In the era of the smartphone and tablet boom, the hottest wireless commodities are airwaves.
The Emmys will be Sunday night at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, and AMC, HBO and Showtime have nabbed a huge chunk of the major nods this year. This yet again sparks the question that has been looming around the industry for years: Is the quality of programming from the major broadcast networks on the decline?
Time Warner Cable and Sinclair Broadcasting Group have agreed to extend talks to resolve a dispute that could have blacked out 33 local TV stations in as many as 8.5 million homes across the country.
Oprah Winfrey was headed into her "la-di-da years" -- her term for semiretirement -- when David Zaslav came along and wrecked her grand plan. The queen of TV talk had never met the CEO of Discovery Communications until he arrived at her Chicago office in April 2007 with a proposition. "OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network," Zaslav said, pitching the notion that they create a cable TV network together. "I don't want your money," he told her. "I want you."
Despite the intense popularity of the NFL, many of its fans are unable to subscribe to the league-owned NFL Network through their cable television provider. And unless significant progress is made in the next few months, they'll be without it this coming season, just as they have been since the NFL Network's creation seven years ago.
Your cable bill is going up this year -- and next year, and the year after that -- with no end in sight.
Fox Networks and Time Warner Cable announced an agreement Friday that will avert the disruption of Fox network programming to 15 million subscribers of Time Warner Cable and an affiliated company.
A midnight deadline passed Friday, but the Fox network has still not resolved its differences with Time Warner Cable on a deal to keep its channels on the air in several major cities.
Time Warner Cable's customers could see Fox disappear from their televisions if the two companies fail to resolve a fee standoff by Dec. 31.
General Electric and Comcast announced a joint venture worth a combined $37.25 billion on Thursday that will give the cable company eventual control of NBC Universal.
When the series "ER" airs its finale on Thursday, the event will not only mark the completion of one of NBC's most successful shows, but it can also be viewed as the end of an era for the network.
Walt Disney Co. is hurting as consumer spending remains tight. The world's biggest media conglomerate reported profit declines last month in its major business segments as advertising declined at its ABC network, fewer tourists visited Disney World, and 2008's "Wall-E" remained its last box office hit.
Charter Communications, a provider of cable TV, Internet and other broadband services, said on Thursday that it will file for bankruptcy, as part of a "financial restructuring."
Super Bowl fans in Tucson, Arizona, caught a different kind of show during Sunday's big game.
For America's media conglomerates, it's getting Darwinian out there - and the next stage of their evolution could come quickly.
If the nation's largest cable TV operators have their way, the home digital video recorder could soon become a relic
Boxing and mixed martial arts attract different audiences. In coming together Saturday, Golden Boy Promotions and Affliction Entertainment hope to fuse generations connected by little more than the love of a good fight.
Two rifle-bearing lads enter what looks like an abandoned building. They are nervous, for good reason. Snarling vampires attack. There is violence. There is gore. There is even a heart-tugging moment when one of the humans finds his missing girlfriend - only to discover that she too is now a blood-thirsty creature of the night.
Cablevision Systems Corp. is considering several options to boost its stock price including spinning off some of its diverse holdings
The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday he will recommend that the nation's largest cable company be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet
Big Ten fans received a jolt of good news last week when the conference's co-owned television venture, the Big Ten Network, announced a long-awaited agreement with the nation's largest cable provider, Comcast. Starting Aug. 15, nearly 25 million new customers will have access to the channel, most notably 6.5 million households in seven of the eight states with Big Ten schools.
Time Warner is dangling an eye-popping $10.9 billion gift to shareholders as part of its spinoff of Time Warner Cable. But it's a gift that will keep on taking in the form of $10 billion in additional debt and a heavy financing burden shifted to the cable unit.
For just shy of one month way back in 1995, the Walt Disney Company was poised to become the world's biggest media company after announcing it was buying ABC/Capital Cities. But mere weeks later, Time Warner announced it was buying Turner Broadcasting, putting itself back into the lead dog position among the media pack as measured by revenue, a position it held through its wayward combination with America Online and up to this week.
Cablevision Systems Corp. is close to buying the Long Island newspaper Newsday from Tribune Co. for $650 million, a person with knowledge of the situation said Sunday.
News Corp., the media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch, has withdrawn its bid to purchase the Long Island daily paper Newsday, a News Corp. spokeswoman said Saturday
News Corp., the media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch, has withdrawn its bid to purchase the Long Island daily paper Newsday, a News Corp. spokeswoman said Saturday.
Just as the race for your TV, phone and Internet dollar speeds up, the gains for the companies peddling the triple-play service bundles have slowed to a crawl.
WiMax hopes were revived Wednesday morning, and once again the wireless broadband opportunity is huge - in more ways than one. The big buzz around the wealth of mobile Net potential is almost overshadowed by the massive tab that even six tech giants can't fully cover.
The bidding for Tribune Co.'s Newsday has attracted some of the biggest names in the New York media world. News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch led the charge with a $580 million offer. New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman quickly matched it. Now Cablevision's Dolan family has lobbed in a high bid of $650 million. Cablevision's involvement is the most puzzling of the three. After all, the Dolans are cable guys, not newspaper publishers. Nevertheless, there's a strange logic to it.
As the bloody battle over subscribers between Comcast and its phone and satellite rivals continues at a virtual draw, the cable giant is looking ahead to a new wireless broadband arena: WiMax.
Does Viacom's mix of media businesses make the company recession-resistant?
Does Viacom's mix of media businesses make the company recession-resistant?
Time Warner Inc. said Wednesday it plans to spin off the rest of its cable TV business, answering investor pleas to further simplify the media conglomerate's sprawling corporate structure
In Brent Swanson's basement home theater, there should be nothing drab about Battlestar Galactica.
Something remarkable happened on Thursday - an Internet service provider and a peer-to-peer software company announced a collaboration and agreed to work together.
Comcast Corp., an Internet service provider under investigation for hampering online file-sharing by its subscribers, announced Thursday an about-face in its stance and said it will treat all types of Internet traffic equally.
WiMax may not be dead after all.
Something stinks in the world of Spygate. Call it a spectre over Specter. Call it a distasteful conflict of interest. Call it an unfair accusation against a Senator with motives more pure than a Troy Aikman spiral. Call it manna from heaven for Bill Belichick and his morally impaired Patriots staff. But whatever you call it, don't say that it doesn't have tongues wagging in NFL suites and behind the closed doors of Congress.
Time Warner's new chief executive officer confirmed Wednesday that the media company is separating its struggling AOL access business from the division's growing online advertising business, a move that could lead to the sale of the traditional dial-up unit.
Are we heading into a recession? Wall Street may have a better idea after three big media companies report quarterly results this week.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts says he remembers walking around the Consumer Electronics Show five years ago with Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt. He recalls seeing a big presence from his rivals in the satellite-television business. His own industry, by contrast, was nowhere to be found.
Analysis: It may have caved in allowing all its fans to watch the Patriots play for an undefeated season, but the league network's battle with cable companies is far from over
The phone business has been very good to the cable industry.
Wayne H. Davis doesn't look like much of a rabble-rouser. A tall, balding 53-year-old, Davis has the unassuming demeanor of a high school math teacher. And the way he peppers his conversations with acronyms, he sounds more like an engineer (which he is) than an agitator.
Michigan-Ohio State. Yankees-Red Sox. Duke-North Carolina. Cowboys-Packers. When bitter sports rivals backed by massive resources face off against one another, fans are typically the winners.
Michigan-Ohio State. Yankees-Red Sox. Duke-North Carolina. When bitter sports rivals backed by massive resources face off against one another, fans are typically the winners.
There were no major surprises in the third-quarter earnings report of Time Warner, the world's largest media conglomerate.
updated: Thu Oct 25 2007 08:31:00
Ali goes shopping at 3000 feet. For more Show and Tell check us out on iTunes!
You bucked up for cable so you wouldn't miss Monday night football on ESPN, but why must you also pay for SOAPnet?
Personally, my college football viewing experience Saturday won't be all that affected by whether or not I can see the Ohio State-Youngstown State game. I can imagine, however, that it's a slightly more pressing concern for all those Buckeyes fans in Ohio, who, like millions of others around the country this weekend, can't wait to see their team in action for the first time this season.
New York-based cable television operator Cablevision Systems Corp. reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit Wednesday as it added more digital video, high-speed Internet and voice subscribers.
A year ago, Time Warner finally relented to market pressure and decided to stop charging broadband customers for its AOL service access fees. Faced with a steadily declining AOL subscriber base, Time Warner made the decision to focus more on the rapidly growing online advertising market and make much of AOL's services free.
Leading U.S. cable operator Comcast Corp. posted a 28 percent rise in quarterly profit Thursday, but it lost more basic video subscribers than analysts expected, sending shares down 3 percent in premarket trading.
The big cable companies and the telco giants are engaging in a battle for your living room. At stake are the dollars you spend on your phone, television and Internet access service.
Over the past two decades, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany has established himself as the shrewdest executive in college sports. From spearheading the addition of Penn State as the conference's 11th member to brokering the Rose Bowl's integration into the BCS to continually landing the nation's most lucrative television and bowl lineups, Delany has made sure his 111-year-old conference is consistently at the front of the pack when it comes to changes in the collegiate landscape.
Cable television shows, unless they are the series finale of "The Sopranos," often don't generate the types of ratings that come anything close to what even the least-watched programs on the free broadcast networks get. But cable TV is actually among the hotter segments of the media business these days.
Cablevision, the nation's No. 5 cable operator, accepted an offer Wednesday from the company's founding Dolan family to buy the rest of the company in a deal worth $10.6 billion.
Time Warner, the world's largest media company, reported better-than-expected earnings for the first quarter Wednesday thanks to robust results from its cable business and improved profits at its AOL division.
Media companies have been criticized by some on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley for being to slow to adapt to new competition, like the Internet.
These 20 stocks produced the largest total returns to shareholders in 2006. For this list, we included only Fortune 500 companies that traded for at least $2.
Time Warner, the world's largest media company, disclosed in a regulatory filing Friday that chairman and chief executive officer Dick Parsons received annual compensation of $22.5 million last year, up from $16 million in 2005.
It's been a tumultuous couple of months for Sprint Nextel, and that has led to some speculation that the wireless company could be a takeover target.
Verizon isn't going to take it anymore. After years of ceding ground in the broadband wars to cable operators Comcast, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable (owned by the parent of Fortune's publisher)...
Time Warner, the world's largest media company, announced Tuesday that its Time Warner Cable unit has become a publicly traded firm and that shares should start trading as early as March 1.
Sex sells. Or does it?
I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that a spokesperson for Horizon Productions -- the company that produces the annual Lingerie Bowl -- told me that the event, which was originally scheduled to appear on pay-per-view this Sunday during the Super Bowl's halftime show, has been cancelled. The good news is that the Nationwide Insurance ad mocking Kevin Federline as a down-and-out fry cook has not been cancelled. Oh, and despite the one-year lingerie layoff, Lingerie Bowl V will be broadcast on cable next year.
Who is Glenn Britt? Unless you work in the cable industry, or you're a particularly observant owner of Time Warner stock, you've probably never heard of Britt, who happens to be CEO of the media conglomerate's cable unit.
The Dolan family, which controls Cablevision Systems Corp., has raised its offer for all outstanding shares of the New York-based cable operator to $30 per share from $27, representatives of the family said Friday.
Shares of Time Warner Cable, the second largest cable company in the U.S., could hit the market within the next few weeks, analysts said.
It has been a great year for many media stocks. So, not surprisingly, it's been a pretty good year for guys like me, who make a living writing about media companies and their stocks.
Thanksgiving, a day given to excess, will include a third helping of pro football this year -- but only for a fraction of U.S. homes.
Most media stocks have enjoyed a revival on Wall Street this year after a disappointing 2005. But whether or not the group finishes the year on a strong note will largely depend on what three industry leaders say in their upcoming earnings releases.
Time Warner posted solid gains in third-quarter earnings and revenues thanks to strong sales growth from cable and an improving profit picture at the company's AOL unit.
If anyone needed a further sign of cable's resurgence, it came today in the numbers issued by Comcast, the nation's largest cable player. And it comes at a crucial moment in the telecommunications business -- just a week before expected government approval of the mega-merger between AT&T and BellSouth, a combination seen as necessary to give the telcos the scale to compete with cable.
Look who's finally joined the media stock party.
No wonder Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons likes the cable business so much.
Are cable stocks cheap? Charles and James Dolan think so. In early October the Dolans, who own 22.5 percent of Cablevision stock and control 74 percent of the voting rights, offered to buy out publ...
It's October. And you know what that means ... boo!
The Dolan family, which controls the New York-based cable provider Cablevision, renewed an offer to take the company private for an estimated $7.9 billion in cash.
Comcast doesn't have any plans to limit or prioritize Internet traffic on its network and doesn't see the need for government involvement in the "Net neutrality" issue, chief operating officer Stephen Burke said Wednesday.
Hey, Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts: If you're reading this, I've got some friendly advice for you.
Most media stocks have bounced back sharply this year after a brutal 2005 as investors began to realize that entertainment firms are positioning themselves for growth in the new world of digital media.
Walt Disney is paying almost as much money for only half the pro football this season. And it should be damn glad to be doing so.
Wall Street just can't figure out TiVo. Sure, most consumers love the digital video recorder company, which has become the equivalent of Kleenex or Google for the DVR industry.
By our count, AOL has announced four let's-fix-this-puppy plans in as many years. And almost all of them, despite great hype, have turned out to be fairly modest proposals.
This August is the most brutal month for the National Football League.
Amid all the coverage around AOL's new strategy, you might not have noticed that Time Warner (parent of CNNMoney.com and Fortune) made another big announcement this week: The company, along with Comcast, completed its acquisition of Adelphia's cable-television assets in a deal that makes Time Warner's cable unit the nation's third-largest provider of multichannel programming behind Comcast and DirecTV.
Time Warner Cable's deal to buy Adelphia Communications will help the cable company bargain for better rates from programmers, although the costs savings won't likely be passed on to consumers, according to a report in The New York Times on Monday.
There is a big debate in Congress about "Net neutrality" - whether or not broadband network operators such as Verizon and Comcast should be able to charge big Internet companies such as Google and eBay in order to have their Web sites delivered in a smooth, timely fashion.
The year is half over. And you know what that means. It's time to take a look back at how this column's stock picks have fared.
U.S. cable operator Cablevision Systems Corp. on Wednesday said its planned network-based digital video recorder is protected by "fair use" legal precedents established in the famous Sony Betamax video case.
In 1903, an Eastern European immigrant and one-time street peddler named William Fox built a 149-seat movie theater in a penny arcade in Brooklyn.
Time Warner, the world's largest media conglomerate, reported first-quarter sales and earnings that were largely in line with expectations thanks to strong growth at its cable and network TV divisions and also reaffirmed its operating profit forecast for 2006. But will that be enough to lift the stock out of its funk?
Cable giant Comcast has a new ad campaign poking fun at digital subscriber line (DSL) Internet services offered by major phone companies. The commercials feature two turtles known as the Slowskys who are DSL customers.
Say something in Farsi, Tom. "Dasterast is 'to the right,'" replies Tom Freston, the new chief executive of Viacom. "And dastechap is 'to the left.' Ruberu is 'straight ahead,'" he goes on.
ATLANTA (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp., the No. 3 U.S. wireless service, has seen interest from other cable television companies wanting to join its venture with four cable TV providers, its top executive said Monday.
Say something in Farsi, Tom. "Dasterast is 'to the right,'" replies Tom Freston, the new chief executive of Viacom. "And dastechap is 'to the left.' Ruberu is 'straight ahead,'" he goes on.
What if new movies were showing not only at the neighborhood multiplex but also on your cable box? Rainbow Media Holdings--the Cablevision unit that owns the AMC network, the Independent Film Chann...
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