iPad Will Rule TV? --- Tower Coverage --- Net Pressures --- And, Oh Yeah, Retrans

• Analyze This: Citadel’s Shing Yin follows American Tower and its competitors ... we all should.  He notes the company is expanding dramatically adding 7.8K towers “via new builds and acquisitions in 2010, compared to 3,550 in 2009 and just 960 in 2008.  For 2011, the company has already announced plans to grow its portfolio by about 5,600 towers, of which ~4,300 will be from acquisitions.”  He rates it ‘neutral' with a target of $56. --- Another tower company, SBA Communications, is rated ‘reduce’ by Yin with a price target of $34. --- Radio One CEO Alfred C. Liggins, III, reported, “Our investment in TV One continues to perform strongly.  TV One had Q4 net revenues of $28.7 million (+17.1% vs Q4 2009) and EBITDA of $5.9 million after valuation expenses of $2.0 million (+12.5% vs Q4 2009).  On February 25, 2011, TV One completed a private debt offering of $119 million.”  Furthermore, “TV One plans to use the balance of the Canyon funding to repurchase DIRECTV's 12.4% interest in the Network.” --- Soon to be part of EchoStar, Hughes Communications CEO Pradman Kaul said, "The highlight in the fourth quarter was the stand-out performance by our consumer business. We activated nearly 59,000 new subscribers in Q4, an all-time quarterly record, while also increasing ARPU. We added a net of 74,000 subscribers in 2010 and we recorded over $1 billion of new orders in 2010, as a result of which our non-consumer backlog was a healthy $1.1 billion at year end 2010. The construction of our Jupiter™ satellite is proceeding well and is on-time and on-budget; we are on track to launch Jupiter in the first half of 2012." --- Interesting take from Collins Stewart’s Tom Eagan as he asks, “A new Starz Originals tier for Netflix?”  And he rates Liberty Starz a ‘buy’ with a target of $75.  Windows are certainly in flux ...

• Rules & Regs: Hillicon Valley reports House GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) “convened a meeting of top communications companies on Wednesday morning, where he questioned why they are not doing more to help Republicans in the fight against net-neutrality rules. - “Participants included Peter Davidson of Verizon, Tim McKone of AT&T, Steve Largent of CTIA, Walter McCormick of U.S. Telecom, Kyle McSlarrow of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), Comcast, and Time Warner Cable, according to industry sources.  Verizon was the sole company to evade criticism during the meeting, sources said.”

• Retrans: FCC is meeting today ... details tomorrow morning in The Morning BRIDGE.  Comment: I remember ’92 and the Cable Act (veto and all) ... it did a couple of odd things.  It regulated cable, but provided for de-regulation (that provision put us in the data business ... MediaCensus is the direct descendant of the Effective Competition Tracking Reports and it is why our subscriber tracking is the best ... take a look at CTAM’s latest Pulse) and it created retransmission consent.  Back then, cable was the only successful multichannel provider ... today there are four big, very successful competitors, two of which are national.  The law was created for a different marketplace ... the FCC might think about that. - PSM

• Tech: It’s an iPad day for cable ... click here for Cablevision news from MediaPost, click here for the NY Times on Comcast and click here for March Madness from Business Insider.     

• Folks: Forbes (03/14/11) asks if Cisco’s John Chambers still has any magic noting, “Five years ago it netted 27 cents per dollar of revenue, now it gets just over a dime.”

• Programming: Comcast Colorado Springs and Pueblo, CO, added Blue Highways TV.

• Up, Over & Down There: UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has approved the spin-off Sky News as an independent company as that clears the way for News Corp to absorb the rest of BSkyB soon.
 
• Spectrum: Forbes hammers Cisco (see above) and then writes, “Wireless Spectrum: Washington Is Clueless” and makes a compelling argument (Steve Forbes column 03/14/11) for free enterprise until he suggests, “If President Obama truly wants to make us more competitive in high tech, one useful step would be to abolish the FCC.”  Or, let’s not regulate interference with spectrum usage? .  

• More News in The Morning BRIDGE ... early tomorrow morning in your in-box.•