Comcast's Niner

Nine services catering to multicultural audiences will be launched in Comcast systems nationwide over the next few weeks. Three services will also provide 25 hours of content/month to the MSO’s free VOD catalogue-AZN TV, Canal 52 MX (Latino channel from Mexico) and Azteca On Demand (VOD from Azteca America). The other services getting clearances: Channel 1 Russia, GMA 7 (from the Philppines), Hispanic Information TV Network (the Spanish-language channel’s first MSO-wide deal), ITN (from Russia), La Familia Network and TVK24. That makes 59 multicultural cable nets from Comcast, with 30 other channels in affiliate talks, the MSO’s intl programming vp Dave Jensen says. At a National briefing Tues, Jensen and other execs predicted the amount of ethnic VOD content will go from about 100 hours now to 300-plus by year end.