• by August 13, 2004

ABC NEWS, NOW? - It's been more than two decades since it first took a shot at the 24-hour cable news business, but ABC apparently hasn't given up on the idea. Twenty-one years after it scrapped its ill-fated Satellite News Channel venture with Westinghouse's Group W unit (now ironically part of CBS), ABC is quietly rolling out a 24-hour cable news service, according to BusinessWeek. The channel, which ABC is calling ABC News Now, was launched before the Democratic National Convention, and will run at least through election day. But if comments made by Walt Disney Co. president - and former ABC newsman, well weatherman - Bob Iger are any indication, it could continue on well beyond that.

"In many respects, this is the shape of things to come," said during Disney's Aug. 10 quarterly conference call with analysts and investors. Unfortunately, it appears to have come a little too late for ABC. When it first attempted to muscle into the business in 1983, it had a strong partner, and not much competition: just CNN and Headline News. Since then, CNN has expanded its presence, NBC and Microsoft jumped into the game with MSNBC, and News Corp. barreled in with Fox News Channel. Today, there are 19 ad-supported news/information channels, according to the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau's website, including niche channels like Bloomberg Television, CNBC, CNNfn, CNN en Espanol and Disney's own ESPNnews.

In its initial incarnation, ABC News Now will feature anchorman Peter Jennings and political stalwarts like George Stephanopoulos and Cokie Roberts. And since it doesn't exactly have any cable carriage, Disney has struck deals to stream the news through AOL and SBC Yahoo! DSL, along with another to show it on Sprint Vision phones using MobiTV. And, of course, Disney is also airing the channel on 70 ABC-owned and affiliated stations in major markets, with those stations using part of their digital broadcast spectrum for the new digital channel.

According to BusinessWeek, the channel was the brainchild of ABC News president David Westin, and was conceived as a way to access news over new platforms, including the digital spectrum, the Internet, cable, and cell phones. "The world is fundamentally changing from a time when large media oligopolies control distribution to when folks will be the ones with the votes for where they get their news," Westin told BusinessWeek. "I don't know where and when, but I know the direction it's going."

Will Disney make a genuine cable play for the channel in what is already a glutted news channel marketplace? Well, Iger also noted in the company's conference call that ABC can utilize its FCC "must-carry" rules as leverage with cable operators to carry ABC News Now on their digital tiers in markets where ABC affiliates are airing it on a digital broadcast channel.

But we have an even better idea that would scale the whole thing up rather quickly. Disney should simply reconsider Comcast Corp.'s bid to acquire it, which would give it all the cable industry distribution leverage it would ever need to launch a new news channel, or for that matter, just about anything it would want to launch.

IS GOOGLE REALLY BOOBLE IN DISGUISE? - Or, is it just that Google's management team are boobs? Why else would they appear among a bunch of boobs in a not-so-quiet interview in Playboy magazine hitting the streets just as Google's IPO hits The Street? Sure, it's great PR, but it's not exactly the kind of corporate governance that's likely to inspire many traditional investors in a post Sarbanes-Oxley marketplace. Then again, we have a feeling Google isn't really thinking about traditional investors.