April 9, 2008

Naegle Gets HBO Gig

UTA agent to succeed Strauss as entertainment president, Comcast targeted as Web bully again, HSM 4 ready to roll.

By Steve Goldstein

News briefing for Wednesday, April 9, 2008

A hypothetical nuclear war between Pakistan and India would blow open a massive hole in the ozone layer, leading to a cataclysmic global nuclear winter, Bloomberg reported last night, thus dampening spirits at the Cable360 newsroom’s weekly meeting at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge.

HBO announced this afternoon that Sue Naegle is the premium network’s new president of entertainment. Variety and the LA Weekly broke the story early this morning. Naegle, a partner at United Talent Agency, succeeds Carolyn Strauss as entertainment president. Strauss, who worked closely with former HBO chief Chris Albrecht during the glory years of The Sopranos and Sex and the City, was ousted from the post in March. Naegle packaged the Six Feet Under deal with HBO for her client Alan Ball, the series’ creator. [Variety | LA Weekly]

Researchers at the University of Colorado have revised their recent findings that Comcast has been blocking regular HTML Web traffic as well as peer-to-peer file sharing, Ars Technica reports. They are now saying Comcast does not block standard Web traffic. The earlier conclusions had been skewed by an overloaded network address translator used in the team’s lab. [Ars Technica]

Production begins in two weeks on Disney Channel’s High School Musical 4, according to a Hollywood Reporter story picked up by Reuters. The script for the film is still being written. High School Musical 3 will be released in theaters in the fall. [Reuters]

Briefly Noted
TV commercials using expletives that are “bleeped” are gaining in popularity both with viewers and Madison Avenue. Just what we needed—another stupid bleeping trend. [New York Times]

Philips is getting out of the flat-panel TV market in the U.S. [New York Times]

Circuit City posted a fourth-quarter profit, leading some to speculate that as the economy sours, more consumers will invest in home entertainment. [Reuters]

Consumer electronics stores don’t yet have all the digital TV converters they’ll need to keep up with the expected demand, the Los Angeles Times reports. [Los Angeles Times]

The economic slowdown is forcing Silicon Valley start-ups to think a little bit more about actually turning a profit and a little bit less about profitable “exits.” [New York Times]

LATE STORIES
You can't keep a good man down, but a good wine should go down smoothly. Thus former TLC GM Roger Marmet yesterday launched WineTasteTV.com, an online channnel for upscale consumers. Marmet says the wine business has exploded, with 75 mln wine drinkers in the US and 2007 sales of $30bln.

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