The FCC mandate that television broadcasters turn off analog signals and fully switch to digital delivery is this year’s Y2K: The industry, from networks to big box retailers hoping to move 50-inch plasma screens, has consumers in a frenzy.
Best Buy and Circuit City will be more than happy to remind Americans that 9.4 percent of them are considered “Completely Unready,” and will lose their ability to get a signal beginning Feb. 17, 2009, when the big switch – to free up some of the broadcast spectrum to resell it with much higher licensing fees to other operators – is made.
Television operators, meanwhile, are doing everything they can to make sure customers are prepared for the switch, trying to school them on whether their old analog sets will need converters, or whether their new flat screens are A-OK for February’s messiah. (One network in Las Vegas even flipped the switch early to tell customers whether they’d be left behind or not.)
But what happens when those television operators, like software salesmen during Y2K, completely lie to you about your risks?
CONTINUED »
Good news, gays! Your only way to catch a weekly dose of abs-galore Taylor Kitsch is here to stay. At least for another season. Critics charity case Friday Night Lights, which isn’t exactly about football (but what a nice plot device that involves locker room scenes), will return thanks to a deal struck between Jeff Zucker, Marc Graboff and Ben Silverman at NBC and DirecTV, owned by Barry Diller foe and Liberty Media head John Malone. The arrangement is “an innovative deal where NBC found a partner who will share costs and exhibition windows” says one source who didn’t exactly explain how this is going to work. Whatever. You’ll be tuning in on Hulu.
Might Liberty Media’s John Malone be willing to give up its super-voting shares in IAC – and let both parties drop their lawsuits – if the scream queen just hands over HSN?
The TV shopping network is among the few bright spots in IAC’s latest earnings report. A year ago and a few times in recent months, a similar deal to exchange assets was on the table, but was squashed because of concerns about HSN’s future; the unit’s 8 percent gain this quarter, under Nike import Mindy Grossman, might have calmed those fears.
CONTINUED »
If you can tell us the last time you were at Bounce, on 2nd and 2nd, you’re probably not the type of crowd who reads this website. Or maybe you are, and you just use the “my lame ass friends from college dragged me there” excuse. But hell, at least you know the East Village bar. And after today, you’ll know it as the East Village bar that’s getting its ass sued by DirecTV for trying to entertain its patrons.
DirecTV is cracking down on restaurants and bars that are misusing or misappropriating its programming, and it recently obtained a $50,000 judgment against a New York bar, according to the direct-broadcast satellite provider. […]
The lawsuit against Bounce Deuce was one of five complaints DirecTV filed last year against commercial establishments in New York and Florida. The DBS provider has several other commercial-misuse investigations under way across the country.
The judgment was entered against Bounce Deuce for its unauthorized showing of the 2006 NFL Sunday Ticket package. DirecTV filed two other similar civil complaints against commercial establishments in New York in December, and those cases are pending in federal court.
And that $50,000 ruling against it means you’re Jack & Cokes just went up a buck fifty. Bottoms up!