Subscribers

Cox Cable, DirecTV and Dish Network are still trying to reach agreements to carry Time Warner Cable's new sports channel SportsNet in time for the outlet's first Lakers telecast Wednesday night. Time Warner Cable's SportsNet, which launched Oct. 1, is the new home for the Lakers and will be the only place for fans to see 57 of the team's 82 regular-season games. Other games will be available on national outlets, including Tuesday night's Lakers season opener against Dallas, which was on TNT. Last week, Time Warner Cable struck distribution deals for SportsNet and the Spanish-language service Deportes with Charter Communications, AT&T U-Verse and Verizon Fios.

The Colony Theatre in Burbank is facing the possibility of imminent closure if the company isn't able to resolve a budgetary shortfall, leaders announced over the weekend. They said the 37-year-old company has run out of money and needs to raise $49,000 in the next two weeks and $500,000 by the end of the calendar year in order to remain open. The Colony, which produces contemporary and classic plays and musicals, operates a 268-seat theater in the Burbank Town Center mall.  In the past two years, the Colony has seen a significant drop in attendance, which has been "the root of all these problems," said Trent Steelman, the company's executive director, in an interview.

Netflix Inc.'s stock plunged Wednesday, as investors reacted negatively to guidance that its streaming service would attract fewer subscribers in the U.S. this year than expected. The company's shares were trading at $60.50 at midday Wednesday, down about 11% from the previous day's close. The stock dip followed Netflix's revised guidance for subscriber growth in the U.S, which came during its third quarter investor call Tuesday after the market closed. Netflix delivered better-than-expected revenue growth for its third quarter ending Sept.

After the coffee. Before ignoring a new version of the iPad. The Skinny: For some reason my DVR blew off recording Fox's "New Girl" last night. Any other Time Warner Cable subscribers have the same problem or is mine just possessed? Wednesday's headlines include Mel Karmazin's plans to leave SiriusXM, Netflix stock tumbles after it posts disappointing results, and the National Geographic Channel movie “SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden" gets some last-minute editing.  Daily Dose: The World Series starts Wednesday night in San Francisco and Fox is hoping a Tigers-Giants battle will deliver.

Borrowing from Twitter and other social networks, LinkedIn will now let its users follow specific individuals and receive their updates. The professional social network announced Tuesday that users will be able to subscribe to 150 "influential thought leaders" to receive their posts. Previously, LinkedIn users could get updates from companies and industries but not individuals unless those individuals approved the connection. LinkedIn follows other social networks who have this feature including Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram.

The clock is ticking, and like a lot of Southern California sports fans, Gary Price is growing anxious. For weeks, the Glendale resident has heard about stalled negotiations between the Pac-12 Networks and his satellite provider, DirecTV. This weekend, the stalemate hits home for Price and more than 1 million other viewers in the Los Angeles market. They will not get to watch UCLA play Houston in a game that is being broadcast only by the conference. The same thing could happen with the USC-California game next weekend.

Canada's largest telecommunications company plans to launch its own online movie service to compete with Netflix. BCE Inc. Chief Executive George Cope outlined plans Monday to use the company's planned $3.38-billion acquisition of Astral Media Inc. -- a leading provider of English- and French-language pay television services -- to roll out the new service, according to a report from Bloomberg News. Netflix introduced its service in Canada in September 2010, and had amassed 1 million subscribers 10 months later.

AMC Networks has launched another round of attack ads aimed at Dish, the satellite broadcaster that stopped carrying its cable channels almost two months ago. The only problem is getting the ads in front of actual Dish subscribers, of which there are about 14 million. The new ads are running only on AMC, IFC, WE and Sundance -- none of which, of course, are being carried by Dish. While AMC could try to buy advertising on other networks that are available on Dish, those networks probably would be reluctant to run spots that might offend one of their biggest distributors.

Aereo Inc., the new distribution service that media mogul Barry Diller is backing, has little chance of survival, a media analyst said. Besides the legal battles Aereo is facing with CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC and other broadcasters, there are also questions about whether there is demand for what Aereo is offering. "Even if Aereo can win in court, the company is already dead in the water for multiple reasons," said Dan Rayburn, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan. Aereo, which launched last spring in New York, basically transmits the signals of local broadcast stations via the Internet to smartphones, tablets and Internet-friendly TVs. Aereo charges subscribers $12 a month for a small antenna that receives broadcast signals and a remote digital video recorder that can hold up to 40 hours of shows.

DirecTV said Thursday its profits for the second quarter were up 1% to $711 million and revenue increased 9% to $7.2 billion thanks primarily to growth in Latin America, where it added over 600,000 subscribers. However, in the United States the satellite broadcaster lost about 52,000 subscribers. That is believed to be the first time in the company's history that it has experienced a dip in subscribers. DirecTV has just under 20 million customers in the U.S. DirecTV chief executive Mike White has said the company is focused more on retaining its customers and getting them to subscribe to additional services than it is in wooing new subscribers.