Photograph by Scott Halleran/Getty Images

Tiger Woods plays a bunker shot during the WGC-Cadillac Championship last week in Doral, Florida.

As if there weren’t enough sources of celebrity gossips, Trace Sports, whose TV shows cover the private lives of stars from golf legend Tiger Woods to hoops wizard LeBron James, has its eyes on the U.S. even as it’s working on a new reality series where women compete to marry a European soccer player.

The Paris-based channel is already beamed into 30 million homes in 90 countries and soon TV watchers in the Land of the Free will satisfy their thirst for items on the hottest rugby players, athletes not yet married and what’s going on behind the scenes during the National Basketball Association’s trip to Milan.

The 18-month-old pay-TV channel, which aims to do for sports what E! Entertainment did for Hollywood, is part of a portfolio of channels owned by parent TRACE, which includes pop music station Trace Urban and Latin-inspired music channel Trace Tropical, where Shakira can be found shaking her hips.

In a TV market where competition for sports rights is soaring, and companies like BT Group, the U.K.’s former monopoly phone provider, are paying hundreds of millions of pounds to show English Premier League soccer matches, Trace Sports plays a complementary role, Laurent Dumeau, the CEO of Trace Sports, said at a gathering of European cable TV executives last week in London.

“With sports rights increasing so quickly, this is a way we can monetize them more rapidly,” said Dumeau, who’s also the former chief financial officer for NBC Universal in France.

Trace Sports has a deal with ESPN to send a production crew to the X Games in Tignes, France, this year for behind-the-scenes looks at nightlife, parties and how the stars are unwinding after a day of extreme sports.

Clearly, TMZ faces stiff competition.

Original post is Tiger Woods Behave! Trace Sports TV Aims Its Lens at U.S. Shores by Tech Deals.

Photograph by Kelly Ryerson

The lawsuit is the latest flare-up in what’s become an increasingly acrimonious relationship over affiliate fees.

Why can’t we be friends?

You may have read yesterday that Cablevision is suing Viacom for forcing it to take lower-rated channels along with its most popular networks, a practice the pay-TV company claims is illegal.

Cable operators and networks weren’t always so adversarial. After all, they’re in a mutually beneficial business. Every cable subscriber means money not only for the operators, but for the networks as well.

That’s the way the business works: If you sign up for Cablevision’s cable TV service, you’re now also a customer, indirectly, of Viacom. For each subscriber Cablevision signs up to watch Viacom’s cable networks, it pays the media company an affiliate fee.

So even though you pay your cable bill to Cablevision, some of that money is also flowing to Viacom if you get channels such as MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. And, yes, money also flows to Viacom for its less popular channels such as VH1 Soul, MTV Hits and Nicktoons.

SNL Kagan

Basic cable network affiliate fee revenue

Cablevision’s lawsuit is the latest fissure in what’s become an increasingly acrimonious relationship over affiliate fees, which have gone through the roof. Programming fees are set to rise at least 10 percent this year for the largest pay-TV operators, Comcast and DirecTV. Companies like Cablevision won’t raise prices on their customers that fast because they fear subscribers will cancel their service.

Of course, Viacom loses, too, when cable-TV subscribers quit. But Viacom can still make money from those who cut the cord through over-the-top options, such as Netflix and Amazon, which stream content over the Internet.

This leaves Cablevision in a tough spot. To make up the difference from customers who cancel video service, the cable operator will need to keep raising prices on its Internet service. Cablevision already announced it was raising broadband prices in 2013 by $5 a month per customer. But more price increases won’t easily make up the $88 dollars an average customer pays per month for Cablevision’s video service, according to Telsey Advisory Group.

So what happened? What caused affiliate fees to skyrocket and push pay-TV operators to the brink?

Retransmission consent fees: The 1992 United States Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act allowed broadcasters to ask for money from pay-TV operators in exchange for carrying their programming. This meant that CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox could start charging for their local affiliates, owned by companies like Gannett and Sinclair Broadcast Group, and national networks. These channels used to be free. In 2012, they cost pay-TV operators $2.4 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. If operators are now paying billions for retrans fees, their belts become a little tighter with all of the other cable networks in the industry.

Sports became cable’s glue: Whether it’s “Monday Night Football” or your local baseball team, you’re paying big bucks to watch sports on TV. Contracts for sports rights have jumped in price as demand to watch games remains high and live events become essential for why people need cable at all (instead of an online-only option like Netflix). That’s led ESPN, the top-rated sports network, to charge about $6 a month per subscriber, according to Kagan. Regional sports networks typically charge a few bucks per month, too. It’s caused DirecTV, Verizon FiOS and Cablevision to introduce additional monthly fees to customers in recent months to absorb the costs.

Cable programming improved: The most popular drama on TV right now is AMC’s “The Walking Dead.” That’s for all television — broadcast included. Guess what that’s going to prompt AMC Networks to do when its next rights contract is ready for renewal? It’ll charge your cable provider more, and your cable bill will rise. AMC is going to want to be compensated for shows that cost more to make and generate big ratings. Does it matter that AMC Networks also owns lower-rated networks such as IFC and WE TV, and Sundance Channel, which isn’t rated at all by Nielsen? Not if AMC can bundle those networks with its flagship station. They’ll get paid for them, too. And that’s what the Cablevision lawsuit is all about.

There are other reasons the relationship isn’t what it used to be:

• The introduction of online competition made content less exclusive.
• Programmers demanding additional payment for online rights lead to slow progress on what’s known as TV Everywhere.
• Diminished household formation from the recession meant fewer new homes with cable connections, which put pressure on operators’ profit margins.
• Cable TV has become a low-growth, mature industry.

But it’s the rising cost of cable TV that may transform the industry. Cablevision’s lawsuit can be seen as an attempt to slow down what could eventually lead to a huge drop in profit for pay-TV operators — and low-rated cable networks — everywhere.

Original post is Cablevision’s Viacom Lawsuit: How We Got Here by Tech Deals.

Photograph by Corning Inc. via Bloomberg

Believe it or not, cathode ray tubes are still in production today, despite the prevalence of flat screens.

Remember those bulbous TVs and computer monitors that preceded the slimmed-down liquid-crystal displays we have today? Some companies are actually still making them (surprise!), and several of them may be fined by the European Union within weeks over price-fixing agreements, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.

My colleague Aoife White broke the news today that EU antitrust regulators may take as much as 10 percent of annual sales from LG Electronics, Panasonic and Royal Philips Electronics. This wouldn’t be the first time for LG. The EU fined LG Display, partly owned by LG Electronics, 649 million euros ($828 million) for fixing the price of LCD panels in 2010.

Original post is Fat Fine May Hit Makers of Fat TVs by Tech Deals.

The company cited “unfavorable market conditions” in withdrawing its prospectus on July 13. Chief Executive Officer Charles Nooney said yesterday that MobiTV has plenty of capital to invest in the business and is expanding its offerings for TV in the home as well as on smartphones and tablets.

“For us, the markets were too choppy,” Nooney said in an interview. “To be going out after the first of the year and examine the market with a couple announcements under our belt was certainly part of the consideration.”

As of Dec. 31, Emeryville, California-based MobiTV had cash, equivalents and short-term investments of $25.4 million, and Nooney said the company will be profitable by the end of this year after recording an $11.8 million loss in 2011. While he doesn’t expect to need additional cash, the private equity markets are “pretty wide open” should an opportunity arise that brings strategic value, he said.

MobiTV, which started as a provider of technology for carriers to deliver live television on mobile phones, has more recently focused on a service called “TV everywhere.” In January, the company announced a partnership with Deutsche Telekom that allowed the German phone company to deliver content to phones, tablets, computers and set-top boxes. Nooney said other partnerships will be announced this year, including one in Asia.

To expand the product portfolio, MobiTV said yesterday that it will be licensing digital video recorder technology so cable providers, satellite companies and wireless carriers can let users record shows from any device, pausing on one and picking up on any other.

“The world is changing,” Nooney said. “To really play in the space, you have to get multiple screens.”

Last year, 97 percent of MobiTV’s revenue came from Sprint Nextel, Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA unit, AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Live mobile television has proven to be a challenging market, because consumers can access free on-demand services such as Google’s YouTube and subscription offerings from Netflix and Amazon.com.

As MobiTV pulls away from the public markets, other technology companies are going forward. Business software maker ServiceNow has jumped 33 percent since its IPO last month, and Palo Alto Networks and Kayak Software debuted today. Companies are expected to raise more than $700 million this week as the market recovers from a drought after Facebook’s offering in May.

For MobiTV, the concern surrounding the European debt crisis and uncertainty around the U.S. presidential elections are more significant, Nooney said. Because his company has cash, almost no debt and is coming off a year of 27 percent sales growth, he’d prefer to wait.

“The company is extremely healthy, we have resources in the bank and we’re virtually debt-free,” he said.

Original post is MobiTV Boosts Product Line, Plans to Revisit IPO Market in 2013 by Tech Deals.

Photograph: Roku

Roku devices can give subscribers access to a TV version of Rovio's Angry Birds game.

Roku’s sales tripled to $100 million last year — in part because it bought radio and billboard advertising for the first time. To garner more brand recognition for its hockey puck-sized TV-set top box, the company intends to seek as much as $50 million that it can use in part for more ad purchases, Roku Chief Executive Officer Anthony Wood said in an interview.

The ten-year-old company, which competes with Apple and Boxee in the market for devices that deliver Web content to TVs, will beef up marketing as consumers watch more Internet programming in the living room. Unaided brand awareness — adspeak for the percentage of people who identify Roku when asked to name leading video-streaming providers — jumped to 18 percent recently from 7 percent just before the year-end holidays, Wood said. To get that percentage higher, Wood will invest $25 million this year on marketing , including more billboards and radio ads.

Wood said the next round of investors will probably involve strategic partners, rather then venture capital firms. New funding could come from TV makers or providers of satellite or cable services, he said. Some of these companies already bundle Roku devices, which give subscribers access to hundreds of services, including Netflix TV and movies, Pandora radio and a TV-version of Rovio’s Angry Birds game. Wood said Roku has raised $32.5 million. Earlier backers are Wood and Netflix, which spun off Roku in 2007, as well as Globespan Capital and Menlo Ventures, which also acquired Netflix’s shares.

Unprofitable Roku considered raising money in an initial public offering before opting to seek private investors, Wood said. “We’re aiming to be profitable in late 2013,” he said . “There’s so much opportunity out there.”

Wood’s not alone in trying to capitalize on it. He faces competition from Apple, the maker of Apple TV, another set-top box. Set to release a new version of its iPad tomorrow, Apple may also unveil an updated version of Apple TV, which may stream higher-resolution video, according to Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. Apple may also announce a full TV later in the year, Munster said.

While Apple has sold 4.2 million units compared with 2.5 million for Roku, Wood said that Roku has yet to expand beyond the US. “We outsell them in this country,” he said.

Roku will also invest in a new version of its hardware, called the Streaming Stick, that plugs into so-called “smart TVs” that come with an Internet connection. The device looks like a USB stick but plugs into the HDMI socket on TVs that support a new standard called MHL.

Roku, which means six in Japanese, is Wood’s sixth company. The predecessor companies were either shuttered or sold before going public. His most recent company, Replay TV, pioneered the digital video recorder market along with Tivo in the late 1990s. Replay TV had its IPO pulled in the Net crash of 2000.

“This time,” Wood said, “my goal is to do an IPO.”

Original post is Roku to Raise as Much as $50 Million by Tech Deals.