* Verizon teams with home builder
Verizon has partnered with a leading home builder in order to grab some early access to potential customers for the telco’s line of “FiOS” services.
Under a co-marketing deal, Verizon will hawk its fiber-fed services initially to new Lennar Corp. homes in parts of Texas and central Florida.
The agreement will ensure that Lennar homebuyers will be first in line to subscribe to Verizon’s phone service and FiOS Internet service, which offers up to 30 Mbps. One key concept of the deal is to have those services up and running by the time the customer moves into the new home.
* CTHRA reveals 2006 board
The Cable and Telecommunications Human Resources Association has issued the results for the 2006 board elections. Elected to the board for two-year terms are:
– President: Juan Munoz, Time Warner Cable
– Immediate Past President, Brian Koenig, Scientific-Atlanta
– Vice President: Beth Arnholt, Comcast Cable
– Secretary: Julie Cookson, Scripps Networks
– Treasurer: Lisa Chang, The Weather Channel.
* Gotuit adds concert fare
Gotuit Media Corp. has expanded its library of concerts that are made available on-demand. The latest additions include live performances from artists and bands such as Tupac Shakur, Ice T, Macy Gray, James Brown and The Ramones.
The Gotuit Music On Demand service is presently available to about 500,000 digital homes in the northeastern U.S. served by Time Warner Cable and Adelphia Communications.
* More networks ride Rentrak
Rentrak Corp. has signed on a raft of new networks for OnDemand Essentials, a platform that measures and analyzes video-on-demand usage.
The latest to sign multi-year deals include CMT, Hallmark Channel, Logo, Playboy TV, TV Guide SPOT and Warner Home Video On Demand.
Rentrak’s system is designed to breakdown VOD performance by title, audience sharing, weekly top titles and competitive performance by network category. Rentrak noted that its service operator partners have also approved the following data to be shared with advertisers: VOD-enabled universe, total orders, unique set-top box orders and total minutes viewed.
Among operators, Bresnan Communications, Comcast Cable, Cablevision Systems Corp., Charter Communications and Insight Communications are participating in the OnDemand Essentials program.
