By ERIQ GARDNER

Electronic Arts isn’t escaping a lawsuit brought by former collegiate athletes who allege a conspiracy to forbid them from profiting from their images and likenesses in sports video games. On Wednesday, a California federal judge denied EA’s attempt to score a quick win.

The athletes, including Jim Brown, Sam Keller and Ed O’Bannan, claim that when athletes agree to participate in Division I collegiate sports, they’re told to sign a waiver agreement that gives the NCAA and its licensees the right to use their images, likenesses, and names without compensation. The athletes say that these agreements have been interpreted to exist in perpetuity, even after the student-athletes have ended their collegiate playing career. Further, the athletes allege that the NCAA and its partners have come to their own agreements to not pay collegiate athletes and to refuse to bargain with them whatsoever.

Last year, a federal judge denied an attempt to dismiss the amended lawsuit, but EA recently asked the court to review its licensing agreements with the Collegiate Licensing Company, the entity that works with the NCAA to license its intellectual property. EA believed that a reading of the licensing deal would would conclusively refute the plaintiffs’ allegations.

Judge Claudia Wilken does review, but comes to the opposite conclusion.

In an opinion released on Wednesday, the judge says that a reading of the allegations about the agreements in the context of the overall complaint “do not refute” the allegations.
Specifically, as part of EA’s licensing agreement, the video game publisher agrees that it will “not encourage or participate in any activity that would cause an athlete or an institution to violate” the NCAA’s rules.

The judge says this doesn’t distinguish between former and current student-athletes and “can fairly be read” as evidence of a “meeting of the minds” between the defendants to not compensate ex-collegiate athletes. The judge also points to other terms in the contract where CLC and the NCAA have written approval over all licensed products containing student-athletes’ likenesses and the broad authority to inspect EA’s financial records related to the products, “allowing them to see that payments were almost never made to former student-athletes,” says the judge.

Read the full article at The Hollywood Reporter.

By THOMAS PARDEE

The summer Olympics have hit the Viral Video Chart in a big way this week, in videos from some of the largest global marketers, according to data provided by Visible Measures.

Both Visa and Coca-Cola debuted new campaigns centered around the London 2012 games this summer, and both play on the general spirit of excitement and competition while careful skirting the international politics of the games.

Visa scored big with its debut of “Go World 2012,” which hit the top of the chart with more than 2.7 million views. The campaign, which saw a heavy push in social media, is live in 70 countries and features nine individual videos with Olympic stories of famous athletes, including Michael Phelps, Li Na and others. Its main component is a montage entitled “The Difference,” which depicts some of previous games’ more exciting moments, punctuated with the tagline “Join our global cheer.”

Coca-Cola’s “Move to the Beat of London 2012″ came in at No. 5 with just over a million views, and like its other athletics-based global campaigns, it takes a music-focused approach, featuring Mark Ronson and singer Katy B in the center of a fast-paced Olympic spectacle.

Read the full article at Ad Age.

By MIKE ISAAC

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a number.

Facebook shares will trade on the Nasdaq exchange for the first time at $38 per share on Friday morning, valuing the world’s largest social networking Web site at $ 104.12 billion.

At $38 a share, Facebook would raise $16 billion in the offering. The company could sell an additional 63 million in over-allotments if underwriters see the demand (which they probably will).

Facebook initially set its sights on a $28 to $35 price range, but the company steadily raised the target amid growing investor fervor for the largest technology compay IPO in history. Earlier this week, in an amended S-1 SEC filing, the company estimated its share price to be in the $34 to $38 range. The final share price will settle at the top of the estimated range, though not over.

Facebook’s offering debuts after a year replete with hot tech IPOs from Zynga, LinkedIn and Groupon. Facebook’s trumps every other. Google’s was the largest IPO in tech history when it raised $1.67 billion in August of 2004. Last year, Zynga raised $1 billion.

But many things about Facebook ramping up to its Nasdaq debut were far out of the norm for tech company IPOs. To kick off its traveling pitch to institutional investors last week, Facebook put together an extravagant, well-produced roadshow video complete with a full explanation of the company’s advertising business, the meat and potatoes of Facebook’s revenue engine. And in celebration of the IPO, the company will host an all-night hackathon at its Menlo Park headquarters on Thursday evening in order to ring in $FB’s debut “the hacker way.”

The mammoth IPO comes despite initial reports of investor reservations about said revenue engine, and General Motors’ ill-timed announcement earlier this week that it would pull its $10 million in ad spend that it reserves for Facebook, citing that the advertisements just weren’t working.

Shortly thereafter, Facebook increased the amount of shares offered to investors on Friday by nearly 25 percent.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be selling close to $1.2 billion in shares at the time of the IPO — for tax purposes, he says — though he still holds more than 580 million voting shares, maintaining a firm grip on complete control over the direction of his 8-year-old company.

It’s official: $FB has arrived.

Read the full article at All Things D.

By TODD SPANGLER

Comcast will eliminate the 250-Gigabyte monthly broadband-usage limit on Xfinity Internet, moving over time instead to a usage-based pricing model that will provide at least 300 GB of data usage before customers incur additional charges, the operator said Thursday.

The cable operator is making the change after it was criticized by competitors and public-interest groups for allowing unlimited usage of its IP video-on-demand service on Xbox 360, while applying usage of other Internet-video services to the cap.

“[I]n recent weeks, some of the conversation around our new product introductions focused on our data usage threshold, rather than on the exciting opportunities we are offering our customers,” Cathy Avgiris, Comcast’s executive vice president and general manager of Communications and Data Services, wrote in a blog post.

Comcast will “replace our static 250 GB usage threshold with more flexible data usage management approaches that benefit consumers and support innovation and that will continue to ensure that all of our customers enjoy the best possible Internet experience over our high-speed data service,” Avgiris said.

In the next few months, the MSO will test least two usage-based pricing approaches in different markets. Comcast did not provide details about timing or locations.

Comcast’s first new approach will offer a 300-GB usage allotment for Internet Essentials, Economy and Performance tiers, and with increasing data allotments for each successive tier of high speed data service (e.g., Blast and Extreme). The “very few customers” who use more data at each tier can buy additional Gigabytes in increments; for example, $10 for 50 GB, according to Avgiris.

The second approach will increase data-usage thresholds for all tiers to 300 GB per month and also offer additional gigabytes in increments (e.g., $10 per 50 GB).

Read the full article at Multichannel News.

By DANIEL FRANKEL

What, me, worry?

Those three words broadly sum up the attitude of the broadcast TV network chiefs regarding the encroachment on their turf by digital media companies, as they conducted their traditional springtime dog and pony shows for advertisers in New York this week.

Two weeks earlier, Google, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft and other big digital media companies closed out their “Newfront” presentations to the same constituency, appealing for a portion of traditional TV’s annual $70 billion market share.

But as this week’s upfront presentations revealed, the linear video guys still have lots of swagger.

“Not Google, Netflix, Yahoo or, YouTube can compete with our scale,” Fox Broadcasting entertainment chairman Peter Rice told advertisers and their agencies Tuesday. “They’re now buying shows — good for them. In reality they’re going to find they’re in the NFL. It takes a lot to make a show that people want to watch across all media.”

“Everyone is still talking about the first screen, the TV screen,” CBS Corp. chief Les Moonves told the Carnegie Hall audience Wednesday. “The first screen must come first, and there’s no second screen without it.”

For now, the money seems to backing up these claims.

With the CW delivering the last of the big broadcaster presentations of fall schedules on Thursday, network ad sales executives and media agency TV buyers will commence their annual negotiation dance.

During these transactions, large automakers, drug companies, packaged-goods makers and other big brands will buy the bulk of their commercial time for the coming TV season.

Last week, Morgan Stanley media analyst Benjamin Swinburne predicted that broadcasters would see about a 1 percent increase over last year’s upfront market haul, estimating their take this year to be around $9.16 billion.

Read the full article at Paid Content.

By ALEX BEN BLOCK

Kids these days aren’t like they used to be. Just ask executives at television networks that cater to children. Over the past year, a sea change in viewing habits has thrown one of the most profitable segments of Hollywood into a chaotic period of transition. Longtime leader Nickelodeon has suffered a nearly 30 percent drop in ratings, while rivals Disney Channel and Cartoon Network have seen increases. At the same time, upstarts such as The Hub, PBS Kids, Sprout and even Netflix are siphoning off viewers, to say nothing of the online programming and gaming options that compete for the attention of young people.

It’s enough for savvy executives — many of whom are heading to the NCTA conference beginning May 21 in Boston — to begin questioning where the business model for kids television is headed.

“It’s dramatically different from how I grew up and dramatically different from how kids were growing up 10 years ago,” says Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon since 2004, of the way children are consuming content. “This generation of kids has grown up in an on-demand world, so they can watch what they want when they want it.”

Finding those kids and serving them what they want is now a multibillion-dollar business. In the U.S. alone, Viacom-owned Nickelodeon and its affiliated networks sold $1.6 billion in ads in 2011, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars more in affiliate fees. Time Warner/Turner’s Cartoon Network generated $267 million in ad sales, while Disney Channel, which doesn’t air commercials, took in more than $1.2 billion from its 99 million subscribers (not counting revenue from 141 million viewers outside the U.S.). The male-oriented Disney XD channel, which does carry ads, sold nearly $100 million in commercials, leading Disney CEO Robert Iger to cite the Disney channels as a key revenue driver on a recent earnings call. (All estimates according to analysis by SNL Kagan and other sources.)

With the stakes so high, a swing of just a few ratings points can impact the bottom line significantly. So networks have been pulling out all the stops in an effort to lure and maintain audiences. Increasingly, one strategy for reaching fickle kids is to make popular shows — once constrained to a single branded network — available via multiple outlets and platforms.

Read the full article at The Hollywood Reporter.

By RICK KISSELL

Comedy’s hot this season, and the nets are doubling down in the fall. But with a whopping 28 half-hours on the fall sked — up from 20 a year ago and 16 two years ago — is this an over-correction?

Just because the genre is hot, it doesn’t mean that the networks should crank them out haphazardly.

ABC, NBC and Fox all added two or more comedy slots. And they’re meeting in a three-network pile-up Tuesday at 9. Something’s gotta give.

CBS, meanwhile, may possess most of TV’s top-rated comedies but it didn’t feel the need to expand in comedy just because it was the trendy thing to do. Going against the grain, the net will focus more on dramas this fall.

The best sked moves announced last week had to be ABC’s relocation of “Revenge” to Sunday behind “Once Upon a Time” and CBS’ shift of “Two and a Half Men” behind “The Big Bang Theory” on Thursday.

On the other hand, the oddest were NBC’s pairing “Whitney” and “Community” on Friday as well as the net’s shift of newsmag “Rock Center” to Thursday at 10. And then there’s ABC’s choice of following “Modern Family” with the aliens-as-humans half-hour “The Neighbors.”

Here’s a look at how the moves announced this week position the Big Four for the fall.

Read the full article at Variety.

By SAM THIELMAN

USA is doubling down on its commitment to digital media this year, with a broad portfolio of ancillary projects—six, covering the network’s slate of originals—to boost viewership, attract mega fans, and provide deeper ad integrations for the shows’ partners while the series are running. This year, the company has not one but four major automotive sponsors (Ford, Toyota, Lincoln and Lexus) buying tie-in digital integrations, and Capital One on a fifth.

Unscripted television is no stranger to these sorts of deals, but USA’s collection of character-driven dramedies would seem to be a harder sell, not to advertisers, but to writers. But programming honcho Bill McGoldrick told Adweek that his writers have been using the integrations (created with companies like Ford and Capital One) to further flesh out corners of the worlds they’ve been creating that might otherwise go unexplored.

“A lot of our shows are closed-ended A stories,” McGoldrick said (meaning the episode-long tale that drives a 42-minute narrative). “We usually have a personal B story, and what we have left over tends to be the C story, and that’s the mythology. When you start dividing up the pie between the three, you’re only left with so much for that C story,” he said. The shows’ writers, McGoldrick added, like the concept. “Left to their own devices, they’d probably want to tell more of the stories anyway,” he said.

To that end, USA will devote what it’s calling “social TV” to those mythologies. Covert Affairs will have a video-based “branching narrative” (think a simple role-playing game) generated in partnership with Capital One that follows secondary character Augie (Chris Gorham) through his first mission after being blinded. Gorham is the unofficial mascot of the digital integrations program—and everyone from McGoldrick to marketing and digital evp Alexandra Shapiro says that he devotes significant time to social media promotion of the shows. Covert Affairs gets a deeper backstory for Gorham’s character, and Capital One gets an exotic locale in which to tout its services. “We were able to shoot this on location in Spain because the show was filming there,” said Shapiro.

Read the full article at Ad Week.

By JOE FLINT

Every May the broadcast networks take over midtown Manhattan to promote their new shows and ply advertisers with shrimp and champagne.

It’s a business expense. Advertisers are expected to spend $9 billion for commercial time on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW for the 2012-13 television season.

So Fox trotted out singer Mary J. Bligeto entertain the media buyers who decide where to spend money, while CBS rented out Carnegie Hall and used its”NCIS: Los Angeles” star L.L. Cool J to rap about the network’s strong ratings performance. The glitzy affairs are an old tradition in the television industry.

But the upfront presentations, where networks showcase programs in development for the upcoming TV season, have taken on greater urgency as the networks fight to convince advertisers that they remain the most direct route to consumers — many of whom are no longer watching shows on television sets, but rather via other technology that can leave advertisers behind. Networks are quickly putting more of their content online not only to stop it from being pirated but also to reach younger viewers whom advertisers covet.

“We know that viewers want to watch what they want, where they want, when they want,” CW President Mark Pedowitz told advertisers Thursday. The CW, which has the youngest audience of any broadcast network, puts its shows on the Web the day after they air.

Another technological threat arrived at start of the upfronts: One of the TV industry’s biggest distributors began offering a commercial-zapping feature that has network executives redder than the cocktail sauce they were dipping their shrimp in.

Satellite broadcaster Dish Network Corp., which has more than 14 million customers who buy the service for access to broadcast and cable television, unveiled a feature on its digital video recording devices that makes it possible for viewers to never see a commercial on recorded prime-time shows from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

Called Auto Hop, it takes fast-forward a step further. Viewers have long had the ability to fast-forward through commercials, but Auto Hop literally turns the screen black for a few seconds when a show goes into a commercial break. The show then returns. The viewer never catches even a glimpse or blur of an advertisement.

Read the full article at the Los Angeles Times.

By BRIAN STETLER

Broadcast television executives came to New York this week, as they do every year, to talk up their new TV shows in front of advertisers.

This year, they are having to talk about yet another technology trying to tear them down.

The disruptive technology at hand is an ad eraser, embedded in new digital video recorders sold by Charles W. Ergen’s Dish Network, one of the nation’s top distributors of TV programming. Turn it on, and all the ads recorded on most prime-time network shows are automatically skipped, no channel-flipping or fast-forwarding necessary.

Some reviewers have already called the feature, named Auto Hop, a dream come true for consumers. But for broadcasters and advertisers, it is an attack on an entrenched television business model, and it must be strangled, lest it spread.

“How does Charlie Ergen expect me to produce ‘CSI’ ” without commercials? asked Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of the CBS Corporation, in response to questions from reporters on Wednesday morning before his annual upfront presentation.

Ted Harbert, the chairman of NBC Broadcasting, struck a similar note at his network’s presentation on Monday, calling the Dish feature an insult to the television industry. “Just because technology gives you the ability to do something, does that mean you should? Not always,” he said.

Unlike the music and news businesses, television has been mostly successful at fending off technological challenges. Several network owners worked together to start Hulu, an online streaming Web site intended to curb piracy. This year, when a start-up called Aereo introduced a service to stream New York TV stations via the Internet, the stations banded together in filing two lawsuits to stall it. The lawsuits are pending.

The Auto Hop is noteworthy because it originated not from a start-up but from a satellite distributor with longstanding ties to the rest of the TV industry. Dish Network regularly negotiates with the networks for the rights to rebroadcast programming. Without that programming, subscribers would switch distributors. Yet Dish has still decided to promote its ad eraser, which comes with the Hopper, a new DVR that can record all the prime-time programming on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC simultaneously.

Read the full article at The New York Times.

By MIKE SHIELDS

The women’s lifestyle Web video firm Deca is building out a video hub aimed at moms while pushing further into the syndication business.

On May 13, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company relaunched Momversation, a site originally built around a single Web series aimed at—you guessed it—moms. Now, Momversation.com will serve as a destination for all videos related to parenting, like a clip of President Obama’s visit to The View as well as shows from Deca’s recently launched YouTube channel Kin Community.

The popular Momversation series will continue to live on Momversation.com and across the Web. In fact, Target has signed as a category exclusive Momversation sponsor for the fourth year in a row. However, two other stand-alone Deca brands, Parentsask.com and GoodBite.com, will soon be folded into the new Momversation.com.

Beyond the revamped site, Deca is building on its women-oriented syndication business. Deca has already delivered its own content to roughly 100 mom blogs and sites. But the company has recently inked deals with Discovery, Time Inc., Viacom, NBC Universal’s iVillage and CBS Television Distribution to distribute video content from their libraries.
Time Inc., for example, will rely on Deca to syndicate video clips from brands like Cooking Light and Real Simple, while CBS will provide clips from Entertainment Tonight and The Insider.

Discovery plans to use Deca to seed promotional clips for several TLC series. “We’re always looking to find new ways to help viewers find out about our shows,” said Gabe Sauerhoff, Discovery’s vp of digital distribution and partnerships. “Deca has created a community and compiles content that speaks directly to that audience.”

Deca is rebranding its syndication network, moving from Her Channel to the M Network. When it comes to ads sales, both Deca and its partners offer brands pre-roll and banner inventory. The company has tapped Web video ad tech firm FreeWheel to help manage ad inventory.

Read the full article at Ad Week.

By NICOLA LESKE and KATE HOLTON

General Motors Inc’s decision to stop advertising on Facebook may be a wake-up call for the No. 1 social network, but Top advertising executives say it’s far too early to know if the site will take off as an advertising platform.

“There’s a lot of potential but it’s not a slam-dunk,” said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP Plc, the world’s largest advertising agency.

“Showing the impact of branding on Facebook is going to take a long time,” he added.

Facebook is due to begin trading on Nasdaq on Friday in an initial public offering that will raise about $15.2 billion, the biggest ever from Silicon Valley. With almost a billion users, Facebook generated nearly $4 billion in revenue last year, mostly from advertising.

News on Tuesday that GM, the third largest advertiser in the United States, was pulling back from Facebook raised questions about whether ads on the social network are really more effective than on traditional media.

In addition, the company last month reported its first quarter-to-quarter revenue slide in at least two years.

“For GM, advertising on Facebook is the equivalent of hanging up posters in a high school … why would anyone stop to look at the posters when they are congregating, talking in the hall?” Russ Lange, co-founder of marketing consultancy CMG Partners said.

When companies set their marketing budgets in August and September, Lange expects them to consider the question of whether Facebook can be an effective advertising tool.

“They’re going to see the GM pullout as a reality check,” said Ronald Camhi, head of the Advertising Marketing and Media practice at law firm Michelman & Robinson.

Advertising experts do not expect many companies to follow GM. Major brands such as Nike, Nordstrom, Wal-Mart and Ford said they were continuing to advertise on Facebook.

“Macy’s does advertise on Facebook, and digital media overall continues to be one of our fastest growing media segments. Our Facebook brand page serves as a forum for rich conversation with our most passionate customers, and we continue to see great growth in fan participation and engagement,” said a Macy’s spokeswoman, Holly Thomas.

Read the full article at Reuters.

By TODD SPANGLER

Social TV features are twice as likely to be used during live broadcasts than time-shifted viewing, according to a study by Viacom Media Networks — highlighting the opportunity for TV networks to use social media drive live tune-in.

In the study, “Social TV: Viewers C’s The Moment,” Viacom explored how people are using social media to engage with their favorite TV shows.

The study found that viewers engage in an average of seven different types of social TV activities — both online and offline — on at least a weekly basis. Social TV fans reported feeling “left out” of the conversation if they missed a live airing.

“One of the main goals of this research was to understand how to inspire social TV activity among our audiences,” said Colleen Fahey Rush, executive vice president and chief research officer for Viacom Media Networks. “At VMN, we’re focused on leveraging our fans’ attachment to their favorite shows by developing compelling social TV services and apps that deepen those connections and unlock the value of social chatter.”

The top request for content among social users is full-length episodes (88%), followed by sneak peeks of new episodes (75%), and behind-the-scenes extras (71%) and highlight clips (71%). The majority of TV socializers are interested in rewards with real value, like free merchandise or signed cast photos, Viacom found.

The leading source of discovery of social TV services is through search (38%), followed by social networks themselves (26%) and ads run on shows (22%).

Smartphones dominate the use of social TV apps at 82%, trailed by tablets at 18%, according to the Viacom study. For services that are delivered via websites and associated apps, 52% of usage occurs on smartphones or tablets, with usage on desktop or laptops at 48%.

For those that use “check-in” services, such as Miso or GetGlue, 71% check in to a show to let their friends know and 64% check in to let other fans of the show know.

Read the full article at Multichannel News.

By TODD SPANGLER

Comcast this week is launching Skype on Xfinity, a new HD video calling service priced at $9.95 per month, in 10 markets including Boston, Seattle, Chicago and Atlanta.

By the end of the week, the MSO said, the service will also be available in Augusta, Ga., Detroit, Harrisburg, Pa., Indianapolis, Miami and Pittsburgh. Additional markets will launch through the summer.

Skype on Xfinity, which Comcast announced at last year’s Cable Show, is available to qualifying Xfinity Triple Play customers who have an HDMI-capable set-top box. The service lets customers make and receive video calls from their TV in 720p HD quality, as well as send and receive instant messages via Skype while watching TV at the same time.

Comcast is delivering the service using a Technicolor-manufactured adapter box — which provides an Internet connection the TV, as well as the Skype client software — as well as an HD-quality video camera from Quanta. A specially designed remote control with a QWERTY keyboard on the back lets customers chat via Skype as well as power the TV on or off and adjust volume. The other calling party does not need any special equipment beyond what is needed to use Skype.

“We’re continuing to build innovative communication services like Skype on Xfinity that will allow our customers to interact in new ways with the people they care about the most,” Comcast chief technology officer Tony Werner said in a statement. “Through our close collaboration with Skype, we focused on delivering a new product that brings family and friends together through a high-quality video calling experience like never before.”

For Comcast, Skype on Xfinity promises to provide incremental revenue on the telephony front — as well as give subscribers a new reason to keep phone service — as the growth of its Digital Voice business slows down.

Read the full article at Multichannel News.

By MIKE REYNOLDS

NBC Sports Network will kick off its cable-record coverage from the London Olympics with the U.S. women’s soccer team taking on France.

Coming two days before the opening ceremony, the July 25 telecast of the match at 11:30 a.m. (ET) from Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland will mark the first piece of NBC Sports Network’s 292.5 hours of coverage, the most ever for an Olympic cable network. All told, the national sports service, which was rebranded from Versus on Jan. 2, will proffer 257.5 hours of original programming, an average of 14 hours per day.

As first reported by Multichannel News, NBC Sports Network will serve as the home to U.S. team sports. In addition to the U.S. women’s national soccer side, NBC Sports Network will put its cameras on the 2012 version of the men’s basketball Dream Team and women’s field hockey squad, among other competitions. Originating from Olympic Park in London, the network will air up to 20 medal rounds and 22 sports, according to NBC Sports Group official.

NBC Sports Network will also carry soccer qualifying on July 26, but there will be no coverage on July 27 as there aren’t any events scheduled on the same day as the opening ceremony. Coverage will conclude on NBC Sports Network on Sunday, August 12, the final day of competition. On most days, the service’s coverage will air from 4 a.m. – 8 p.m. (ET), encompassing the live Olympic day from London, before passing the programming baton to NBC’s primetime package.

“To serve as the home of U.S. team sports throughout the Games, with more Olympic hours than any cable network ever, is a great thrill and honor,” said Jon Miller, president, programming, NBC Sports and NBC Sports Network. “With exceptional quality content and more than 250 hours of live competition, NBC Sports Network will be an important destination for Olympic fans as we continue to grow the network.”

Read the full article at Multichannel News.

By LACEY ROSE

David Zaslav shouldn’t be on the defensive. After all, the Discovery Communications chief’s 14 cable networks, including red-hot Discovery, ID and TLC, collectively have grown their primetime market share 8 percent this year; his company has a $19 billion market cap and reported revenue up 16 percent to $1.1 billion for the first quarter; and his 2011 compensation hit a cool $52.4 million.

But because of his high-profile partnership with Oprah Winfrey, the Brooklyn-born former lawyer — who splits his time among New York, Maryland and overseas travel — has spent most of the past year defending his $300 million-plus investment in the low-rated OWN network.

Zaslav, 52, who was intricately involved in the launch of CNBC and MSNBC during his nearly two-decade tenure at NBCUniversal, is assuring investors that the fledgling net will be cash-flow-positive by the end of 2013.

Zaslav, a married father of three who often is lauded for transforming Discovery into an international powerhouse (generating $4.24 billion in 2011 revenue) since he joined in early 2007, sat down with The Hollywood Reporter in late April to discuss TLC’s about-face, Sarah Palin’s appeal and why — by his measure — he thinks OWN is a success.

The Hollywood Reporter: When you assess your portfolio, what’s the one thing you’d like to add?

David Zaslav: TLC has been a huge help to us, and we’d like that network to continue to grow internationally. Five-and-a-half years ago, it was the No. 25 network in America; now, it’s a top-five network for women. It was particularly helpful during the recession, when our more male networks got hit hard with financial, auto and beer advertising going away. Eighteen months after we launched internationally, TLC is the No. 1 most-distributed female TV brand outside the U.S. We’re in 130 million homes, and we’re making money.

Read the full article at The Hollywood Reporter.

By REIJI MURAI

Apple Inc plans to use a larger screen on the next-generation iPhone and has begun to place orders for the new displays from suppliers in South Korea and Japan, people familiar with the situation said on Wednesday.

The new iPhone screens will measure 4 inches from corner to corner, one source said. That would represent a roughly 30 percent increase in viewing area, assuming Apple keeps other dimensions proportional. Apple has used a 3.5-inch screen since introducing the iPhone in 2007.

Early production of the new screens has begun at three suppliers: Korea’s LG Display Co Ltd, Sharp Corp and Japan Display Inc, a Japanese government-brokered merger combining the screen production of three companies.

It is likely all three of the screen suppliers will get production orders from Apple, which could begin as soon as June. That would allow the new iPhone to go into production as soon as August, if the company follows its own precedent in moving from orders for prototypes for key components to launch.

Apple’s decision to equip the next iPhone with a larger screen represents part of a competitive response to Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Samsung unveiled its top-of-the line Galaxy smartphone with a 4.8-inch touch-screen and a faster processor earlier this month.

With consumers becoming more and more comfortable using smartphones for tasks they once performed on laptops, like watching video, other smartphone manufacturers have also moved toward bigger displays.

A likely shakeup in the design of a larger-screen iPhone could go a long way in boosting its “wow” factor, convincing fans to trade in their old iPhones for new ones, said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee.

“Not only do users pay for features, but they also pay for aesthetics and design. That’s as important, or more important, than features,” Wu said. “People love the current design — but it’s 18 months old.”

Read the full article at Reuters.

By JOE FLINT

CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves blasted satellite broadcaster Dish Network’s new Auto Hop feature that allows consumers to more easily block commercials from recorded programming.

“They can’t just take our signal and change it and put on a black spot where our commercials were,” Moonves said during a Wednesday morning news conference to unveil the network’s new fall schedule.

Moonves joined executives from Comcast Corp.’s NBC and News Corp.’s Fox in criticizing the Dish feature, which lets customers block commercials from recorded shows that have aired on broadcast networks ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox during the previous day.

Although consumers with digital video recorders can already fast-forward through commercials of recorded shows, Auto Hop takes it a step further. The screen goes black when a commercial break appears. A few seconds later, the program returns. The Auto Hop feature can’t be used on a show during the same day that it’s being broadcast, or on live event programming, such as a sporting event, that has been recorded.

Dish is heavily marketing the feature and even bought a full-page ad in Thursday’s USA Today to promote it. The company also seems to have timed the hyping of the commercial-zapping device to coincide with the “upfronts,” the week the broadcast networks are all announcing their fall schedules to advertisers.

CBS’ Moonves suggested that if Dish continues to push the Auto Hop to customers, his network will respond by not making its programming available to Dish, which has over 14 million subscribers.

“How does Charlie Ergen expect me to produce ‘CSI’ without ads?” Moonves said, referring to the chairman of Dish Network Corp.

Further annoying the broadcasters is the fact that Dish is not offering the Auto Hop feature for cable channels. Moonves suggested that if Dish goes forward with selling the Auto Hop feature, it could risk losing access to CBS content down the road.

“There are obvious things that can be done and we’re looking at that,” Moonves said.

Earlier in the week, Dish spokesman Bob Toevs said the satellite broadcaster “believes that consumers deserve a choice when it comes to television viewing, and Dish’s Auto Hop feature is all about choice. Viewers have been skipping commercials since the advent of the remote control. We are simply making it easier.”

While Moonves isn’t thrilled about Dish’s new gadget, he also was not worried that it would actually get off the ground.

“Too much is being made of it,” Moonves said. “It’s Charlie being Charlie.”

Read the full article at the Los Angeles Times.