• PROGRAMMING

WICT and the Fashion Institute of Technology host a panel discussion, 6pm today at FIT’s Katie Murphy Amphitheatre on Seventh Ave. at 27th Street in NYC. The panel will feature Denise Dahldorf, EVP of affiliate sales for MTV Networks and BET Networks; IFC EVP of marketing Jen Caserta; and Lori Greene, VP of digital media for the History Channel and BIO; and CableWorld editor Seth Arenstein as moderator.

AMC’s Mad Men “ends its first season tonight as one of the most dramatically dazzling debuts since the freshman year of HBO’s The Sopranos in 1999,” writes the Baltimore Sun.

The BBC approved job cuts of 2,800 positions worldwide (or 1,700 net cuts including 1,100 new positions). Paid Content has more plus news of the Beeb’s commercial TV downloads expansion here.

Disney will present a 3-D concert movie featuring Miley "Hannah Montana" Cyrus’s "Best of Both Worlds" sold-out concert tour, coming to theaters nationwide in February.

ESPN‘s E:60 newsmagazine that bowed Tuesday felt old hat to New York Times sports scribe Richard Sandomir.

ESPN Deportes will televise more than 60 winter league baseball games from the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Venezuela starting this week. Its schedule includes the playoffs and championship games from all three leagues in January.

MTV this week attracted 1.4 million viewers for the 2nd episode of Pageant Place and 1.9 million for A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila.

Peachtree TV launches its first original series, Drumline: SWD: Best Band in the Land, on Nov. 20.


SCI Fi greenlit production on a pilot for Revolution, a series set 200 years in the future.

Showtime‘s Dexter beat HBO’s Tell Me You Love Me for the third week in a row, reports USA Today.

Sundance Channel will premiere Brit doc Stephen Fry: HIV & Me on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day.

Versus premieres Greatest High School Football Rivalries on Oct. 25.

VH1‘s premieres of The Salt-N-Pepa Show and Gotti’s Way, plus a new episode of I Love New York, averaged 2.3 million viewers Monday night.



• ONLINE

A coalition of Internet, media and tech companies — including CBS, Microsoft, NBC Universal, News Corp.’s Fox and MySpace, Viacom, Disney and video websites Veoh and Dailymotion but not, notably, Google — will announce online copyright guidelines today, according to the Wall Street Journal. Update: here’s the press release and the coalition’s website on user-generated content principles, ugcprinciples.com.

The Wall Street Journal looks at the introduction of social features in email services from Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL to compete with Facebook and MySpace.

New York Times tech columnist David Pogue compares TV networks’ online offerings. His conclusion: "the selection is puny"; you can’t download, only stream; and "almost nobody wants to watch TV on a computer screen."

Axiom.TV, a family-friendly Web downloading start-up, will launch with 33,000 titles including Benji. Axiom is using VeriSign for content delivery.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s comments at yesterday’s Web 2.0 Summit are recapped by the NYT.

NBC Universal head Jeff Zucker discusses Fox Business Network, GE‘s sale rumors and the looming launch of Hulu.com, which he describes as "an easy-to-use consumer experience that hopefully … becomes one-stop shopping for online quality video," to USA Today, adding: "Disney and CBS have not yet signed on, but we hope that once they see the product, they’ll want to be part of it." NBCU will launch nbcunidigital.com on Monday to facilitate ad sales across its online properties.

Yahoo visitors can vote (through Nov. 5) on their favorite Seinfeld episodes that will run in syndication during two "Viewers Choice" weeks beginning Nov. 12 and Nov. 19, in a stunt cooked up by Sony Pictures Television.



• PEOPLE



BitTorrent hired Douglas Walker, former CEO of Alias Systems, as CEO; and Eric Klinker, former CTO of Internap, as CTO.

Discovery Communications promoted Douglas Craig to SVP, digital media operations.


Fox Reality Channel promoted Noel Siegel to VP, production and development.


NBC Universal promoted Matthew Braatz to SVP, technology and operations, for the NBCU stations group.

IP-VOD service Vudu tapped Mark Jung as CEO; he was formerly with Fox Interactive Media.



• MORE

Congress will grant telephone companies immunity for their role in President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program, the highest ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee — Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) — commented on the wiretapping bill scheduled to return to the House floor next week. [Dow Jones] AT&T, Verizon and Qwest defended their support of the government’s wiretapping surveillance in letters to the House Commerce Committee earlier this week, notes the Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal fans the rumor mill on AT&T‘s tire-kicking of EchoStar by saying the telco is "more likely" to buy DirecTV because EchoStar chairman and CEO Charlie Ergen may get a better deal, and DirecTV "has a bigger subscriber overlap with ATT’s local-phone territory."

EchoStar and DirecTV applauded Ohio judge Daniel Hogan’s ruling yesterday that overturned the Ohio General Assembly’s sales tax on Ohio’s satellite TV subscribers.

CTAM will host a half-day forum in New York on Oct. 24 — Thinking Outside the Spot — featuring Lifetime‘s retiring EVP of research Tim Brooks; Bravo EVP marketing Jason Klarman; MTV Networks EVP and creative director, global digital media, Kenny Miller; History Channel SVP of marketing Chris Moseley; and National Geographic Channel acting GM Steve Schiffman.

Apple will open the iPhone and the iPod touch to third-party applications, with "an SDK in developers’ hands in February," CEO Steve Jobs writes on Apple.com’s Hot News e-letter.

BigBand Networks and RBG Networks will demonstrate their advanced advertising solutions at TelcoTV 2007 next week in Atlanta.

Sony is selling its advanced computer chip operations used in the PlayStation 3 videogame console to Toshiba, reports AP.


Crown Media/Hallmark Channel CEO Henry Schleiff’s home away from home (no surprise to Page Six or FishBowlNY readers): media hotspot Michael’s in NYC, where he dined 56 days in a row, says NY’s Daily News.

HBO‘s Sopranos was referenced in a NYC mob murder trial this week.


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