Cable Giant Comcast Corp. To Offer Dating Videos

PHILADELPHIA — Cable giant Comcast Corp. has paired up with a dating service to offer video dating profiles to high-end cable customers.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company with 21.5 million subscribers, will test “Dating on Demand” in its home turf of Philadelphia in the next few weeks. About 600,000 of Comcast’s 1.5 million customers in the Philadelphia market have digital cable, a spokesman said.

The merger will help fill the cable giant’s need for content while drawing younger customers to its video-on-demand service, an analyst said.

“On the one hand, it’s good; it’s healthy to see them getting into the trendy part of the market. On the other hand, you just have to wonder what’s next,” said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom analyst in Atlanta. “It feels a little desperate.”

Comcast is working with an established dating service called Hurrydate that hosts speed-dating events across the country and this year branched out into online dating.

Hurrydate will host three socials at which singles can make three- to five-minute videos that will be offered locally to video-on- demand customers. A viewer can learn more about the video subject on Hurrydate’s Web site.