News Briefing for Tuesday, May 20, 2008 Cable360 tipster Brain Clark and his sidekick Joe report from the Cable Show in New Orleans that the mid-1990s are definitely over. Happy Tuesday.

Netflix began marketing today a paperback novel-size $99 set-top, made by start-up Roku, that will enable Netflix subscribers to instantly access thousands of movies and shows via the Internet, the New York Times reports. The drawback: Most of the available Internet titles are more than five years old. [New York Times]

Comcast is buying DOCSIS 3.0-certified CMTS equipment from Arris, Cable Digital News reports. [Cable Digital News]

The SEC filed fraud charges against eight former AOL executives, saying they had inflated online advertising revenue by more than $1 billion around the time of AOL’s 2000 merger with Time Warner, the New York Times reports. [New York Times]

Online ad buys are now commonly part of overall TV upfront deals, instead of being used as party favors thrown in after the hand-shaking is over. [Wall Street Journal]

The Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice in the U.K. has made a rule that is intended to reduce the soul-crushing loudness of TV commercials. [New York Times]

Taking a page from the Chinese government’s demand of an apology from CNN for the wounding remarks of one of the network’s commentators, the White House directed one of its counselors to send a letter to NBC News president Steve Capus complaining that NBC News’ editing of an interview with President Bush was “misleading and irresponsible,” the Wall Street Journal reports. [Wall Street Journal]

As part of the run-up to the general election, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut wrote a letter to Google chief Eric Schmidt requesting that he remove from YouTube content produced by “Islamist terrorist organizations.” [CNET]

The results from the Cable360 poll are in: 60% of respondents say that two years from now, mobile TV will be as ubiquitous as cell phones and iPods; 40% of respondents say that is an unlikely scenario. Visit Cable360 to respond to the current poll question: Which political party are cable operators, satellite distributors and telcos more likely to contribute to in the general election for the presidency? Monday’s Top Stories

Don’t forget to enter CableFAX: The Magazine’s Programming Awards contest.

What are the best companies to work for in the cable industry? Help CableFAX: The Magazine decide by nominating the companies you think should be on our list of the Top 10 Places to Work in Cable by completing our online nomination form.  We will run the Top 10 Places to Work as a Web exclusive on Cable360.net, on CableFAX: The Magazine’s home page and in our Top Operators edition of CableFAX: The Magazine.

Got a tip? Contact [email protected] and [email protected].

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Commentary by Steve Effros It’s happening faster than I thought it would: the realization that the “cable” model of delivering video was the right, and probably only workable business model. “Cable”

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