An Ignoble Experiment

2. Fox News gets another pay-TV competitor: Newsmax TV

Taking a chance--or perhaps seizing an opportunity--on a growing, popular but somewhat unstable digital currency, Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) announced that it will begin accepting Bitcoin from customers for pay-TV services beginning in the third quarter.

Subscribers will be able to use Bitcoin as an option--alongside the usual debit cards, credit cards, checks, etc.--to make one-time bill payments.

To process these payments, Dish has selected Coinbase, a VC-funded start-up that claims 31,000 merchant partners, a customer reach of "1.3 million consumer wallets," and a client base that includes Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Bing, Overstock.com and Bloomberg, among others.

"We always want to deliver choice and convenience for our customers and that includes the method they use to pay their bills," said Bernie Han, Dish executive VP and chief operating officer, in a statement. "Bitcoin is becoming a preferred way for some people to transact and we want to accommodate those individuals."

Dish's selection of Bitcoin as its digital coin of the realm comes less than three months after the crash of Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox destabilized the currency. It also comes amid skepticism from the federal government that the currency will ever be used for more than nefarious transactions.

Bitcoin, however, has quickly recovered from its February tumult and has lately received quite a bit of high-profile backing. This includes commentary in the Washington Post last week from tech pioneer and investor Marc Andreeson, who said the currency will be looked upon as being as influential as the Internet in 20 years.

For more:
- see this press release
- read this Multichannel News story
- read this Bloomberg story

Read more about: Dish Network
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By Daniel Frankel

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3. CCAP sales up a whopping 177% in first quarter, Infonetics says

Right-wing media company Newsmax announced Thursday that it will launch a new pay TV channel intended to challenge incumbent Fox News for cable news audience share and advertisers.

The Boca Raton, Fla.-based publisher, which touts a 200,000 circulation monthly print magazine and a news website that drew 11.5 million unique users in January, according to comScore, said it will conduct a soft launch of Newsmax TV on DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV) in mid-June, giving it reach of about 20 million pay TV subscribers, with the goal of soon covering 40 percent of the country.

A Newsmax.com post says the company is "focused on serving an audience of more than 80 million disenfranchised Baby Boomers," while providing them with "independent news with a mainstream conservative tilt, while offering a balanced perspective and open to all points of view."

Of course, with AM talk radio and the dominant portion of the cable news spectrum now dedicated to reinforcing their world view, it's debatable as to just how disenfranchised Newsmax's target audience is.

But there is no question that after more than a decade of operation without any like-minded competitor, the feet of Roger Ailes' Fox News are now being nipped upon by upstarts.

Last month, for example, another fledgling conservative media company, San Diego, Calif.-based Herring Networks announced that it had reached a deal to launch its One America News Network on AT&T U-verse (NYSE: T).

"The agreement we have signed with DirecTV marks a significant milestone for Newsmax TV as we prepare for a national launch this summer," said Newsmax Media CEO Christopher Ruddy on the Newsmax website, right next to an ad seeking the repeal of the Affordable Healthcare Act. "Our launch will benefit from the existing Newsmax.com audience that is already in place, will naturally be drawn to our brand of news, features and useful information and consists of one of the highest concentrations of baby boomers on the web. We will immediately plug into that audience to participate in the development and the evolution of the channel prior to a national launch."

Newsmax drew revenue of $104 million in 2013, up from $85 million in 2012.

For more:
- read this Newsmax story
- read this Bloomberg story

Read more about: Fox News
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By Daniel Frankel

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4. Brian Roberts on the TWC purchase: 'It was now or never'

Sales of Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) products were up 177 percent year-over-year in the first quarter, with MSOs eschewing the traditional backbone of cable broadband, Cable Modem Termination System technology (CMTS), according to Infonetics Research.

Click here for a larger view. (Source: Infonetics)

This follows Infonetics' Q4 measurements that had sales of CCAP gear jumping 192 percent. Introduced by CableLabs two years ago, CCAP headend servers combine the functionality of CMTS and delivery of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) channels on a single platform. The technology is proving widely popular among MSOs, focused on building high-density, next-generation architecture.

Arris and Cisco lead the market globally in terms of CCAP and CMTS revenue.

"Cable operators are on a steady path of adding significant channel capacity as part of DOCSIS 3.0, IP video, business service, carrier WiFi and forthcoming DOCSIS 3.1 rollouts," noted Jeff Heynen, principal analyst for broadband access and pay TV at Infonetics.

The combined global CMTS, CCAP and edge QAM market was down 6 percent in 1Q14 from 4Q13, to $332 million, Infonetics noted. Additionally, CCAP revenue jumped 177 percent sequentially in the first quarter, while CMTS revenue dropped 76 percent. This shift is being felt particularly in the North American market, where revenue for the quarter dropped 13 percent despite a 20 percent rise in CMTS and CCAP channel shipments.

For more:
- see this Infonetics press release
- read this Multichannel News story

Read more about: Cable Modem Termination System
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By Daniel Frankel

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5. Aereo awaits High Court fate, delays Thursday's Chromecast debut

Sitting alongside Re/code technology blog impresarios Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg in the pair's iconic red chairs Wednesday at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) CEO Brian Roberts laid out the corporate urgency behind his company's proposed $45.2 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC).

"Our judgment was the company was going to be sold and if we wanted New York and Los Angeles, it was now or never," said Roberts, who described Comcast as still being viewed largely as a "regional cable provider," despite its ownership of a major entertainment conglomerate in NBCUniversal.

Roberts said this perception has hampered Comcast in its efforts to form industry partnerships with companies like Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX).

The federal approval of its TWC acquisition would give Comcast the major urban area subscriber base it seeks. It would also trigger the activation of a separate $20 million deal to port 3.9 million more rural Comcast subscribers to Cox Communications. This would leave Comcast with about 30 percent of the pay TV market, and much of its subscribers in big cities.

The event was attended by Deadline Hollywood and a handful of other media-, entertainment- and technology-focused publications. (As Re/code noted, Comcast is one of their investors.)

Separately, Roberts told the Code audience that he remains on good terms with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, despite the latter's misgivings about the peering deal Netflix recently signed with Comcast.

"They used to spend three-quarters of a billion dollars for postage" to mail DVDs to subscribers, Roberts said. "They would like [their broadband costs] all to be free. I don't blame them for that."

Roberts also objected to critics of the TWC purchase claiming the deal would give Comcast a "monopoly" in the pay TV market. "The business isn't that way anymore," Roberts said. "You can get [pay-TV services] from Dish TV, you can get it from Verizon, you can get it from DirecTV."

For more:
- read this Deadline Hollywood story
- read this Re/code story

Read more about: Brian Roberts
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By Daniel Frankel

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