Broadcast Rights

As the camera pans through a marble room, a statue of a flute player, carved from the same beige marble, sways in time to his own music. As if fulfilling King Midas' dream, the flutist and the other statues in the room turn to gold, glittering in the light. Suddenly, a white ball appears and fills the screen with the familiar brush-stroke logo of The Wave, KTWV-FM (94.7).

There wasn't much news attached to Monday's official announcement that the Dodgers had finalized their deal with Time Warner Cable, nothing that wasn't known already. The 25-year contract starts after the following season and is reportedly worth $7 billion to $8 billion. Mostly it left the same old questions: Will the deal gain Major League Baseball approval, will there be other sports programming on the channel, will there be a Spanish-language outlet, will there be any games on free television?

Wondering if the kids from "Glee" will be out of high school — or at the very least, start shaving — by the time the 2015 Women's World Cup rolls around? Or the 2018 World Cup in Russia? Think of all the cross-promotional avenues from our friends at Fox, the media company emerging on Friday with the English-language rights to those tournaments, as well as the 2019 Women's World Cup and the 2022 World Cup. Close your eyes and you can practically hear "Don't Stop Believing" accompanying highlight footage of some gritty yet lovable underdog footballing side.

For many Kings fans, the joy of being one victory away from the team's first Stanley Cup championship is incomplete because they haven't been able to hear the play-by-play call and analysis of announcers Bob Miller and Jim Fox, who were relegated to the sidelines after the first round because of the exclusivity clause in the NHL's television deal with NBC. Club executives have been working on a solution that would respect complicated broadcast-rights issues...

Canal Plus must stop buying exclusive broadcast rights to recent French films to air on a pay-per-view basis until France's competition regulator decides whether the practice is unfair, the regulator said. The Conseil de la Concurrence imposed the measure on Canal Plus and its Kiosque unit after an initial inquiry prompted by complaints from two rivals, Multivision, a TV operator, and Television Par Satellite, France's No. 2 digital-satellite TV service.

Media group EM.TV & Merchandising said Wednesday that it had exercised an option to lift its stake in Formula One racing to 75%, gaining control over broadcast rights to one of the world's most popular sporting events. The move, clearly flagged by EM.TV and its Munich, Germany-based partner Kirch Group, has been opposed by car makers involved in Formula One racing who are wary of broadcast rights falling into the hands of a single television operator.

Jockeys Corey Black and Alex Solis were talking to reporters Sunday after a day of silence, but they won't be giving television interviews, a practice that is expected to be followed by other riders at Santa Anita. "I'm not doing any television interviews," Black said. "About the other guys, I don't know. This is my decision. We're not the stars, so they don't need us." The Jockeys' Guild's insurance agreement with the Thoroughbred Racing Assns.

CBS will announce today that it has won the U.S. broadcast rights for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, industry sources said Tuesday. CBS emerged the winner after Fox Broadcasting Co., the other contender for the TV rights, declined to bid, a source said. Fox had been seriously weighing a bid for the 1998 Winter Olympics in the wake of its surprise $1.58-billion winning bid for a new NFL contract.

From a small, quiet house near a subway station in the shabbily genteel Camden Town district, a rear-guard action is being fought against government reforms that could change the face of British television. In this building, which normally houses an independent TV production company, a large, bearded, bearlike man named Simon Albury paces restlessly, rummages through piles of newspaper clippings, takes a seemingly endless string of phone calls and summons up information on a computer screen.

Call it the "Dodgers tax. " Pay-TV analysts expect Guggenheim Baseball Management, the investment group that paid an astronomical sum for the Dodgers, to recover at least part of its investment by charging a sky-high fee for the right to broadcast the team's games. With local stations and cable channels run by Time Warner Cable and News Corp. expected to get into a bidding war for those rights, the team is virtually guaranteed a multibillion-dollar contract - not unlike the one the Lakers won last year from Time Warner.

The Dodgers sued Fox Sports on Wednesday morning, alleging that the television company is trying to "interfere" with the sale of the team in bankruptcy. In a sharply worded court filing Wednesday night, Fox said it would ask that the Dodgers be dismissed from bankruptcy. In the process, Fox slammed Major League Baseball as "Prime Ticket's former ally" and claimed the only reason Dodgers owner Frank McCourt wants to sell the team's TV rights now is to put "value rightfully belonging to Prime Ticket in his own pocket.

Wondering if the kids from "Glee" will be out of high school — or at the very least, start shaving — by the time the 2015 Women's World Cup rolls around? Or the 2018 World Cup in Russia? Think of all the cross-promotional avenues from our friends at Fox, the media company emerging on Friday with the English-language rights to those tournaments, as well as the 2019 Women's World Cup and the 2022 World Cup. Close your eyes and you can practically hear "Don't Stop Believing" accompanying highlight footage of some gritty yet lovable underdog footballing side.

Fox Sports sued the Dodgers on Tuesday, trying to halt the proposed television rights sale that Frank McCourt says is his key to emerging from bankruptcy as the team owner. McCourt's strategy now faces at least two significant obstacles -- from Fox, which claims the Dodgers have breached their current cable contract, and from Major League Baseball, which has vowed not to approve any television deal that would leave McCourt in control of the Dodgers. Baseball also has asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to order the sale of the Dodgers.

Time Warner Cable has entered into a 15-year agreement with the California Interscholastic Federation to assume broadcast rights for regional and state championships in boys' and girls' sports effective this school year, CIF Executive Director Marie Ishida announced Thursday. No financial details were released. Time Warner is scheduled to broadcast at least 60 championship games via television and the Internet this school year and 80 in future years. Negotiations are still taking place with Time Warner to become involved in regular-season and section championship events.

The showdown has been brewing for months — now Frank McCourt and Major League Baseball will finally square off in a court of law with the future of the Dodgers at stake. The battle lines were drawn when the team filed for bankruptcy Monday and the beleaguered owner faces long odds, legal and sports business experts said. "To use sports parlance, this is a Hail Mary pass," said Marc Ganis, a sports consultant who acted as an advisor in the recent Chicago Cubs sale. "Hail Marys sometimes work, but very rarely.

For many Kings fans, the joy of being one victory away from the team's first Stanley Cup championship is incomplete because they haven't been able to hear the play-by-play call and analysis of announcers Bob Miller and Jim Fox, who were relegated to the sidelines after the first round because of the exclusivity clause in the NHL's television deal with NBC. Club executives have been working on a solution that would respect complicated broadcast-rights issues...

"Chicago" on TV: NBC has acquired broadcast rights to Oscar winner "Chicago" for the film to run on both the network and its Bravo channel. The film will be available to NBC in 2005 after its run on pay cable.

Mazel tov, England. As your former suburb, we just want you to know how enchanted we are with what's happening over there right now between William and Catherine (a.k.a. Kate). We hear there'll be some sort of ceremony soon. The world will pause. Hearts will flutter. I'll eat a turtle dove -- extra fries. For a moment, the British Empire will shine once more. And, through it all, America will have wedding envy. What's wedding envy? That's when someone has a bigger wedding than yours.

With only hours to go until their current contract expires, News Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc. were still trying to hammer out a new deal for the cable system operator to carry News Corp.'s Fox TV stations and several of its cable networks. The likelihood of a new accord before today's midnight deadline appeared to be quickly diminishing, and the possibility was increasing that millions of Time Warner subscribers could see Fox shows disappear from their TV screens. On Wednesday, News Corp.