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Adelphia Adds Music Videos, Sports to on-Demand Channels

Posted on: Thursday, 6 October 2005, 18:00 CDT

By Fred O. Williams, The Buffalo News, N.Y.

Oct. 6--Watch only Sheryl Crow music videos if you want. Or if it's sports you desire, cue up a vintage Hail Mary pass by collegiate Doug Flutie.

Adelphia Communications has boosted its "on-demand" content with the addition of music videos, news reports and sports clips from a Massachusetts company called Gotuit Media Corp.

The additional programming -- which has been available for less than a month on channels 920 through 923 -- marks another strike at satellite dish services, Adelphia officials said, taking advantage of cable's two-way transmission capability.

The new programming is also a move to give viewers more control over what they and their families see.

"This gives customers the opportunity to pick the programming they want, at the time they want," said Thomas M. Haywood, regional vice president of operations for Western and Central New York and Northern Pennsylvania.

The Gotuit channels are included with subscription for digital-tier subscribers, who make up about 40 percent of Adelphia's 300,000 area households, the company said.

"We think there's a far more compelling way to view television," said Mark Pascarella, president of Gotuit Media.

The company's sports channel, for example, lets viewers watch a full game or highlights from the NHL, collegiate sports or other sources.

In addition, Gotuit is trying out a fantasy football channel in Buffalo that lets viewers track their fantasy team's statistics while watching game clips. Pascarella said he doesn't expect to wean fantasy managers from the Internet as the primary source for statistics, but to augment their hobby with video highlights.

Gotuit and Adelphia plan to demonstrate the fantasy aid this afternoon at Guido's Sports Bar on Buffalo's Chippewa Street.

The pay-TV industry is seeing subscribers flock to demand-type viewing, using cable on-demand systems and digital video recorders that store shows to be watched later. Adelphia launched video-on-demand service last year with a mix of free programming and pay-per-view titles, which are stored digitally on computers at the regional cable hub.

The new services come as Adelphia awaits the hand-over of its Western New York network to buyer Time Warner sometime in early- to mid-2006. Time Warner and Comcast are awaiting regulatory OKs on their joint $17.5 billion bid for Adelphia.

It will be up to the successor company to decide whether to continue the video on demand choices, Pascarella said.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Buffalo News, N.Y.

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ADELQ, TWX, CMCSK,

Source: The Buffalo News

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