Cable

After getting mixed ratings report cards in 2009, CNN and MSNBC are adjusting their lineups in the coming weeks as they try to lure back viewers who drifted away after the 2008 election. The changes at the two channels come after a year in which Fox News grew even stronger, bolstered by outspoken hosts such as Glenn Beck, who used his show to rally opposition to the Obama administration. In prime time, Fox News averaged 2.2 million viewers, a 7% rise over 2008, the network's best showing in its 13-year history, according to Nielsen.

Sky Angel LLC, a distribution company that delivers content via broadband or "over the top," claims that programmers are resisting doing business with it for fear of upsetting cable and satellite pay-TV distributors. In written testimony submitted in advance of Wednesday's Future of Video hearing being held by the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, Sky Angel Chief Executive Robert Johnson said, "The video distribution marketplace remains willing to engage in anti-competitive tactics in order to harm emerging competitors.

WASHINGTON -- A cable signed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed scaling back security personnel in the Libyan city of Benghazi five months before militants there killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, according to an interim report by House Republicans. It is unclear whether Clinton personally authored the cable, a copy of which was not included in the report. Cables from Washington typically go out under the name of the secretary of State even though almost all are written by staff members.

A newly declassified document has added to long-standing questions about whether Henry Kissinger, while secretary of State, halted a U.S. plan to curb a secret program of international assassinations by South American dictators. The document, a set of instructions cabled from Kissinger to his top Latin American deputy, ended efforts by U.S. diplomats to warn the governments of Chile, Uruguay and Argentina against involvement in the covert plan known as Operation Condor, according to Peter Kornbluh, an analyst with the National Security Archive, a private research organization that uncovered the document and made it public Saturday.

"American Idol" fired judges, "The Tonight Show" is a punch line and viewers keep splintering across the channel landscape, but there's at least one sure thing in the TV business: Football rules the airwaves in 2010. In a striking display of ratings prowess, the opening games of the college and pro football seasons drew record audiences, further cementing the sport's position atop America's sports-media food chain. Already this month, NBC had the most-watched regular-season National Football League game ever shown in prime time, and Fox's ratings for the opening weekend of NFL games were the network's best Week 1 numbers since it began showing pro games in 1994.

Walt Disney Co. has reached an agreement that would bring Pixar Animation Studios' "Cars 2," Disney's "The Muppets" and other approved films to Chinese cable television viewers, broadening the Burbank entertainment giant's access to the world's most populous market. An executive from You on Demand said Wednesday that it had struck a licensing deal with Disney to rent current films, as well as classic movies such as "The Lion King" and "Mary Poppins," through its recently launched on-demand service in China.

As a Marine, Trevor Neiman survived three tours of duty in Iraq, where he patrolled the deadly streets of Fallouja and lost some of his best friends. A knife attack at his Phelan home in May left the muscular man with a punctured lung, broken ribs and a ghastly head wound. But that didn't stop him from following in his father's footsteps and becoming a cable TV installer. On Monday, Neiman, 25, went to a Victorville home. While he was inside, a man grabbed a hammer and fatally beat him. "There was no exchange of words.

There's an unfortunate difference in words between the cover title, "Data Till You Drop!" (by Carla Lazzareschi, May 16) and the inside headline, "TV Till You Drop!" Data is certainly not TV, and, with few exceptions, TV does not provide data. Although the technology of 500-channel cable boxes is interesting, and the corresponding interview with John Malone informative, the prospect of television providing data in the near future is somewhat remote (no pun intended). I strongly suspect that the future of cable will be no more than an extension of the status quo--that the percentage of cable bandwidth that's allocated to entertainment will significantly exceed the percentage allocated to computer, data and educational services.

"Tell me what you don't like about yourself." When "Nip/Tuck" opened with that line in the summer of 2003, the television universe had no idea what it was in for. Alternatively emotional, outlandish, sexual, graphic, tongue-in-cheek and gothic, the story of two handsome Miami plastic surgeons (Dylan Walsh and Julian McMahon) "sucking the champagne and caviar out of life" was a breakout hit, and not just in terms of its own fledgling network, FX. With its cultural statement about society's obsession with youth and its underlying message that "beauty is a curse on the world," "Nip/Tuck" resonated with aging baby boomers and younger viewers.

My cable company has been collecting what they call an "Orange County Property Tax" from me for several months now. Would someone care to tell me what they're doing with the interest on my money? Cable companies have bad service, and we, the people, have no choice because they have a monopoly! EILEEN E. PADBERG Irvine