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from: MultiChannel News

Time Warner Ends ‘Unscalable’ Trial

By Tom Steinert-Threlkeld 2/2/2007

Let’s say you could watch 75 channels of cable television on your PC. Would you? No. At least 99% of the time.

Time Warner Cable said Thursday that fewer than 1% of the 9,000 customers to which it had been providing basic television service to their PCs actually watched any TV that way on any given day.

from: Chicago Tribune

INSIDE TECHNOLOGY
AT&T laying low in bid to launch video services

By Jon Van
Published February 5, 2007

AT&T Illinois is keen to launch video services over its wireline network, but the company is uncharacteristically coy about how it plans to do so.

from: Business Week
INFO TECH

Lightspeed's Slow Start

Lightspeed's Slow Start
Questions dog the new high-speed AT&T network that offers phone, Net, and TV

AT&T is on top of the telecom world. A few weeks ago, chairman and CEO Edward E. Whitacre Jr. put the latest touch on his empire by closing an $86 billion deal to acquire BellSouth. That completed a whirlwind of acquisitions in which Whitacre has virtually remade the old Ma Bell by gobbling up 13 companies over the past decade with a combined price tag of $285 billion, including assumed debt. Last year, investors rewarded "Big Ed's" voracious appetite by bidding up AT&T's (T ) stock price 46%. The cherry on top? Well, that came last month at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where Cingular Wireless, the company's cell phone arm, stole the spotlight by partnering with Apple Inc. (AAPL ) to introduce the sleek iPhone.

from: Worcester Telegram & Gazette

City Council Asked to Protect Public Access Channel

From Worcester Telegram & Gazette, February 1, 2007
By Nick Kotsopoulos

More than 100 supporters of WCCA-TV, Channel 13, the nonprofit, local public access cable channel, last night urged the City Council Public Service and Transportation Committee to ensure that the station’s funding is not decreased as part of the new cable television contract the city negotiates with Charter Communications Inc.

from: Athens Banner-Herald

Georgia Cable Reform Bill Would Give Service Oversight to State

From Athens Banner-Herald, February 4, 2007
By Don Nelson

Legislation designed to establish a statewide cable and video franchise system would allow telecommunications companies like BellSouth a quicker and less restrictive way to provide television services in the state’s cities and counties, the bill’s proponents say.

From: Variety

Senate Democrats question FCC
Oversight hearing brings Martin to Hill

By WILLIAM TRIPLETT

Commercial television is "in the worst state ever," the Federal Communications Commission is not "suppressing" information, the FCC's last go at revising media ownership rules was "a spectacular failure," and a more equitable deployment of high-speed Internet services isn't just "feel-good liberal theory."

from: Contra Costa Times

AT&T, Verizon spend millions to access California cable TV market

SAMANTHA YOUNG
Associated Press

SACRAMENTO - AT&T and Verizon, the two most dominant players in California's telephone market, spent nearly $26 million to lobby lawmakers last year in a successful effort to access the state's lucrative cable TV market.

from: Multichannel News

Hot Seat Awaits Martin
Democrats Likely to Scrutinize FCC Chairman’s Decision
By Ted Hearn1/29/2007
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Washington— For the past two years, Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin hasn’t feared congressional meddling while Republicans controlled all the key committees.

from: Multichannel News

Pre-Emptive Strike in Tenn.
By Linda Haugsted1/29/2007

The Tennessee Cable Telecommunications Association is countering an AT&T-based state franchising reform strategy before the telco has even submitted a bill in that state.

The cable trade group anticipates a proposal similar to those that have succeeded in other states, moving franchising authority from multiple community governments to a single point of contact at the state level.

from: Media Geek

The FCC to Face up the Senate Commerce Committee

by Paul

From the January 26, 2007 edition of the mediageek radioshow [listen now]:

On February 1st, the Republican dominated Federal communications Commission will have its first hearing in front of a Democratic-controlled Senate Commerce Committee.