LATE BREAKING NEWS

If you’re part of the disaffected hipster crowd that only knows Johnny Cash from his recent MTV output, listen up. Cable is celebrating the life and times of the Man in Black this week with a slate of programming that’ll bring you laggards up to speed on the late legend’s deep back catalogue. Leading off the tribute parade is CMT, which will rebroadcast a 1976 Cash concert shot inside the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville, a 90-minute exclusive interview from 2002 and Johnny Cash Remembered, a news special. Elsewhere, Trio will rebroadcast Kindred Spirits: A Tribute to Johnny Cash, a live performance special featuring interpretations of Cash standards by the likes of Rosanne Cash, Travis Tritt and others. Cox expanded its Business Services division with the launch of CBS in Northern Virginia, a key Cox market. Cox appointed Dave Van Alstyne director of the unit, which will deliver digital video, high-speed Internet, virtual private networks and phone service to local businesses, educational facilities and government agencies. The unit is expected to focus heavily on the potentially lucrative government sector. In the six months ended June 30, Cox’s commercial business, which is in nearly every Cox market (the Cox system in Eastern North Carolina, a big market for Cox, is expected to launch CBS soon), saw revenue of $131.5 million, up from $101.8 million in the same period in 2002. The FCC has given independent TV station WNVT-TV, owned by MHz Networks, permission to cease analog broadcasting and commence operating as a digital-only television station, effective Nov. 1. WNVT, which features Russian TV programming, is the first broadcast station nationwide to have received such permission. The Washington, D.C., station sought the special allowance because operating both analog and digital facilities through the DTV transition process wasn’t financially feasible, the station says, noting the impact will be nominal since most viewers already watch the station via cable or satellite. Although at first blush Bill Gates and Hollywood seem to be two mutually exclusive constructs, Microsoft is betting that it has a bright future in pictures. The Redmond giant revealed Friday that it is pitching its Windows Media Series 9 compression code to the Society of Motion Picture Television Engineers as the standards candidate to succeed MPEG-2. Should the SMPTE approve Series 9 as a standard, Microsoft could put its stamp on a host of high-end gear, including set-tops, editing suites and wireless devices. The software, which was unveiled in Los Angeles a year ago, has been in development for over three years at a cost of about $500 million.