By Drew Grant 7/16/12 1:34pm

Cable Wars

Breaking Bad (AMC)

Never Look a Meth Horse in the Mouth: AMC and DISH Offer Tempting Gifts for Taking Sides in Contract Dispute

The battle of the networks vs. cable providers reached a boiling point last night, when some 14 million viewers subscribed to DISH Networks were unable to watch the fifth season premiere of AMC’s highly popular, uplifting show about overcoming cancer with meth labs, Breaking Bad.

Whether negotiations between DISH and AMC broke down because of a breach of contract (says AMC) or because the network was charging too much for its service (says Dish), the outcome is hurtful to both parties. The ratings for Breaking Bad will be skewed negatively in the short term, since Nielsen only counts people who watch Walt and Jesse make meth during their original time-slot.

Meanwhile, AMC is enticing viewers away from DISH Networks with some pretty clever tactics. Read More

By Drew Grant 7/11/12 12:17pm

TV Wars

Time Warner, Dish Network, and DirecTv: the Summer of their discontent

DirecTv, Dish Network, and Time Warner: A Guide to How Your Cable Provider Will Be Screwing You This Summer

Several of us watching Jersey Shore reruns  last night suffered a rude shock when DirecTv rudely cut off our programming at midnight. Of course, we had been warned–a vague phone call earlier in the day, a hushed, automated voice telling us to call back our service provider, which we didn’t because we thought they were going to try to upgrade us again– but DirecTv’s  inability to negotiate with Viacom portends a summer of bad news, television-wise.

No matter who you pick to serve up your TV, it looks like you’ll be getting screwed. Here’s how it breaks down. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 11/30/11 10:02am

The Lease Beat

137Varick (2)

Trinity’s 137 Varick Street Reaches 100%

A Trinity Real Estate-owned Hudson Square office building has reached 100 percent occupancy after it lured NYU-Poly Varick Street Incubator away from another Trinity-owned building into a bigger space, signed Paik Architecture PLLC to new office space, and agreed to give current tenant Unity Construction Development additional space, The Commercial Observer has learned.

Having met maximum capacity, 137 Varick Street now has an eclectic collection of tenants that range from Alexander Gorlin Architects, online job search company TheLadders, and Scott Jordan Furniture.

Read More

By Emily Geminder 1/25/10 9:52pm

Mogul Request Live

The same year that Times Square became Times Square, the Astor Hotel opened for business. It was 1904, and The New York Times had just arrived in the neighborhood, erecting its headquarters on West 43rd Street. Like the paper of record of that day, The New York Herald, The Times wanted to paste Read More

By Felix Gillette 8/18/09 11:46pm

The Reinvention of Brian Graden

Earlier this summer, when Brian Graden announced in an email to colleagues that he would be stepping down as the president of entertainment at MTV Networks at the end of the year, he didn’t cite the reasons typically invoked by media executives on their way out the door. He wasn’t starting a Huffington Post–meets–something-or-other Internet Read More

By Eliot Brown 11/05/08 12:08am

City Looks To Bolster Media Industry

Last Thursday, at the Audit Bureau of Circulations’ annual conference, Mayor Michael Bloomberg dropped by the Waldorf-Astoria to deliver brief remarks to a ballroom about two-thirds full. Having just finished with a press conference on the fiscal crisis, he targeted his opening joke at The New York Times with a quip that seemed to capture Read More