Also: Comcast earmarks cash for minority entrepreneurs, John Malone bids for Barnes & Noble, MSOs get SMB kudos
Welcome to the cable news roundup, TGIF edition.
As Dish Network LLC (Nasdaq: DISH) promised earlier this month at its retailer summit in Denver, the company announced Thursday it would offer new satellite TV subs three free months of Blockbuster Inc. 's by-mail DVD service through Aug. 10. (See Photos: Dish Network's Retailer Summit and Dish Can't Match Netflix.)
Comcast Interactive Capital and DreamIt Ventures will seed five minority-led startups through an accelerator program that's tied to commitments Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) made as part of its NBCUniversal LLC acquisition.
J.D. Power and Associates gave high marks to the cable sector's business services efforts in its latest customer satisfaction rankings, with Cox Communications Inc. leading the home-based business segment, Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC)'s Optimum Business on top of the SMB world, and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) rating highest in the large enterprise market. (See Cable's $5B Biz Services Bonanza .)
John Malone's Liberty Media Corp. (NYSE: LMC) may take a bit of a run at Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) and the Kindle after bidding about $1 billion for Barnes & Noble, setting a value of $17 per share for the retail bookstore chain and maker of the Nook e-reader.
NBC sports chief Dick Ebersol has resigned following a contract dispute with his new bosses at Comcast, causing some to wonder if NBC's future coverage of the Olympics could be in jeopardy and tempt other networks, such as ESPN or Fox, swoop in.
RCN Corp. Senior Director of Video Product and Video Ops Jason Nealis revealed that TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO) Premiere-to-Premiere streaming capabilities are baked into the 14.8 software update for the broadband-powered DVR. (See RCN Makes TiVo Its Dominant DVR.)
The British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) has added a Series Record feature to its wildly popular iPlayer desktop app, giving users the ability to download all current series episodes in a given month without having to do it on a per-episode basis.
— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable
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