SeaChange Sells Off Its Broadcast Server Biz

Here's what's pushing cable's buttons Wednesday morning.

SeaChange International Inc. (Nasdaq: SEAC) has reached a deal to sell its broadcast server and storage business to a group of investors led by VantagePoint Venture Partners for an undisclosed sum, completing its transformation into a video software and backoffice systems company. The sale will result in a new, independent company to be named XOR Media, led by Zheng Gao, the current president of SeaChange's storage and servers unit. Moving forward, SeaChange will keep its VoD server business, however. The divestiture was expected as the company made major changes up top and investors continued to press the company to sell non-core parts of its declining hardware business. (See Now SeaChange Loses Its President, SeaChange Sees Software Surge Amid Shake-up and SeaChange Off the Block, CEO Exits .)

The top 14 U.S. multichannel video providers representing 94 percent of the market added 380,000 video subs in 2011 despite a lousy housing market and new over-the-top video threats, says Leichtman Research Group Inc. (LRG) , noting that the additions were 175,000 fewer than 2010's totals. The top 10 cable companies lost about 1.62 million video subs in 2011, versus a loss of 1.78 million in 2010.

Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) EVP David Cohen defended his company's proposed spectrum sale to Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) in a blog post, holding that the deal offers the MSO a "quick and efficient" path to offering wireless service. The blog serves as a warm-up, as Cohen will be among the witnesses at a hearing later today by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. (See Cable-VZ Wireless Deals to Face Senate Grilling .)

There's more executive shuffling at Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC) this week with the resignation of David Kline, the president and COO of the MSO's media sales unit. Former AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) ad exec Gregory McCastle has succeeded Kline, who had been with Cablevision for about 15 years. (See Engineering EVP Latest Exec to Exit Cablevision and What's Next for Cablevision? )

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable