Time Warner Cable

Time Warner Cable is working to add local stations to its iPad streaming app, allowing customers to watch broadcast shows on the devices anywhere in their homes. The cable operator’s offering includes a slew of cable networks, but no access to TV stations.

A strange-bedfellows coalition of Dish Network; Time Warner Cable; activist group Free Press; the Newspaper Guild; and the American Cable Association which represents small and mid-sized operators have sent a letter to the FCC. They’re united by a concern about TV stations that “cannot lawfully merge under the FCC’s local television rules (but) are nonetheless consolidating their core operations, staff and news production.”

The FCC is hoping to close the digital divide by developing cheap high-speed Internet access for low-income households. Today, the commission will announce commitments from most of the big cable companies in the United States to supply access for $9.99 a month to a subset of low-income households. The low introductory price is meant to appeal to new customers who have not had broadband in the past.

While the FCC’s desire to get back TV spectrum from stations is grabbing a lot of attention, there’s another issue that shouldn’t fall under the industry’s radar. The attempt by cable and satellite operators to get the commission to change the retransmission consent rules to decrease the broadcasters’ leverage. This second revenue stream is vital and is growing more important each year. This is a dangerous proceeding. If broadcasters don’t pay enough attention, all their spread sheets showing steadily rising retrans revenue over the next decade could suddenly become moot.

Rival distributors Time Warner Cable and satellite broadcaster DirecTV teamed up to make their case to the FCC for an overhaul the agency’s retransmission consent rules. Representatives of the two companies met with FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Robert McDowell on Wednesday to discuss the tensions that have arisen over the last few years between broadcasters and multichannel video program distributor over fees broadcasters want in return for carriage of their programming.

Time Warner Cable said that it would subsidize some purchases of a set-top box called Slingbox that allows users to watch their home television programming from anywhere. It will give subscribers to its $99-a-month Wideband Internet service, which is faster and costlier than traditional broadband, a rebate for the total cost of the $300 device.

Privately held cable operator Insight serves more than 750,000 customers in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. It has about 537,000 high-speed data subscribers, 679,000 video subscribers and 297,000 voice subscribers. Time Warner Cable said it expects the deal to create annual cost savings of about $100 million, with the majority of those savings coming within two years of the deal closing.

Time Warner Cable Inc., the second- largest U.S. cable TV operator, is in advanced talks to buy Carlyle Group’s Insight Communications Co. for about $3 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said. TWC may announce an agreement to buy Insight as soon as today, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are private. The talks may also fail to lead to a deal, the people said.

The newly expanded Pac-12 Conference has partnered with cable operators Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks to create a national network and six regional networks.

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NY1, Time Warner’s cable news channel in the Big Apple, wanted to reinforce its position as the city’s quintessential news channel. Its Real New Yorker campaign, a sharp-eyed series of promos that offer up fast-moving snapshots of daily life from the jaded but affectionate perspective of native New Yorkers, did just that. One of them even got the mayor to toughen up fines for cab drivers who refuse inconvenient fares.

Time Warner Cable and Viacom Inc. have put the guns down in their legal fight over the former’s plans to stream the latter’s content on iPads. The two companies, which filed suit against each other in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in April, told the court they have entered into a standstill agreement which essentially means they are putting the legal battle on hold while they try to resolve the dispute amicably.

The cable systems serve about 70,000 basic video subscribers, 42,000 high speed data or HSD subscribers, and 26,000 phone subscribers in Kentucky and western Tennessee.

Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt said Thursday that in just a month more than 360,000 users downloaded an app allowing simulcasting of networks on iPads in homes. The service launched with 30 channels and now has 70-plus available for the streaming.

Time Warner Cable and Viacom each filed lawsuits on Thursday that seek to resolve a stormy dispute over the right to stream channels to new devices like iPads.

The controversy over Time Warner Cable’s plan to distribute cable programming on tablets has implications for broadcasters. Like many cable programmers, most broadcasters don’t have all the rights needed to distribute programming on the Internet. Also, viewing on tablets is unmeasured. Do you want your station’s viewing shifting to unmeasured devices?

Time Warner Cable pulled 12 networks from Discovery Communications, Fox Cable Networks and Viacom off its iPad streaming-video application on Thursday — after those companies complained that the service violated the terms of their distribution agreements — although the MSO continues to insist it has the right to deliver that programming to the tablets.

News Corp. and Time Warner Cable are trading blows again. This time it’s over an iPad app Time Warner Cable launched this month that allows its subscribers to watch live television in their homes on the Apple device. News Corp., parent of several cable networks including FX, sent a letter to Time Warner Cable telling the pay TV distributor to stop streaming its channels on the iPad, representatives of both companies confirmed.

Time Warner Cable, under fire from some in the television industry for its iPad streaming app that offers several dozen TV channels, says it has done nothing wrong.

Does Time Warner Cable have the right to provide iPad users with live TV channels? That’s at the center of a dispute between the cable operator and several large media […]

TV rights holders this week have unleashed their legal eagles, warning Time Warner Cable that its new distribution scheme is for the birds. Network legal reps are issuing a flock of heated missives to the nation’s No. 2 cable operator, calling for an immediate halt to a new service that allows subscribers to stream video content to iPads and other tablet devices.

To attract more video customers, Time Warner Cable plans to invest significantly in marketing this year, although no financial terms were disclosed.

The charge against the cable and satellite operators comes in a letter to key members of Congress. The NAB president also calls for a government investigation into “spectrum hoarding and/or spectrum speculation.”

The country’s two leading cable operators are deploying the EBIF technology that propels interactive advertising at a rapid clip. Comcast has 14 million-plus homes where set-top boxes have the technology installed, while Time Warner Cable had EBIF teed up in approximately 5 million set-top boxes at the end of 2010.

Time Warner Cable’s North Carolina news operation, News 14 will produce  newscasts at 6:30 a.m., 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. next year for Sinclair’s WXLV Greensboro as part of the recent retransmission consent agreement.

In a move that will affect millions in Southern California, almost all Los Angeles Lakers games will be on pay TV starting with the 2012-13 season. Time Warner Cable is launching a regional sports network that will carry all the team’s games, except for a handful that are broadcast nationally.

A National Advertising Review Board panel has urged Time Warner Cable to stop making claims in ads that the cable company’s services are provided on a fiber or fiber optic network.

Football fans who might have been left in the dark during the Super Bowl this Sunday were granted a reprieve when a last-minute deal temporarily ended a media standoff that had revived calls for regulators to intervene in TV programming disputes.

The new agreement covers 28 stations in 17 markets. In addition, TWC will produce three half-hour local news program, Monday through Friday, on Sinclair’s ABC affiliate, WXLV Greensboro/Winston-Salem, N.C., beginning in January 2012.

Time Warner Cable, thesecond-biggest cable TV operator in the U.S. improved its net profit 22.2% to $392 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, with revenues gaining 5.9% to $4.8 billion. But as has been the trend for many cable system operators, Time Warner lost basic video subscribers — 141,000.

Time Warner Cable reached an agreement in principle with Sinclair Broadcasting Saturday evening for continued carriage of its 28 TV stations in TWC markets, and said it expects to work toward a final agreement in the next seven days. “We’re pleased to reach an agreement with Sinclair Broadcasting without any interruption in service for our customers,” said Rob Marcus, TWC president-COO.

Time Warner Cable announced Friday afternoon that it and Sinclair Broadcasting have agreed to extend their retransmission consent negotiations — set to expire tonight at 11:59 — until 11:59 pm on Saturday, Jan. 15. “Negotiations are ongoing with Sinclair, and we’re still working hard to reach an agreement,” a TWC statement said.  “We are still hoping to avoid a broadcaster blackout, but even if Sinclair pulls the plug on Saturday night, Time Warner Cable will continue to provide all available Big 4 network programming to its customers. There is no need for customers to switch, they’ll still have access to all of their favorite network programming.”