GigabyteFan

The fighting league UFC has signed a multi-year deal with Roku set top box company to offer UFC events to anyone with a broadband connection.  The events will be available for $44.99/ea, and a UFC On Demand channel will be available for $59.99 for 6 months.

UFC currently sells the pay-per-view events through providers such as Comcast, DirecTV, and Dish Network.  The new Premium On Demand channel is currently not widely available without the Roku box.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Friday granted a request by Dish Network and EchoStar to review a previous ruling regarding the Tivo Vs. Dish Network patent litigation.  Most see this as a temporary victory for Dish allowing them the ability to continue fighting through the appeal process.

At stake if Tivo wins, not only would Dish need to pay the judgement against them which is now in the hundreds of millions of dollars range with increases thanks to interest …  but the real bite comes in the form of a mandatory shutdown of all Dish/Echostar DVR’s unless they pay a license fee to Tivo.

Macmillan publishing, a company attempting to survive, has come to terms with Amazon.com over the distribution of it’s new releases over the Kindle.  Releasing titles at $12.99 to $14.99 per copy, versus Amazon’s desired $9.99 pricing structure.

Amazon released a statement as follows:

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer.

Blockbuster wants to add another movie format to the game.  Using the SD Card format they hope you will use their new kiosk to rent movies instead of dvd/blueray at Redbox.  Although I think they would have an easier time using USB format.  No word yet on pricing or the level of support Blockbuster plans on putting behind this service.

Sirius XM has reported a net growth for the Christmas quarter of 257,000 subscribers.  Bringing the total count to 18.8 million subscribers.

NY Times has made the choice to start charging users to visit their site starting in 2011.

The new approach, referred to as the metered model, will offer users free access to a set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number. This will enable NYTimes.com to create a second revenue stream and preserve its robust advertising business. It will also provide the necessary flexibility to keep an appropriate ratio between free and paid content and stay connected to a search-driven Web.

The plan is to change the number of pages a free user can see from time to time.

WSJ.com is reporting that Conan O’Brien is close to signing a $40,000,000 severance package deal to leave his post at The Tonight Show.

Leaving NBC gives him the option to go to Fox and head up the start of their very own week long late night division. 

One option that rarely gets discussed or mentioned is the idea of a cable deal.  Conan could do a deal with someone like TBS or FX.  If he found the right cable channel, they may be willing to pay quite handsomely to increase their ratings.  Much like the Howard Stern / Sirius XM deal, the price might be very high if Conan includes the cable channels into his option list.

The deal Netflix has with Starz may be coming to an end soon.

Disney licenses it’s movies to Starz for a flat fee, said to be typically in the range of $5,000,000 for major films, although things like this are rarely disclosed officially.

Currently Starz is reselling it’s steaming service to Netflix which is where the majority of the new films come from for Netflix steaming.  Disney wants to end this because they don’t receive a cut for the sale by Starz to Netflix.

Xbox 360 users may someday be able to enjoy ESPN360 programming on their Xbox 360 consoles.  Talks are said to be underway between Disney and Microsoft to include some ESPN games in with the ESPN subscription fee.

At this time the talks are very early on, and may not come to pass.