Top stories:

• DirecTV reports Q3; comments pres/CEO Chase Carey, "The primary reason we did not really achieve our churn target for the quarter was really more internal execution, which ranges from execution in particular sales niches to issues like debugging new advanced set-top boxes for a particular segment of the box area. We are making progress on getting on top of some of these issues in our execution, but we still, again, we still clearly need to do better, and that is a place we expect we will continue to make progress." Read more of today’s earnings call transcript, courtesy of Seeking Alpha

• Comedy Central‘s Indecider Blog broke the news of Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation at 12:15am; Chicago Trib‘s Maureen Ryan says Stephen Colbert’s live coverage (and CNN) won election night for cable

• Cablevision reports Q3; 10th consecutive quarter of basic subscriber increases [read today’s earnings call transcript, courtesy of Seeking Alpha]

• Insight reports Q3; sub growth in all categories

• Suddenlink taps Sprint Nextel for wireline VoIP telephony

• Dem sweep positions John Dingell (D-Mich) and Ed Markey (D-Mass) for new roles in January: Dingell to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Markey to step up and lead the Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee

Other earnings:

• News Corp. reports Q1

• Cisco reports Q1

• Terayon to restate 2000, 2002 and 2003 earnings

• JumpTV reports Q3

Programming:

• Exit poll:

• Lifetime plans A Christmas Wedding (Dec. 11)

• Comcast planning HD sports channel – TVPredictions

• ExpoTV expands user-generated content with Moviepinions

• TBN’s Smile of a Child Network doubles airtime for Gina D’s Kids Club

• BabyFirst TV receives a 2006 iParenting Media Award

• Sarah Silverman to host 2007 Spirit Awards on IFC (Feb. 24)

• Sony Movies now available on Canada’s Shaw VOD

Vendors:

• SeaChange‘s On Demand Group launches PPV business in Germany

• Texas Instruments and Intellon partner on home networking

• mPhase and BitBand create IP-based VOD solution

Other news:

• Videogames influence kids more than movies or TV – survey

• AIM TV renews pressure on Nielsen’s Hispanic samples

• Tom Tom Club: you saw this one coming…fellow Redstone Rejects Tom Freston and Tom Cruise are bonding, says the New York Post‘s Page Six

• Time Warner Inc. announces debt offering

• AOL acquires Relegence, a news aggregator and search engine

• Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival bringing short indies to mobile phones

• NBC Universal Digital Studios producing original broadband programming for MSN

The Daily

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Thursday–December 3

Talking ‘Trafficked’ with Nat Geo’s Monroe

Nat Geo’s eight-part docuseries “Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller” made its debut Wednesday night, offering up extensive reporting on the underground world of black markets. National Geographic Content

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