last month at Dive Into Media). If Google wants cable TV programming, it’s going to have to play by cable TV’s rules.

So what can Google offer that will make someone switch from Time Warner Cable, which dominates the pay TV business in Kansas City?

Very high-speed Internet access, for starters. And perhaps Larry Page will figure it’s worth his while to offer the service at a very low margin, because the whole project is a very expensive test, anyway.

Beyond that, here are some guesses/predictions from Bernstein Research analysts Carlos Kirjner and Craig Moffett, who have a pretty good handle on this stuff. They’re the ones that predicted on Tuesday that Google would file for cable licenses “very soon”. This prognostication comes from that same note:

DVR in the Cloud: “We would expect Google to store (and make available to consumers) the content across all or most TV channels it will provide, making available to users not just the live stream but also past content going back several days or weeks, if not longer. With the addition of good search and discovery and user interface capabilities, this would make DVRs obsolete.”

TV Where You Want It: “We would expect Google to offer access to something like “Cloud TV,” described above, including the live TV stream, across multiple devices, such as computers, tablets and handsets.”

A Programming Guide That Doesn’t Suck: “It is not very hard to imagine a much better user interface than the one currently provided by the MSOs and satellite TV providers”, presumably along the lines of what they’ve been showing off with the revamped Google TV.

Again, the big caveat here is that none of this happens unless the cable programmers play along. And while none of the stuff described above seems truly mind-blowing, some of it — like live mobile streaming — will stil require programmers to give Google capabilities they haven’t given to heavyweights like Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

And even though the cable programmers often tangle with the cable providers, they’re at least comfortable with them in general. Google, though, still scares the bejesus out of lots of traditional media companies, so I’m not sure how many of them will play along.

One pretty good bet: Google’s foray into cable TV won’t include anything from Viacom, since the cable giant is still suing Google in the YouTube copyright case. So no Snooki for Kansas City.

[Shutterstock/Dwight Smith]

But if Comcast wants to, it can change that overnight, as The Wall Street Journal’s Sam Schechner reported yesterday. The cable giant’s new content deals allow it to sell its stuff nationally, to anyone with an Internet connection, if it wants to.

Comcast insists publicly that it has no interest in doing that. Privately, its executives say the same thing. They say they can’t figure out how to market and support a $5-a-month digital subscription service to noncustomers and still make money.

What if they added more content and sold it for $8 a month, like Netflix does? “That still wouldn’t work for us,” one of them told me yesterday. “We can’t figure out how it works for Netflix, either.”

So if things don’t change, then Streampix will work primarily as an anti-churn tool for Comcast — a carrot they’ll dangle to keep current subscribers happy. And it may also keep a few of them from signing up for Netflix, or renewing the subscription they already have.

Which means it will join the growing number of Netflix killers that aren’t really Netflix killers, because they don’t have the same breadth of content, or are only available to a certain number of customers.

Over the last couple of years, Amazon, Hulu and Dish/Blockbuster have all launched Web video subscription services that offer Netflix-like services. But, so far, none of them have really gone head to head with Reed Hastings.

Later this year, though, Verizon and Redbox will begin selling their own Web video service, and the companies have been very clear that that one won’t be limited to Verizon customers.

And it will definitely feel like a competitive service. There’s a good chance, for instance, that movies from the Viacom-backed Epix pay-TV channel, which currently run on Netflix, will appear on the Verizon service, too.

So that’s one full-fledged (potential) Netflix killer launching this year. And another one that might turn into one, with a flip of the switch. That ought to keep the Netflix executives, and investors, occupied for a bit.

Ad tech firm Resonate has a simple pitch along those lines: It says it can figure out what different groups of Internet users care about, and where to find them on the Web.

The Reston, Va.-based start-up has been at it for four years, and just raised a big series B round led by Revolution Growth, the new fund led by former AOLers Steve Case, Ted Leonsis and Donn Davis. Resonate won’t announce the total amount of the raise, but a person familiar with the company says it’s $22 million. Earlier investors like Greycroft Partners, LLC and iNovia Capital put another $7 million into the company, and some of them have reupped, as well.

Lots of ad tech companies promise to target Web surfers based on their online behavior, and some are now saying they can tie in offline behavior, like voting records (!), as well.

For now, at least, Resonate is avoiding that kind of targeting. Instead, it recruits panels of Internet users, asks them to complete comprehensive surveys on their likes, values, etc., and tracks their surfing patterns. Then it uses that data to figure out where to find people who will be most receptive to particular pitches.

The idea: While marketers might want to advertise a new light salad dressing on a food site that caters to women, Resonate might figure out that a sports site with a big male audience would be a better bet.

Resonate started out selling itself to political advertisers, and CEO Bryan Gernert says he’ll be doing a bunch of that this year. But he says the company is primarily focused on brand advertising, and counts McDonald’s, Verizon and Toyota as clients. Last year, Resonate did “north of $10 million” in revenue, he says.

But if you’re in a hurry, you might consider this no-nonsense guide from the U.S. Army, which has a couple dozen boards of its own (via the Atlantic).

As I’ve noted before, the first instinct when you see military institutions writing about Pinterest, or Twitter, or offering flowcharts that explain how to comment on blogs might be a giggle. But once you actually look at the stuff they’re writing, it seems much more reasonable.

Unrelated: I have had a weird twinge of nostalgia for the ’80s vintage “Be All That You Can Be” campaign. Maybe some kind of madeleine thing triggered by those Will Ferrell Old Milwaukee ads.

Totally evil.

Also, totally untrue.

So says Netflix PR rep Steve Swasey. “Completely bogus,” he says.

And I’ll take his word over the tale that has spread over the Web the last few days — that whoever owns the streaming rights to the 1992 Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner film had yanked them away from Netflix after Houston’s death, so it could make more money selling discs.

The reason that story didn’t make any sense to me isn’t because Hollywood studios are paragons of virtue, but because digital licensing deals are usually rigid, and start and stop on certain dates. If they allowed rights holders to yank their stuff on a whim, then we’d see it all the time, right?

And sure enough, it turns out Netflix hasn’t had the streaming rights to “The Bodyguard” — which belong to Time Warner’s Warner Bros. — since the end of last year. “We didn’t renew it,” Swasey says.* Netflix still rents the DVDs, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Ah. But what about that Netflix rep who supposedly told talk show host and publisher Dan McDermott that a “production company” was pulling “all the streaming titles we have of Whitney Houston,” so it can make a “very large amount of money”?

This one is harder for Swasey to say is categorically false, since he didn’t hear the exchange himself. But he says it’s “highly doubtful” that a rep told any caller anything beyond the fact that the movie wasn’t available. Because support reps are trained to offer very little information beyond that, Swasey says.

So, perhaps a rep did think way outside the box here, but I tend to believe Swasey’s story here, too. Always more fun to imagine big companies behaving outrageously, but if that happened every time we imagined it did, it wouldn’t be outrageous.

*Perhaps there’s a good story about Warner Bros. titles leaving Netflix in general, since the studio and its parent company have had a … strained relationship with the movie service.

In the meantime, they’re offering this teaser clip, along with a story-behind-the-story (warning — comes with annoying auto-play video):

The Bentonville, Ark., company will buy 51% of closely held Yihaodian, increasing its investment from 18%, Wal-Mart spokesman Anthony Rose said Monday. The transaction is subject to the Chinese government’s approval.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

But! If you’re going to see Linsanity up close and personal, may as well get as close as possible. Zuckerberg’s seat normally goes for $1,200, according to CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell.

Mark Zuckerberg, who is at the Knicks game, is sitting in $1,200 seats. He can spend that every min for 10K days & still have $

— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) February 19, 2012

The lawmakers — Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.), Joe Barton (R., Texas) and Cliff Stearns (R., Fla.) 00 want to know if Google’s behavior “constitutes a violation” of a privacy settlement Google and the Federal Trade Commission signed last year. Breaches of the settlement could bring fines of as much as $16,000 per violation per day.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The furor eventually prompted Steve Jobs to hold an unprecedented press conference to defend the phone’s design. The issue eventually went away, but not completely, due to the inevitable class action suits.

But now those are gone, too. A settlement will give iPhone 4 buyers who never exchanged their phones for a new one — and didn’t take up Apple’s offer for a free “bumper” back in 2010 — a chance to get a new bumper, or take a $15 payout.

CNET has more details, and Apple PR rep Natalie Harrison offered this comment over the phone: “This settlement relates to a small number of customers who indicated that they experienced antenna or reception issues with their iPhone 4 and didn’t want to take advantage of a free case from Apple while it was being offered in 2010.”

From what I can tell the settlement applies to anyone who’s ever bought an iPhone 4, including people who are buying them at this very moment — there doesn’t appear to be any kind of end date.

If you’re looking for ways to spend that $15, by the way, Apple just happens to have iTunes gift cards, in two very nice designs, in that exact denomination.

The agreement represents an effort to resolve a standoff that dates to 2009, when the World Trade Organization ruled that China’s policy of allowing 20 foreign films a year to be shown there violated international trade rules.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

That doesn’t mean Remnick is a Luddite. He’s interested in using digital assets to expand the work his writers and editors have created, when the magazine gets ported to the iPad. And he admits to a cautious interest in social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter.

But Remnick’s overwhelming priority is producing the best possible magazine each week, and he seems content with the notion that most people will read the print version.

“The New Yorker — you roll it up, you put it in your bag. It’s quite easy; it’s pretty good technology,” he told Kara Swisher at D: Dive Into Media last month.

Swisher and Remnick used to be colleagues at the Washington Post, and the two of them had a wide-ranging, entertaining chat. You can see the whole thing here; it’s well worth your 30 minutes:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120217/new-yorker-editor-david-remnick-likes-technology-but-he-loves-print-the-full-dive-into-media-interview/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120217/netflix-still-really-doesnt-want-your-dvd-money/ http://allthingsd.com/20120217/netflix-still-really-doesnt-want-your-dvd-money/#comments Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:35:10 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=175877 Netflix said something about DVDs again! Which means it’s time to refer, again, to this Reed Hastings quote from last December:

Streaming is the future. We’re focused on it. DVD will do whatever it’s going to do. We’re not — we’re going to try to not hurt it, but we’re not putting a lot of time and energy into doing anything particular around it and then we’re focused on, how do we take advantage of this incredible global streaming opportunity.

Now, with that context in mind, consider this news: Netflix announced last night that customers could sign up directly for a $7.99-a-month DVD-only plan by visiting dvd.netflix.com.

Some of my fellow typers believe that this is a sign that Netflix has re-embraced the DVD business, which has much better margins than the streaming business, but is dropping away, quarter by quarter.

That would be a good narrative, but I don’t think it’s true.

Consider:

• This is the same $7.99 DVD-only plan that Netflix introduced last July.
• It’s the same URL that Netflix introduced last July. Apparently, it must have gone away at some point between then and now, but the fact that no one seems to have noticed its disappearance is telling.
• New customers who head to the Netflix home page will have no way of knowing that Netflix offers a DVD-only plan. If they click around a bit, they’ll find a note telling them they can add DVDs to a streaming-video subscription plan, but no word of the disc-only option.
• It remains nearly impossible to give someone a Netflix gift subscription that includes DVDs.

This doesn’t sound like a newfound appreciation for the DVD business to me. It sounds like Netflix is continuing to “not put a lot of time and energy into doing anything particular around it.”

So why bother with the new/old URL at all? I asked Netflix PR for comment; if they find the time or energy to respond, I’ll update here.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120217/netflix-still-really-doesnt-want-your-dvd-money/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120216/twitter-ramps-up-self-serve-ads-with-an-assist-from-american-express/ http://allthingsd.com/20120216/twitter-ramps-up-self-serve-ads-with-an-assist-from-american-express/#comments Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:00:26 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=175622 Twitter’s cautious entry into advertising is picking up velocity: It is finally opening up its self-serve ad platform to a large group of small advertisers.

Twitter started testing the platform late last year, with about 100 advertisers. Now it will let in another 10,000, via a promotion with American Express. Only AmEx card-holders, or merchants who accept AmEx, will be allowed to buy the ads, and AmEx will give each buyer a $100 credit to kick-start their purchases.

Twitter says it will let in more buyers throughout the year, in groups of 10,000, and that at some point the AmEx exclusivity will go away.

The self-serve platform is important to Twitter because it wants to emulate the success of Google, and now Facebook. Those companies sell big ad purchases directly to a small group of buyers, and then let lots of small marketers buy on their own, over the Web.

Twitter says it has sold ads to 3,000 marketers so far, but if the do-it-yourself plan works, that number will get much, much larger. Perhaps it will have enough to turn a profit, which I’ve been told is a possibility for the service in 2012. (I ran that one by CEO Dick Costolo last month onstage at Dive Into Media, but he wouldn’t bite.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120216/twitter-ramps-up-self-serve-ads-with-an-assist-from-american-express/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120216/twitter-robots-instant-stories-no-humans-required/ http://allthingsd.com/20120216/twitter-robots-instant-stories-no-humans-required/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:20:52 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=175547 Hey, how’s Newt Gingrich doing on Twitter?

You could try answering this question yourself by combing through Twitter and looking at what Newt says there, and what people are saying about Newt there. But that would take time and effort.

Much easier to have a computer track this down for you — and then ask the computer to write up a story about it, too.

That’s what Narrative Science, the start-up that specializes in robot-written stories, did earlier this week. The result isn’t elegant, but it gets the job done, in a brute force sort of way.

NEWT GINGRICH GAINS ATTENTION WITH HOT-BUTTON TOPICS TAXES, CHARACTER ISSUES

Newt Gingrich received the largest increase in Tweets about him today. Twitter activity associated with the candidate has shot up since yesterday, with most users tweeting about taxes and character issues. Newt Gingrich has been consistently popular on Twitter, as he has been the top riser on the site for the last four days. Conversely, the number of tweets about Ron Paul has dropped in the past 24 hours. Another traffic loser was Rick Santorum, who has also seen tweets about him fall off a bit.

While the overall tone of the Gingrich tweets is positive, public opinion regarding the candidate and character issues is trending negatively. In particular, @MommaVickers says, “Someone needs to put The Blood Arm’s ‘Suspicious Character’ to a photo montage of Newt Gingrich. #pimp”.

On the other hand, tweeters with a long reach are on the upside with regard to Newt Gingrich’s take on taxes. Tweeting about this issue, @elvisroy000 says, “Newt Gingrich Cut Taxes Balanced Budget, 1n 80s and 90s, Newt experienced Conservative with values”.

Maine recently held its primary, but it isn’t talking about Gingrich. Instead the focus is on Ron Paul and religious issues.

No Pulitzer for that one, but that’s not the point. This is a work in progress that’s meant to illustrate an interesting project Narrative Science is working on: The Chicago-based company got its start by creating stories out of “structured” data sets, like baseball box scores. Now it is looking at “unstructured” data — like the thousands of messages that Twitter puts out each second — as story fodder, too.

Stories about things people say on Twitter aren’t super compelling (though if you check Techmeme, you’ll see that my fellow typers and I sure make a lot of them). But if Narrative Science gets good at this, it could end up somewhere interesting.

“This is a really basic story, but it’s fully automated,” says CEO Stuart Frankel. “No human touched it at all. You can see where this thing is going.”

Meanwhile, Frankel says, Narrative Science’s core business is taking off. The company, which raised $6 million last year, now has 30 clients, many of whom use the company to produce stories and reports they use internally. But you can see public examples of it via publishers like Forbes, which is using the service to crank out automated earnings previews.

Again, those previews aren’t made up of sterling prose, but they are very serviceable. Which means Forbes can either save the money it would have spent paying someone to mash that stuff out — or it can free up a writer to do the interesting kind of stories that only humans can do.

And now I’ll save myself a few minutes of work by citing myself from last year, where I tried to assure myself that Narrative Science wasn’t going to put me out of business: “The trick for content makers like myself is to find work that only content makers like myself can do — work where human qualities like experience, judgment and creativity get rewarded. And if we can’t do that, we ought to be doing something else, anyway.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120216/twitter-robots-instant-stories-no-humans-required/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120216/more-free-web-tv-disappears-some-march-madness-games-will-go-behind-paywall/ http://allthingsd.com/20120216/more-free-web-tv-disappears-some-march-madness-games-will-go-behind-paywall/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:11:28 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=175471 If you’ve gotten used to the idea that you can watch March Madness on the Web, for free, without breaking the law, you may be in for a surprise next month.

Some of the college basketball tourney’s games will only be available to Web users whose cable providers have deals with Turner Sports, or those who pay a $3.99 one-time fee to access the games on PCs, Google/Android and Apple/iOS devices.

Games that CBS broadcasts, though, will still be available to anyone with a Web browser, through the network’s own site.

Here’s the practical breakdown, nicely summarized by BTIG’s Rich Greenfield (registration required):

• CBS will stream the games airing on the CBS Network throughout the country live on CBSSports.com for free. Consumers will only be able to watch on PCs/Macs, with no tablet/smartphone access.
• TBS, TNT and TruTV will stream the games airing on each network live at TBS.com, TNT.tv and truTV.com for consumers who authenticate their respective MVPD service provider (currently all major MVPDs authenticate these network Web sites, except Time Warner Cable). As with CBS, the games will only be available via PC/Mac (no portability).
• Complete access to March Madness on Demand via PC/Mac, smartphone and tablets with interactive features, regardless of whether you have subscribed to MVPD service, will cost a consumer $3.99 (one-time fee for the whole tournament). Streaming online and across portable devices will be available from the selection show through the championship game.

A few more notes: CBS and Turner split the games, so you won’t run into the paywall every time you want to watch — Turner will have 41 of the games. And as Greenfield notes, most pay-TV operators have deals with Turner, which says that means about 75 million homes will have Web access via “authentication.” That said, if you’re planning on watching the games that way, better prepare now, by hunting down your subscriber info, etc. — the process isn’t nearly as easy as it ought to be.

Big picture: This is a switch from the precedent CBS established in 2006, when it started streaming all of the tournament’s games on the Web for free (for three years before that, it had charged around $15 to watch online).

Each year, the network loudly trumpeted the number of eyeballs and ad dollars that Web streams attracted, while arguing that it didn’t hurt traditional TV ratings at all. Last year, you could even watch the tournament on an iPad for free.

But it’s in keeping with the broader move we’ve seen from big media companies, who are pulling back on free Web video. Back when Hulu launched in 2008, it seemed that most big TV networks were going to put all their shows online, but in the last couple of years, we’ve seen the pendulum swing the other way, as networks tie “free” Web TV to pay-TV subscriptions.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120216/more-free-web-tv-disappears-some-march-madness-games-will-go-behind-paywall/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120216/dont-tell-mom-the-babbysitters-an-ipad/ http://allthingsd.com/20120216/dont-tell-mom-the-babbysitters-an-ipad/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:36:20 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=175334 You love your kids, but they are loud or hyper or bored or simply need more attention than you can provide at this particular second. And that’s why you have an iPad.

You can file this under “not news to anyone who has kids,” but it’s fun to see in print. Nielsen reports that 55 percent of tablet owners with kids say they use the gadgets to “entertain” (read: pacify) the brood while traveling. And 41 percent do the same when out at restaurants, etc.

If you expand the sample set to include people with smartphones, and/or people who are honest about their parenting, both of those numbers will hit 100 percent.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120216/dont-tell-mom-the-babbysitters-an-ipad/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120215/cbs-may-produce-new-show-for-netflix/ http://allthingsd.com/20120215/cbs-may-produce-new-show-for-netflix/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:19:41 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=175057 The digital video boom has generated lots of extra money for big media companies, who are selling off old shows to services like Amazon, Hulu and Netflix.

But as those services start to dabble in creating their own shows, big media companies could get another bump, by helping the new guys make new content.

CBS, for instance, makes about 20 shows at its own production facilities, primarily for itself. But the broadcaster may end up producing something for Netflix, CEO Les Moonves said today during the company’s earnings call.

Moonves didn’t offer any other details on the discussions, and said he wouldn’t until there was a signed deal. Netflix offered up even less information: “Anyone and everyone who produces content is looking to do deals with Netflix,” Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said via email.

Last week, Netflix launched “Lillyhammer,” its first original series, and later this year it will debut “House of Cards,” a David Fincher/Kevin Spacey series. Twentieth Century Fox — which like this site is owned by News Corp. —  is also producing a new run of “Arrested Development” for Netflix.

The company has also reportedly reached a deal with Lionsgate to produce “Orange Is the New Black,” a new series from the creator of Showtime’s “Weeds.”

Meanwhile, Moonves says CBS continues to talk to other players who are in the market for the stuff he’s already made. Verizon and Redbox have already announced plans to launch a new subscription video service, and while Moonves wouldn’t name names — Google? Apple? — he didn’t dissuade analysts from anticipating more buyers for his stuff.

“There are a lot of conversations,” he said this afternoon. “It’s hard to predict whether they’ll be a major deal. But we’re talking to an awful lot of people.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120215/cbs-may-produce-new-show-for-netflix/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120215/martha-stewart-on-the-web-a-good-thing-the-full-dive-into-media-interview/ http://allthingsd.com/20120215/martha-stewart-on-the-web-a-good-thing-the-full-dive-into-media-interview/#comments Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:02:09 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=174915 Martha Stewart is a celebrity and a brand and a business. A big business, which generates more than $200 million in revenue each year.

But now that we’re in an age where celebrities and brands and businesses can speak directly to consumers, via platforms like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, does that give someone like Stewart even more opportunity?

Stewart and Lisa Gersh, who runs Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, batted those ideas around with Walt Mossberg at D: Dive Into Media last month.

Stewart pointed out that her publishing group immediately embraced the iPad, where it has produced some beautiful and popular tablet editions of her magazines. And the company says it has been able to use Twitter and Facebook effectively as well.

But Stewart, whose Hallmark TV deal is ending this year, will probably look to get another TV show up on the air instead of jumping feet-first into Web video. You can see her entire interview here:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120215/martha-stewart-on-the-web-a-good-thing-the-full-dive-into-media-interview/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120215/nbc-reruns-on-netflix-boost-comcasts-bottom-line/ http://allthingsd.com/20120215/nbc-reruns-on-netflix-boost-comcasts-bottom-line/#comments Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:08:11 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=174833 Netflix is trying its hand at producing new TV shows, like “Lilyhammer.” But it is spending the vast majority of its ballooning content budget buying old stuff.

A good reminder of that comes from today’s Comcast earnings report, where the cable giant notes that its NBC broadcast unit posted a $305 million bump in licensing fees last year, “primarily the result of a licensing agreement for prior season and library content.”

Comcast doesn’t identify which agreement that was, but people familiar with the company say it was the “multi-year” renewal agreement that Netflix and NBC Universal announced last July. That deal gives Netflix subs access to shows like “The Office” and “Parenthood.”

Comcast generated $55.8 billion in revenue last year, so that $300 million barely qualifies as a drop in a bucket. But it is a profitable drop, since licensing revenue is basically found money with big fat margins.

And given that woeful NBC saw revenue drop 7.1 percent last year to $6.4 billion,* that money is nice to have.

Meanwhile, a quick check on Comcast’s cable business: It lost 17,000 video subscribers in the last quarter, which Comcast executives say is a great result, because it’s the lowest quarterly drop they’ve had in five years. And the company added 336,000 broadband customers.

*Some of that drop is because the network saw a boost from the Olympics in 2010.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120215/nbc-reruns-on-netflix-boost-comcasts-bottom-line/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120214/sony-apologizes-for-whitney-houston-itunes-price-hike/ http://allthingsd.com/20120214/sony-apologizes-for-whitney-houston-itunes-price-hike/#comments Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:12:05 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=174652 Sony says it’s sorry it raised prices on two Whitney Houston albums at Apple’s U.K. iTunes store the day after the singer’s death.

On Sunday, Sony pushed through wholesale price changes that moved the retail price of Houston’s “The Ultimate Collection” from 4.99 pounds to 7.99, and “Whitney: The Greatest Hits” from 7.99 pounds to 9.99. The label moved the prices back to their original level later that day.

The story flared up throughout the Web yesterday, and Sony wouldn’t comment on the matter until this afternoon.

Here’s the apology statement: “Whitney Houston product was mistakenly mispriced on the UK iTunes store on Sunday. When discovered, the mistake was immediately corrected. We apologize for any offense caused.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120214/sony-apologizes-for-whitney-houston-itunes-price-hike/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120214/a-very-special-very-foul-mouthed-valentine-from-netflix/ http://allthingsd.com/20120214/a-very-special-very-foul-mouthed-valentine-from-netflix/#comments Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:38:48 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=174637 “Lilyhammer,” the new original series from Netflix, has been getting mediocre reviews. But this Valentine is the kind of thing that might tempt me to check it out, once I’m finished plowing through “Breaking Bad.”

(Warning: I enjoy swearing.)

In other news, Netflix reportedly has a third original show lined up. This one might also involve some not-safe-for-work language.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120214/a-very-special-very-foul-mouthed-valentine-from-netflix/feed/ 0