Another blow to the Dish Network

The joint distribution and marketing deal between AT&T and the Dish Network is coming undone. On Wednesday, AT&T gave Dish formal notice that it's ending the deal as of Dec. 31. The move had been foreshadowed two weeks ago when AT&T exercised a contractual right to force Dish to buy back some debt held by AT&T, a clear signal that the relationship was on the rocks. The breakup likely means that AT&T will form a new partnership with DirecTV next year. These aren't happy days at Dish, where subscription growth has slowed to less than a crawl. Competitors are eating the company's lunch, both the low end (where plunging cable prices are drawing away customers) and the high end (where DirecTV is blowing Dish out of the water in the race to add new high-definition channels). The breakup with AT&T may be a portent of things to come.

Guess what? Cable service is crummy

It's not exactly shocking news, but satellite-TV customers are happier with their service than cable customers. The annual American Customer Satisfaction Index, produced by pollsters from the University of Michigan, DirecTV scored 68 points out of a possible 100 from customers, while Dish was close behind at 65 -- the two-top-rated companies in the survey. Cable as a whole scored 64, but that rating benefits from the performance of smaller companies like Cablevision. Most of the larger cable companies got lower scores: Time Warner 59, Comcast and Charter 54. So much for the "consumer protection" that comes from government regulation of cable. Consumers get the best service when companies compete, not when they sit back in comfortable government-created monopolies.

How to watch 'Friday Night Lights' four months early

NBC wants to use its telecast of the 2009 Super Bowl as a platform to launch the new season of Saturday Night Lights, so the show's third season won't start until sometime next February. But you can watch it four months earlier if you subscribe to Direct TV's satellite service. New episodes of Friday Night Lights -- the same ones NBC will show in 2009 -- will begin airing on Direct TV's channel 101 on Oct. 1.

A couple of months ago, when it looked like a second season of marginal ratings had doomed Friday Night Lights, Hollywood was abuzz with gossip that it would move to Direct TV, which is hoping to lure customers away from satellite rival Dish Network with original programming. Apparently that was too expensive a proposition for Direct TV, and instead an agreement was hammered out to split production costs with NBC. "We're beyond thrilled that we have structured an innovative deal that allows us to continue to produce and air this beloved series,'' said NBC programming boss Ben Silverman in announcing the return of Friday Night Lights.

Silverman called the deal "a win-win for NBC, Universal Media Studios and Direct TV, not to mention the many passionate fans who adore Friday Night Lights." No doubt about the fans; whatever happens later, they at least get a third season of original episodes. As for everybody else, we'll see. How many new subscribers will this really bring to Direct TV? And how many viewers will still be left by the time Friday Nights Lights begins airing on NBC, especially with bootleg copies recorded from Direct TV zipping all around the Internet?

Just in time for Easter, gospel music comes to Direct TV

On March 19, Direct TV is adding the Gospel Music Channel to its lineup on channel 338. GMC airs gospel and Christian music videos from practically every genre, from country to hip-hop, along with the occasional documentary or artist bio. On 7 a.m. on Easter Sunday, the channel kicks off 24 commercial-free hours of music.

Dish Network's HD channels: Lost in space

Dish Network satellite TV viewers are going to have to wait a while -- maybe a long while -- for all those new high-def channels that Dish has been promising. A new satellite that was supposed to add between 20 and 50 new channels to Dish's high-def lineup flew off into the Twilight Zone after it was launched Friday. A second-stage booster engine on the Russian-made Proton rocket carrying the satellite shut down early, leaving it 5,000 miles short of its target. That's the second botched mission by a Proton rocket in six months, and they're likely to be grounded until somebody figures out what the problem is.

Direct TV adds more high-def channels

Direct TV, the country's biggest satellite-TV provider, looks like it will make good on its pledge to offer 100 high-definition channels by the end of the year. It has just added 15 HD regional sports channels (including 11 from Fox Sports) as well as high-def versions of MTV, VH1, Spike and Nickelodeon. When an HD version of the Bio channel appears later this month, it will give Direct TV 89 high-def channels.The Dish Network, with more than 70 HD channels, isn't doing badly, either.

There's an HD set in your (near) future

Last week, I wrote that NBC's 756 hours of high-definition coverage of next year's Beijing Olympics might be be the tipping point for HD television, turning it into the standard for American consumers. But HD took another big step just this week, with Direct TV's announcement of dozens of new high-def channels that give it a total of 72 -- with a promise that the number will rise to 100 by the end of the year and as many as 150 by March. Among the newest additions are the Cartoon Network, the Fox Business Network, FX, National Geographic Channel, HD Theater, A&E HD and Smithsonian HD.

Now the pressure will be on cable company's to match Direct TV's offering. And just like that, the principal reason not to buy an HD set -- the lack of programming -- will disappear. NBC's Olympic coverage will be the icing on the cake.

Just in case you though the Middle East was getting any saner...

Farfur, that Mickey-Mouse-like character who preaches jihad to little kiddies on the Al-Aqsa satellite channel managed by Hamas, was beaten to death by Israeli interrogators on a recent show. I know this sounds like something I'm making up, but you can see for yourself here.  Not that Hamas handled the matter insensitively -- there was on-air counseling for children disturbed by Farfur's death. Said the show's host to a 3-year-old caller: "You saw that the Jews let Farfur die as a Martyr. What do you want to say to the Jews?” Replied the child: “We don’t like the Jews because they are dogs! We will fight them!”

The FCC's TV violence report: village idiocy

The FCC's long-awaited report on TV violence is finally out, and it's even worse than anybody expected. Not only did the report say the government can and should regulate violence on television, but in interviews explaining, the commissioners were quite clear that they aim to appoint themselves censors of cable TV as well as broadcast. "We can't just deal with the three or four broadcast channels -- we have to be looking at what's on cable as well,'' FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told the Associated Press.

If that ever somes to pass, TV will be reduced to mush. The FCC report suggests that a crackdown on violence will extend into practically every show on television. “A broad range of television programming aired today contains [violent] content," it observes, "including, for example, cartoons, dramatic series, professional sports such as boxing, news coverage, and nature programs.”

So don't misundertand: We're not talking about The Sopranos and CSI here, we're talking about Iraq war coverage on the CBS Evening News and CNN's Virgina Tech coverage, not to mention the lions and tigers on Animal Planet, fistfights at hockey games, and the Nazis in Schindler's List. Anything that some quack psychologist thinks might give a 4-year-old nightmares (or, as the FCC put it, “a definition based on the scientific literature" that "recognizes the factors most important to determining the likely impact of violence on the child audience”) will be fair game. We'll be going right back to the lowest-common-denominator standard of the old three-channel universe.

This is the lunatic endpoint of the whole "it takes a village" school of collective child-rearing. The FCC is saying it doesn't believe parents can be trusted to make decisions about what their kids should watch on TV, so the Nanny State will take over -- and its standards will be inflicted on all of us, children or not.

This report couldn't come at a worse moment. The idiot shrieks of First Amendment Chicken Littles, who predict the end of free speech over everything from Bill Maher leaving ABC to the Bush White House kicking Helen Thomas out of the front row at press conferences, have large desensitized the public to the issue now that there's a genuine threat. And with an election coming up next year, what American politician wants to be the pro-TV-violence candidate?

The last, best hope to divert the kiddie-knows-best steamroller is for cable and satellite TV operators to warm up to the idea of a la carte programming. A la carte service means that subscribers could pick (and pay for) only the channels they want, instead of being forced to accept vast tiers of channels that bore and/or repulse them. There's no technological reason this can't be done. When I was a foreign correspondent living in Nicaragua in the 1990s and watching TV on one of those giant C-band satellite dishes, my satellite company allowed me to choose the channels I wanted from a menu of a couple of hundred.

The cable industry has bitterly opposed a law mandating a la carte service because it's a greedy government-protected monopoly that's used to getting its own way. Why should it let you pay less money for fewer channels when for all these years it's been able to set prices as high as it wanted without fear of regulation or competition? The television industry has sided with the cable guys, because a la carte would destroy its ability to bundle unwanted channels with their popular ones and force cable companies to buy both. Time to wise up, guys. Nobody's going to be buying anything if we have 500 channels full of The Bobbsey Twins Visit Blueberry Island.

I once asked Brent Bozell, the head of the Parents Television Council and the head of the clean-up-TV posse, what it would take to satisfy him. "What would it take to make Brent Bozell shut up?" he paraphrased, fairly accurately. "If we had a system where I can cable television in my home without bringing MTV along with it. A system where every channel in my home is one I invited. A system like a la carte." If the cable industry will put up, Bozell will shut up.

A great TV deal! Too bad it's illegal in most of Florida

Just in case you had the faintest doubt that allowing telephone companies to compete with cable TV monopolies would result in cheaper rates -- a proposal that the cable companies are fighting like mad dogs in the Florida legislature right now -- ATT has just announced it will offer a free year of high-definition programming to any customer who signs up for HD service through its U-verse TV subscription television operation. (The same deal is also available to customers who buy Direct TV or Dish Network satellite service through ATT.) When is the last time your cable company monopoly offered you anything but excuses? Competition produces better service and better prices. The only people who think otherwise are the cable company monopolists and their toadies in the legislature and local government.

Foul balls and foul cable service

Everybody's reporting today that major league baseball's Extra Innings package of out-of-market games will be available only on Direct TV's satellite service, after baseball financial boss Bob DuPuy's announcement Thursday that a consortium of cable systems had failed to match Direct TV's offer. But I suspect that the fat lady has not sung on this one yet. Note that DuPuy didn't say the cable operators offered less money than the $700 million put up by Direct TV; rather, he claimed that their offer was "not responsive" to some of the terms set by baseball. The argument is not about money but exactly which tier of cable programming the Extra Innings package would be placed -- the sort of arcane issue that neither viewers nor Congress, which has taken an interest in the deal, will ever understand or care about.

Personally, I don't see why baseball can't sell its product to whoever it wants under whatever conditions it chooses to set. Neither the Constitution nor the Bible grants mankind an inalienable right to see baseball games on cable. And it seems to me that Direct TV is not acting like a monopolist but a competitor, trying to acquire something that will make its service different -- and better -- than cable's. But Congress is always anxious to grandstand for its constituents at somebody else's expense, so I expect pressure on baseball to offer the games more widely. And baseball, threatened with losing its exemption from anti-trust laws, will probably buckle.

If Congress really cared about the consumer rights of TV viewers, it would pass a law preventing local governments from granting monopolies on cable service. No single policy in the history of television has been more destructive, simultaneously costing consumers untold millions of dollars in higher rates and lost service while restricting programming choice.

There's a move afoot in Florida to create competition in cable by easing the rules for telephone companies who want to offer cable service. (Herald reporter Jim Wyss has the details in a story today.) Of course, everybody's against the legislation -- the cable companies because competition would threaten the arrogant, slothful and avaricious way they do business, municipal governments because they'd lose the public-access channels that allow them to preen and prance on television. (I'd love to see the city of Miami take a vote of cable customers: Which would you prefer, to watch us on television or have your cable bill cut 40 percent? We'd have to redefine the term "landslide.")

But those objections are predictable. What's really irritating -- and shameful -- is the way some consumer groups are pitching in to preserve the cable monopoly on the grounds that the phone companies might not choose to offer cable service to every single household in Florida. These groups are so enchanted with the word "regulation" that they refuse to see that it's precisely government regulation that has made it possible for cable companies to cheat their customers all these years. Perhaps they should pay a visit to Nicaragua.

I spent five years in Managua, Nicaragua as the Herald's Central American bureau chief. Managua didn't grant an exclusive franchise to any cable company; anybody who wanted to could go into the cable business. Result: four companies competing for my business. Repair calls were always answered the same day, and usually within an hour or two, because dissatisfied customers could (and did) switch companies with a single phone call. It's hard to compare rates between the two countries (especially because the Managua companies weren't paying anything for programming, just swiping it off the satellite), but the prices were quite stable and even drifted downward a bit during the five years I lived there, rather than jumping each year as they do here. Despite being the second-poorest country in the hemisphere, Nicaragua could definitely teach us a thing or two about economics.

The 104-channel universe

A new study released by the Nielsen Company Monday says the average American home now gets 104 television channels. That's up eight channels over a year ago, and up 43 since the year 2000. Not that anybody watches them all -- the average family only really uses about 16 of those channels, Nielsen says, a figure that's been relatively constant since 2000. That suggests that when Congress finally gets around to considering proposals to force cable systems to offer so-called a la carte pricing -- that is, to allow consumers to order (and pay for) only the channels they want, instead of having to accept big programming packages devised by the cable systems -- there may be a lot of popular support for the idea. Why pay for 88 channels you never watch?

The study also says that 87 percent of Americans have their televisions hooked up to either cable or satellite. Keep that in mind some idiot (usually a politician or a sports columnist, two of America's most IQ-deprived demographics) starts screaming about how the move of NFL or major-league baseball games to a cable channel will deprive large chunks of the TV audience of the ability to watch. Of the 13 percent of Americans who don't have cable or satellite, a good chunk -- probably about half -- don't watch television at all. Americans who watch television consider cable not a luxury but a staple, and it's routinely present even in low-income homes. Time for the chattering classes to catch on.   

Star Jones has been there a week, and already they're speaking in tongues

I have never met a marketer who didn't need to be clubbed like a baby seal, but the bunch at Time Warner really deserve a special place in Hell. They sent out a huge press release today saying they're changing the name of Court TV -- to what, they didn't mention -- in order to target "a highly coveted psychographic known as 'Real Engagers.' "

I'm not sure what a "psychographic" is, or a "Real Engager," either. But judging from the new programming the press release announced for Not Court TV Anymore, I'm guessing it may be marketingspeak for "irretrievable cretins." For instance, one of the new series, called Bounty Girls, is a reality show about "an elite team of female bounty hunters who use their brains and beauty to track down the most elusive criminals." Meanwhile, much of Court TV’s trial coverage is being banished to the Internet to make room for Star Jones and Nancy Grace. I'm thinking that if the Dish Network had known what was coming, it wouldn't have been so concerned about striking a deal to get Court TV back on its satellites last month.

Armageddon averted, darn it

Well, Echostar CEO Charlie Ergen turns out to one more whimpering corporate eunuch rather than the raving, megalomanic, scorched-earth nutjob we were all hoping for. You may recall that Ergen, warned that if Turner Broadcasting didn't agree to a deal by Feb. 1, he'd ban Turner's Court TV channel from his Dish Network satellites for all time, thus pulling down the cornerstone of Western civilization and throwing the entire known universe into irreversible entropic chaos. Well, Feb. 1 came and went weeks ago, like even before the death of Anna Nicole Smith if you can remember those days, and Ergen didn't push the red button after all. A deal with Turner was struck over the weekend, Dish Network subscribers can see Court TV again, and all the corporate death-ray-guns are back in their holsters. Sigh.

Killer satellites

That spat between Court TV and the Dish Network satellite system is not getting any prettier. Mediaweek reports that Charlie Ergen, the CEO of Dish's owner EchoStar, is saying that if the two companies haven't worked out a deal to put Court TV back on the satellite by Feb. 1, then Court TV can go pound sand. Dish Net subscribers haven't been able to get Court TV since Jan. 1, when a contract between the two expired. Since then they've been fighting, nastily and publicly, about money, with Court TV even running ads urging viewers to make nasty phone calls to Dish.

Dish TV seems to think it hold the upper hand -- losing its spot on the satellite cost took Court TV out of 11 million homes. Court TV nonetheless racked up the highest ratings in its history in January, up 21 percent from last year, so the folks over there are probably not exactly quaking in their boots. Stay tuned -- well, unless you're a Dish Network customer, in which case you can't.

Court NOT in session

If you're a Dish Network satellite television subscriber, you're probably wondering where your Court TV channel went. It disappeared yesterday when the Dish contract with Court TV expired. Both sides are playing hardball over a renewal; the reason, shockingly, is money. Court TV wants more of it, and Dish is saying no.

Unless you're a Court TV fan who subscribes to Dish, this is sort of fun to watch, like an Ultimate Fighting championship among ruthless corporations. Turner, which owns Court TV, is running ads on CNN (which it also owns) urging offended Dish subscribers to bitch out Dish. (In corporate statements, Turner has gone even further, suggesting Dish subscribers switch over to the rival Direct TV satellite service.) Dish, for its part, is offering its customers a free look at the Biography Channel to make up for the absence of Court TV. With any luck, by the weekend Turner will have created a new reality show in which contestants eat the eyeballs of Dish executives, while Dish will have obliterated the entire city of Atlanta with invisible death rays fired from its satellites. You go, guys.