Published report says new owner Liberty Media is considering an offer.
By Phillip Swann

Washington, D.C. (January 3, 2007) — Liberty Media, which recently purchased satcaster DIRECTV, is now interested in buying Rainbow Media, which includes 15 Voom High-Definition TV channels.

The New York Post reports that Liberty Media Chairman John Malone is engaging in “informal chatter” with the Dolan family, which owns Cablevision, which owns Rainbow Media.

Liberty Media is expected to take control of DIRECTV in the second half of the year. The company secured the satcaster in a stock swap with News Corp. late last year.

Court TV was yanked from DISH Network’s channel lineup on New Year’s Day after both parties failed to come to terms on a new carriage agreement.

At 12:01 a.m. Monday, Court went black in some 12 million U.S. households served by EchoStar’s DISH Net, according to Court parent Turner, which suggested that viewers switch to cable or DirecTV in order to continue receiving the signal.

In a statement released yesterday, Turner said that EchoStar is “unwilling to pay…the standard industry rateâ€? for carriage of Court TV, adding that the company hopes to reach a resolution that would return the network to DISH subs.

EchoStar returned fire, calling Turner’s asking price “unreasonable.â€? In a statement, Eric Sahl, senior vp, programming for DISH said, “It is not fair to ask our customers to pay a DBS premium for a channel owned by the second largest cable operator, Time Warner.â€?

Both sides said that negotiations are ongoing. In the meantime, EchoStar will fill the gap in its lineup with the Biography Channel.

The pay-TV industry has long envied DIRECTV for its exclusive carriage agreement with the National Football League for its NFL Sunday Ticket. Now, according to reports, the satcaster is eyeing Major League Baseball’s Extra Innings to be the next professional sports programming package only available on DIRECTV.

A recent story in Sports Business Journal said DIRECTV is in advanced negotiations with MLB executives about acquiring exclusive carriage rights to the league’s out-of-market Extra Innings package - a move that authors John Ourand and Eric Fisher said would be “a huge blow to the cable industry” and cause a stir on Capitol Hill. According to the story, unnamed sources from the league and DIRECTV confirmed that the two sides are negotiating a deal that admittedly still has a number of hurdles.

The league has been shopping the exclusive programming bundle to both cable and satellite providers during the past several weeks. Last year, most providers were offering the entire season for about $179.

The article said MLB and cable execs have been frustrated with Extra Innings’ slow growth peaking at roughly 750,000 subs last season and teams were picking up individual payouts of about $2 million each. By comparison, SBJ said, the NFL’s Sunday Ticket had nearly 2 million subs with DIRECTV paying the league close to $700 million per year through 2010.

With Congress offering a sympathetic ear to cable’s recent (and long-term) complaints about DIRECTV’s stronghold on professional football, some industry insiders with close ties to the negotiations for baseball expressed surprise that MLB would try to secure an exclusive deal, the article said.

To ring in the new year, internet service via satellite provider SkyVision expanded its global satellite presence throughout the Europe, Middle East and Asia (EMEA) markets by teaming up with iDirect Technologies - a developer of satellite-based broadband access solutions. Together, SkyVision will use a platform from iDirect enabling the company to sell satellite capacity to virtual network operator (VNO) customers which in turn will allow them to deploy their own networks without assuming the upfront hardware costs, or the ongoing concerns of maintenance and security.

SkyVision officials said the iDirect platform’s flexibility has opened up a wide range of possibilities for the company and will help its customers communicate more efficiently. Use of the technology will be of particular benefit to iDirect’s high-end clients from the oil and financial industries and other global corporations, the company said.

The iDirect solution allows SkyVision to resell its satellite capacity to customers who can then operate their own VSAT network without the cost of buying the VSAT hub infrastructure. SkyVision will lease network capacity to each VNO which can then be managed in any way the service provider needs - including the use of private IP addresses, the company said.

The new solution allows operators to control remote sites and deliver end-user broadband speeds all while only paying for the capacity being used. SkyVision said the VNO package offers all the opportunities of the VSAT industry without assuming the risk, or the upfront investment of deploying a wholly-owned and separate teleport infrastructure.

From SkyReport

While many in the pay-TV world believe a merger between DIRECTV and EchoStar’s DISH Network remains a long shot, recent comments by John Malone have peaked people’s interest in the possibility that the two companies will work together for a brighter HDTV future. Reports have circulated that the Liberty Media big shot - and incoming DIRECTV boss - said the nation’s largest satellite TV provider may team up with its rival EchoStar on several high-def initiatives.

As has been widely reported, Liberty is preparing to take control of DIRECTV in a stock swap with former parent News Corp. The deal is expected to close sometime near mid-2007. Last week, Malone was quoted in industry press reports as saying he is excited about DIRECTV’s upcoming launch of two new satellites that will greatly expand the company’s HD capacity. The satellites will enable DIRECTV to offer up to 150 national HD channels.

Malone said although many observers believe the federal government would continue to disapprove of a merger deal, the companies could still work together on various projects, specifically HDTV. If the government won’t let the two companies join forces, the Liberty chair said they could save a lot of money by cooperating in certain areas.

“We could form an alliance with EchoStar and share a high-definition platform, which would either double the capacity or cut the costs in half,” Malone told Broadcasting & Cable. “We could develop content jointly with EchoStar for that high-definition platform, which would be very interesting.”