THE TELCOS ARE BACK IN THE TV BUSINESS....this time some experts feel they are playing catch-up with the cable companies by offering the ultimate 'triple play' --Internet, TV & phone services. By Joyce Schwarz, JCOM, emerging entertainment analyst & consultant, www.joycecom.com. That's just one reason you might be interested in the DCC event on June 21 -- see details below!
Digital Coast Roundtable features special guest Dan York, EVP Programming, AT&T Project Lightspeed at their Chairman's Roundtable series on Weds, June 21 at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel, Santa Monica. DCR Chairman, Robert Dowling, former Editor & Publisher, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER is set to host the event. According to the email invitation the evening will take a look at "What will the connected home of the future look like?" and they will focus discussion on "AT&T's fiber-optics network expansion initiative". Here are the prices and clickthrough to www.digitalcoast.org for details.
TO PREPARE FOR THE EVENING: you may want to read the following articles: Glen Dickson's excellent story in BROADCASTING & CABLE that covers his version of what AT&T and Verizon are up to in the future: Made for TV: A Tale of Two Telcos Of special interest is Dickson's paragraph that notes: "Phone companies have tried television before. In the mid 1990s, two groups of regional Bell operating companies attempted to launch television services, respectively called Tele-TV and Americast, which promised to compete with cable by offering hundreds of digital channels delivered over fiber-optic pipes. In 1996, Bell Atlantic (now part of Verizon) even started a “fiber-to-the-curb” video service in Dover Township, N.J."
REMEMBER TELE-TV? I was at The BEVERLY HILTON the day they launched -- I remember they had the coolest baseball caps! (Retrieved from "http://encyclopedia.quickseek.com/index.php/TELE-TV":TELE-TV was a media and technology company formed by Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, Pacific Telesis, and Creative Artists Agency in February 1995. The company, based in Reston, Virginia, USA, set out to design a Set-top_box that would allow customers to view video on demand over copper phone wires. Thomson Consumer Electronics was to build the set-top boxes. Howard Stringer was hired as CEO. Academy Award-winning talent were hired to design GUI's for interactive program guides. Michael Ovitz, then head of CAA, was to play a role as deal-maker between Hollywood and the company. The company reportedly spent $500 million dollars before halting operations in early 1997. (We bold-faced HOWARD STRINGER -- I'm sure you know where he is today?) More on what happened to TeleTV and of course the Time-Warner project that both ended about the same time --Time Warner to shutter ITV effort | CNET News.com
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