Addenda and Corrections

Karen Brown The complexity of operating a merged CNN-ABC News operation has prompted AOL Time Warner to call off talks with ABC News parent Disney, AOL executives told a group of senior executives at a meeting in New York. By late Friday, reports seeped out that a contested item of business at the management retreat was whether to drop AOL from the company’s corporate name…. No one knows how many people watched TNT‘s hi-def production of the NBA All-Star weekend, but MSOs that picked it up liked the results. “It went very well. The picture quality was good, and technical quality was good both days,” says Bonnie Cleaver, senior director of new product development for Comcast. A Cox corporate spokesman reports “an overwhelmingly positive response from the systems.”… Comcast named Kerry Knott as its new uber-lobbyist in Washington. Knott has worked with the Microsoft office in D.C., and was previously a staffer for former Republican House majority leader Dick Armey of Texas…. The contact listing for advertising sales at USA and Sci Fi networks in last week’s edition of the K-Book was incorrect. USA Cable is now Universal Television Networks (it consists of USA, Sci Fi, Trio and NWI). The president of ad sales is Jeff Lucas. The phone number is (212) 413-5124…. In the Ed-Op column in the Feb. 3 issue of Cable World, it was incorrectly stated that only WCBS-TV and WNET-TV had digital signals on the air in New York. WCBS and WNYW, the local Fox owned and operated station, broadcast digitally from the Empire State Building. A second station owned by Fox, WWOR, also transmits a digital signal from the WNYW transmitter. WNET, the local PBS affiliate, uses a low-power digital transmitter atop its Manhattan studios.