• Mediacom promotes Dandnaik
By Traci Patterson
Mediacom Communications has promoted Tapan Dandnaik to senior vice president of customer service and financial operations. In his new role, Dandnaik will assume senior responsibility for all customer service call center-related activities.
“Since coming to Mediacom, Tapan has successfully led various initiatives to improve processes and enhance information gathering at all levels of our organization, including managing the team that developed the financial and management tools critical to our record RGU sales growth so far this year,” said Rocco B. Commisso, Mediacom’s chairman and CEO.
Dandnaik began his career with Ingersoll-Rand as a product engineer. In 2000, he joined RCN Corp. as a financial analyst. He joined Mediacom in May 2005 and most recently served as group vice president of financial operations, responsible for the company’s process improvement, financial planning and analysis, billing and data warehouse functions.
• Verizon’s FiOS TV service expands in Wash.
By Traci Patterson
Verizon’s FiOS TV service will soon be available to consumers in Marysville and Kenmore, Wash., thanks to a newly approved agreement authorizing the telco to offer its video service in the communities. Marysville and Kenmore are the third and fourth communities in Washington State to grant video franchises to Verizon, following similar votes earlier this month in Lynnwood and Everett. Verizon said that it plans to begin offering FiOS TV in the communities later this year.
The franchise votes give Verizon the authority to offer FiOS TV to up to 9,730 households in Marysville, and up to 8,400 households in Kenmore. And many Verizon customers in Washington State already have access to Verizon’s FiOS Internet service, which delivers download speeds of up to 50 Mbps.
Verizon already provides FiOS TV in parts of California, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia.
• Cablevision closes purchase of Newsday
By Mike Robuck
Cablevision wrapped up its purchase of Long Island newspaper Newsday yesterday. Cablevision first announced the deal, which was valued at about $650 million, in May. Cablevision purchased 97 percent of Newsday from the Tribune Co. in order to garner a better tax break than an outright purchase of all of Newsday.
Newsday Publisher Tim Knight will continue to oversee Newsday and will report to Cablevision Chief Operating Officer Thomas Rutledge. The two companies said that new collaborations and initiatives will emerge in the coming months once Newsday begins operating under Cablevision’s umbrella.
“We deeply appreciate Newsday‘s journalistic excellence, editorial voice and advertising value,” Rutledge said. “Adding Newsday to the Cablevision family will combine powerful newsgathering capabilities with industry-leading electronic distribution. We believe this presents great opportunities for us to build our subscription-based businesses. This marriage of content and technology will also strengthen Newsday‘s role as the connecting point between readers and the events, businesses and neighbors around them.”
More Broadband Direct:
• Comcast’s Q2 profit increases by 8%
• Comcast, NetZero sign on to anti-child porn plan
• TWC launches PowerBoost in N. Texas
• Qwest promotes Richards to COO
• Ixia partners up with QualiSystems, Apcon
• Report: Online viewing finding an audience
• TiVo debuts ad viewership data
