5Qs with Rainbow's Josh Sapan

It’s been just over a month since IFC Films and Comcast launched theatrical day/date for VOD. How’s it going? Cablevision has rolled it out on an SVOD basis. We are indeed speaking to other operators. It’s fair to say we’ve been met with a warm reception. We don’t have any deals to announce today. I am hopeful that fairly soon we will. Mark Cuban has said he won’t distribute IFC Films that are part of that deal at his Landmark Theaters until Comcast inks a deal for his HDNet. What’s your response? We’re probably the 2 entities out there with new content for HD. That makes us genetic siblings. We have IFC Ent releasing indie films theatrically, and they have Magnolia. They are releasing films early, and we’re doing the same. There is so much similar about how we see the world and what we’d like to accomplish. I hope they succeed at everything they do, and we do too. Isn’t there a little bit of sibling rivalry? I don’t know if that’s the case. More likely than not, success for one would spell success for another. What’s it going to take to get carriage deals for Voom beyond EchoStar? EchoStar has just begun to deploy active marketing of Voom and HD. We’ve just gained distribution for Voom in Canada on satellite. And Voom will soon be distributed in Japan. We’re optimistic that we’ll find a way to reach arrangements with other US distributors reasonably soon. What will you miss most about New Orleans this week? The soul of the town and the culture. There’s no place like it.