Contentinople - Erin Barker - News Bits: Broadcasters Asking Cable to Pay Up

Written by Erin Barker

Wednesday, October 28. 2009 at 11:10 AM EDT Post a comment

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Fox and CBS are asking cable companies to pay up for access to their shows, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Normally, cable companies don't pay much -- or anything -- for broadcast networks that are available free over the air. But now that advertising revenues are crashing, the networks are looking for other ways to cash in.

Fox, which suffered an operating loss of $120 million last year, is one of those, WSJ says. Its parent company, News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), is asking Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) to pay up along the lines of $1 per household per month. If the two don't reach an agreement by the time their current contract expires at the end of the year, News Corp. could pull Fox stations from TWC, affecting millions of subscribers.

CBS has already had some success with this route -- analysts estimate cable companies pay the network $0.50 per household per month for access to its stations.

In other news:

Paramount Pictures Corp. is planning to launch a slew of Web-only series, CNET reports. It debuted its latest, Circle of Eight, on MySpace last Tuesday. Circle of Eight had a big budget by Web standards and features the acting prowess of DJ Qualls and compositions by Mark Mothersbaugh.

"I think the people who tell you that it can't be done have a different strategy than us," Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Digital, told CNET. "Our goal is to create professional content that is supported by digital distribution... I can't give you the budget [for Circle of Eight] but I can tell you that it was not inexpensive. [Others have tried this] but they weren't high-production value, scripted shows. We think it will be interesting to prove the platform can support high-quality."

Facebook has now developed an official way to handle the profiles of deceased users: Users can now "memorialize" the profiles of lost loved ones. To do so, the user must prove he or she knew the deceased -- by providing the person's email address or date of birth -- and send Facebook a link to a news article or obituary confirming the death. After that, Facebook will remove personal information like telephone numbers from the profile, and only confirmed friends will be able to visit it.

Tags: Advertising, Broadcaster, Business, CBS, Facebook, Fox, MySpace, News Corp, Time Warner, Video

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