Tennis Channel Executive Rants After Losing a Court Ruling

Ken Solomon, the chief executive of Tennis Channel, thought until late last month that he was on his way to winning a big and lengthy legal battle â€" one that would greatly enhance the channel’s business. He believed that Comcast would soon make Tennis Channel as widely available on its cable systems as Golf Channel and NBC Sports Network, which it owns.

Ken Solomon, the chief executive of Tennis Channel, in 2010.

But last month, a three-judge panel of a federal appellate court ruled that Comcast had not discriminated against Tennis Channel by giving it far less distribution than Golf Channel and NBC Sports Network, and was not obliged to expand its availability.

Solomon was in Paris for the French Open when the decision was handed down. Hours later, frustrated at the dramatic reversal in the case, he sent his staff an angry, meandering e-mail that was punctuated with the language of sexual assault.

Solomon likened the judges’ decision â€" and, apparently the difficulty of dealing with Comcast â€" to “being raped by a brutal captor, finally winning in a long and painful public court trial,” and, “on appeal years later from a pre-decided Mad Hatter of a court asking you, the victim, to produce video to prove that it ever happened.” The e-mail was published by Deadspin.

The ruling, Solomon wrote, was “a travesty of justice, wholly wrong and unfair, and just plain hard to believe.”

His vituperative response went far beyond the polite statement issued by the channel, which expressed respectful disagreement.

Solomon has raised millions of dollars for President Obama’s presidential campaigns as one of his top bundlers of contributions and has reportedly been considered for an ambassadorship. He was not available for an interview on Wednesday.

In a statement, he said: “I regret several ill-chosen, excessively colorful and inappropriate words in a private e-mail to colleagues a few weeks ago reflecting my disappointment with a legal decision. The e-mail dealt with an issue that we are obviously passionate about, but the words do not accurately reflect my thoughts about the case or those involved, and I am very sorry that I used them.”

Vince Wladika, a consultant to Tennis Channel, said: “It was a brain meltdown that occurred late at night in Paris. Maybe a little too much red wine. This is nothing that ever reflects what Ken Solomon stands for, and I’m sure he is beyond embarrassed about it.”

Solomon’s optimism about the case had been fueled by Tennis Channel’s successful advancement of the discrimination argument at various levels of the Federal Communications Commission. By a 3-2 vote, the commissioners had ruled for the network.

But last month, Comcast got the ruling it wanted from the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which stayed the F.C.C.’s decision.

In his e-mail, Solomon wrote that “three Lone Ranger judges walked in the court with a mission ... looking for one thing, to teach the FCC a lesson.” And, he wrote, “Tonto-Comcast, who spends more than Exxon and Boeing in DC on lobbyists and God knows what else. They bought this unholy decision, one way or another.”

A Comcast spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment.

The importance of getting broad distribution on Comcast is important to Tennis Channel, as it is for most networks. With more subscribers, a network reaps more monthly fees and can generate more advertising revenue. Golf Channel and NBC Sports Network are available to more than 20 million Comcast customers; Tennis Channel is available to the few million who pay extra for a sports tier. Tennis Channel, with 35 million subscribers, is owned by a group of investors that includes private equity firms, the United States Tennis Association and the former players Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi.

Gatekeepers of Cable TV Try to Stop Intel

WASHINGTON â€" As Intel tries something audacious â€" the creation of a virtual cable service that would sell a bundle of television channels to subscribers over the Internet â€" it is running up against a multibillion-dollar barricade.

Gigi Sohn, right, the head of Public Knowledge, said new providers need protection.

A Netflix stream of “Arrested Development.”

That barricade is guarded by Time Warner Cable and other cable and satellite distributors, which are trying to make it difficult â€" if not impossible â€" for Intel to go through with its plan. The distributors are using a variety of methods to pressure the owners of cable channels, with whom they have lucrative long-term contracts, not to sign contracts with upstarts like Intel, that way preserving the status quo.

Intel, however, is undeterred, and its executives intend to begin its TV service by the end of the year. They are ready and willing to pay more than existing distributors do for channels. But to date the company has not announced any deals with channel owners.

To Intel, and to some analysts, the behavior by the existing distributors â€" in some cases giving financial incentives to friendly channel owners, in other cases including punitive measures in contracts â€" has an anticompetitive whiff. The antitrust division of the Justice Department is looking into the issue as part of a broad investigation into cable and satellite company practices, according to people contacted by the department, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. A department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Public attention about the issue, which gained new life this week during the cable industry’s annual conference here, might also spur the Federal Communications Commission to afford would-be Internet distributors like Intel the same legal protections as those that already exist. The commission has been considering such a change for more than a year.

“The government has to step up and protect these companies, or the incumbents are going to kill them in their cradles,” said Gigi B. Sohn, the president of the public interest group Public Knowledge.

Prospective products like Intel TV, delivered through the broadband Internet infrastructure of Comcast, Time Warner Cable or another provider and sometimes called “over the top TV,” have the potential to radically alter the media marketplace in the United States.

Unlike Netflix, which sells a library of TV episodes and mainly supplements cable, a service like Intel’s â€" with dozens of channels, big and small, streaming through a modern interface â€" could cause more consumers to cancel their cable subscriptions. (They would have to keep a broadband subscription, however, unless or until wireless capacity improves.)

It could also stir further innovation within the industry. If Intel’s service ever goes on sale, industry executives predict that others will quickly follow â€" either because they want to, or they feel they have no choice.

Apple, Microsoft and Sony are often mentioned as possibilities, but the more immediate competition might come from Comcast, Time Warner Cable and other major distributors, which could suddenly compete directly in markets all across the country. Comcast has quietly been working on an “over the top” service for well over a year.

“Suddenly there’d be a whole new world of competition,” said one of the executives, who declined to express support for the “over the top” option for fear of angering the existing distributors.

Most of those companies declined to comment on the record, but some representatives said privately that they are taking common-sense steps to protect their businesses. Each confidential contract between a distributor and a channel owner is different, they said.

Some contracts include clauses that expressly prohibit the channels to be sold to an Internet distributor like Intel, while other contracts merely discourage such competition by including financial incentives or penalties. So-called most favored nation clauses, which are common, exist to ensure that if another distributor receives a cheaper rate for a channel later, that rate applies across the board. Some of these provisions have been in place for years.

France Resists U.S. Trade Talks Over TV and Film Concerns

BRUSSELS â€" France’s insistence on protecting its state-sponsored film and television industry could create snags in the European Union’s preparations for trade talks with the United States, according to trade officials here.

Ministers and diplomats were trying Wednesday to head off a showdown at a meeting planned for Friday by the Union’s 27 trade ministers. The ministers plan to decide whether to give the European Commission, the Union’s executive arm, formal authority to start negotiating a trans-Atlantic trade pact that President Barack Obama opened the way for in February.

‘'The French obviously continue to hold out, and there isn’t agreement at this point,'’ Richard Bruton, the Irish minister for jobs, enterprise and innovation, said by telephone on Wednesday.

The hope had been that a unanimous decision at the meeting Friday would enable the United States and Britain to hail the official start of the trade talks when the Group of 8 biggest economies hold a summit meeting that gets underway Monday in Northern Ireland.

‘'We’re trying to accommodate the French insofar as we can,'’ said Mr. Bruton, who is leading efforts to broker a deal with France. ‘‘But we’re also conscious that other member states have a view that the more a mandate has carve-outs, the more you narrow the base on which a deal can be done, and the more risk you have of other things being taken off the table in which Europe has an interest.'’

A trade pact would aim to cut tariffs and streamline regulations between Europe and the United States, which are already the world’s two biggest trading partners.

France and the other 26 European nations have the power to veto the start of the trade talks, but France is digging in its heels on protecting its film and television industries from foreign competition.

The French prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, told the French Parliament on Wednesday that France ‘'would go as far as using its right of veto'’ to protect its cultural industries.

Intense lobbying on the issue from the other side has begun by American technology and media companies, including the online movie distributor Netflix, which want easier access to European markets.

The core issue for countries like France is the ‘'control of the digital space and the implications of the evolution of the digital economy, for culture,'’ a senior European diplomat said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the effort to reach a deal with France.

‘'The reality is that the global market is currently dominated by U.S. operators, and that is why it is such a sensitive issue,'’ said the diplomat. He cited Google, Apple and Netflix among the leading American companies in markets where European competitors, not only French ones, lag far behind.

Britain, Sweden and Denmark are strongly in favor of giving negotiators a broad mandate, including in movies and other media, to reach a more comprehensive deal. Those countries see advantages in opening up protected and potentially lucrative sectors like transporting goods along the U.S. coastline, and opening American government procurement markets at both the federal and state levels.

But in France, filmmakers are among those describing the stakes in stark terms. Using media as a bargaining chip ‘'breaks deeply held European beliefs and jeopardizes our cultural identity, particularly in the online world, for incredibly short-term and tactical gains,'’ said Frédéric Goldsmith, the general manager of the Association des Producteurs de Cinéma, an industry group in Paris representing small and midsize feature film production companies.

France is not entirely isolated. Belgium could be a supporter of its insistence on protecting ‘'cultural diversity,'’ a concept safeguarded inEurope’s treaties and laws.

Hungary and Greece might also support France, trade officials said. But many say the French are by far the touchiest on the issue because their concerns might go well beyond protecting movies and television programs, extending to concerns that the French way of farming and standards for food imports could be threatened by a more uniform trans-Atlantic approach to commerce.

Meanwhile, American companies like Netflix hope to use the trade negotiations with Europe to remove barriers erected over the years to hold back a full-scale invasion from Hollywood. Netflix is apparently among companies seeking to stream movies in Europe without being required to show locally sponsored films and programs as well.

Joris Evers, the director of global communications for Netflix, based in Los Gatos, Calif., said in response to questions by e-mail that he would not go ‘'into detail on whether or not we have what type of activity in Brussels at this time.'’

But Mr. Evers said that the company planned ‘'to add another European market before the end of the year.'’ He declined to specify the market that Netflix would enter.

‘Steve Harvey’ Talk Show Gains an Extension

Steve Harvey’s daytime talk show, which had its debut last September, will remain on television through at least 2016 thanks to a series of deals announced Wednesday by its distributor, NBCUniversal.

The long-term deals demonstrate how successful the show, “Steve Harvey,” has been for NBC and for the local stations that carry it. While Katie Couric’s talk show, “Katie,” was introduced at the same time as Mr. Harvey’s and initially drew slightly higher ratings, “Katie” was accompanied by much higher expenses and expectations. Her ratings have slipped in recent months, while Mr. Harvey’s have grown. His show has impressed people in the syndicated television industry, while Ms. Couric’s show has underperformed.

Both shows were previously renewed through 2014. Now “Steve Harvey” has been extended two more years, both by local stations owned by NBC and by other station owners. In some cases Mr. Harvey’s show will move into more advantageous time slots after 2014. (Something similar happened after the health-themed talk show hosted by Dr. Mehmet Oz became a hit upon its premiere in 2009.)

NBC said Wednesday that it had completed about two-thirds of the long-term distribution deals for “Steve Harvey.” It expects to complete the remainder soon.

Mr. Harvey’s show has been particularly helpful to the 10 NBC stations that NBCUniversal owns in big cities like New York and Chicago. By drawing a substantial audience in the afternoon, it has helped the shows that come later in the day.

“'Steve Harvey’ has strengthened our daytime lineups and proven to be a strong lead-in to ‘Ellen’ and, in turn, our local newscasts,” Valari Staab, president of the NBC-owned stations, said in a statement, referring to the talk show hosted by Ellen DeGeneres.

Since September Mr. Harvey has had an average of 1.96 million viewers a day, while Ms. Couric has had 2.3 million. The biggest such show in syndication, “Dr. Phil,” has had 3.95 million viewers.

Chinese Journalist Said to Be Detained in Beijing

BEIJING â€" A Chinese journalist who recently released a documentary about a women’s forced labor camp and has worked as a freelance photographer for The New York Times has been detained by police officers in Beijing, his friends and family members said this week.

Two copies of an unsigned police warrant dated June 1 found recently by friends in the apartment of the journalist, Du Bin, said that it had been issued for “disturbing order at a public place.” That falls under an administrative statute the police can use to hold people for up to 15 days for minor offenses, said Jerome A. Cohen, a scholar of Chinese law at New York University.

The police could release the detainee during that period, move that person to China’s “re-education through labor” system, or seek a formal criminal charge, Mr. Cohen said.

One friend of Mr. Du said he had heard that the police were investigating the journalist, who is 41, for illegal business activity related to his books, many of which are on politically sensitive subjects. It is a charge that officials have used before against Chinese journalists writing books on such subjects even when, as with Mr. Du, the books have been published outside mainland China.

His most recent book, “Tiananmen Massacre,” is mostly a compilation of previously published accounts from various sources of the government crackdown of June 4, 1989. It was released in late May by Mirror Books, which has offices in New York and Hong Kong.

Friends of Mr. Du, a self-taught photographer, also said they believed the authorities had been angered by both by his recent writings and his work on the hourlong documentary film he recently completed on the Masanjia women’s labor camp and what inmates described as abuses there.

Many of the Masanjia camp’s prisoners are petitioners seeking redress from the state for perceived wrongs. Other prisoners include practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that is banned in China.

Mr. Du had also shown the film at least once in Hong Kong, and a version was posted online on May 1.

Mr. Du was escorted from his apartment on May 31 by more than 10 police officers, two of them in uniforms and the rest in plain clothes, according to two friends who had spoken with the landlord’s family. Relatives of Mr. Du said the police had not notified them of his whereabouts or why he is being held.

Human rights advocates say the new party leadership under President Xi Jinping has continued the hard-line approach toward outspoken Chinese liberals and dissidents that characterized the decade-long rule of his predecessor, Hu Jintao. On Sunday, a brother-in-law of Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, was given an extraordinary sentence of 11 years in prison on fraud charges.

Mr. Du’s photography work, some of which has appeared in The New York Times, has covered a wide range of subjects, from petitioners to the Three Gorges Dam to the village of Liangjiahe, where Mr. Xi lived for seven years during the Cultural Revolution. Among the subjects of his books are Mao Zedong’s reign, the Japanese invasion of China and the rebel artist Ai Weiwei. A novella, “Toothbrush,” is set in a dystopian society ruled by a single party.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting from Beijing, and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong.