Cable Television

AT&T Inc. won state regulators' permission to sell television service in California, letting it compete with cable providers. The California Public Utilities Commission's approval of AT&T's application to provide video service came three weeks after it allowed Verizon Communications Inc. to offer TV subscriptions. The decision boosts AT&T's effort to expand its U-verse TV and high-speed Internet service to 8 million homes this year. The company has spent $5.

Despite a baseball-imposed deadline of Saturday, negotiations regarding the Extra Innings out-of-market pay package are continuing, a spokesperson for In Demand said. In Demand, which is negotiating on behalf of cable television, and EchoStar, the parent company for the Dish Network, are trying to retain the package. If they are unsuccessful, the package will belong to DirecTV exclusively.

Local governments across the country went to court Tuesday to challenge federal rules intended to spur competition in the cable television industry. Lawyers for organizations representing cities and counties asked the courts to invalidate rules the Federal Communications Commission approved in December to smooth the way for new competitors that want to offer cable television service.

Major League Baseball and In Demand on Wednesday night ended a nasty dispute over whether cable television customers would be able to buy a fan-friendly package that makes out-of-market games available. The months-long standoff had enraged thousands of hard-core baseball fans and drawn Congressional scrutiny.

A group of national cable television networks on Thursday abruptly pulled out of an experimental program that sought to use EBay Inc.'s auction expertise and technology to buy and sell TV time. Several big ad agencies and major advertisers including Home Depot Inc., Toyota Motor Corp. and Intel Corp. hired EBay last summer to create an "online media marketplace" for television ads. The companies had hoped to introduce an efficient, and perhaps lower-cost, tool for selling commercial time.

Residents of more than 14 Southern California locales will now have a third option, besides satellite and cable, for subscribing to pay TV. AT&T Inc. said it would offer pay television service, with bells and whistles not provided by its rivals, beginning today, in Anaheim, Burbank, Glendale, Riverside and other parts of Southern California.

Time Warner Cable Inc. continued to lose pay-TV customers in Los Angeles and Dallas during the first quarter as it struggled to recover from botched efforts to integrate other cable systems it acquired last summer. But sales gains in so-called triple-play packages which include TV, Internet and phone service, helped the nation's second-largest cable TV company post double-digit increases in revenue and profit.

Comcast Corp.'s plan to show movies on its cable TV systems as soon as they open in theaters has exhibitors screaming "Cut!" Two of the nation's biggest theater chains, Regal Entertainment Group and National Amusements Inc., said they would refuse to play films made available in the home simultaneously. "We're not interested in playing anything that makes its debut in the home and at the theater at the same time," said Michael L. Campbell, chief executive of Knoxville, Tenn.

Couch potatoes rejoice: Now there are even fewer reasons to put down the remote control. Walt Disney Co. said Tuesday that it was launching travel-focused, video-on-demand programming that would let some cable television subscribers push a button on their remote and within 15 minutes get a call from a Disney reservation agent to book a vacation. Disney's Travel on Demand, which will be available to 9 million Time Warner Cable Inc. and Cablevision Systems Corp.

The City Council voted Friday to file a lawsuit challenging tentative decisions by the Federal Communications Commission that city officials fear could reduce their authority to regulate cable television franchises. Councilman Bill Rosendahl, a former cable television executive, said the proposed new rules could reduce public access programming and make it harder for the city to protect residents who are customers of the cable firms.