Los Angeles Times

[Commentary] Time Warner Cable was patting itself on the back after saying it was willing to have a federal arbitrator step in to resolve its long-running dispute with other pay-TV companies over the cost of the new Dodgers channel.

Arbitration with Time Warner Cable over the Dodgers channel would only perpetuate this corrupt system. On the other hand, offering SportsNet LA only to those who want it -- as DirecTV and other pay-TV companies have proposed -- would almost certainly prompt demands for all sports channels to be offered a la carte. Then it would be just a matter of time before other programming tiers -- movies, news, religious and foreign-language shows -- are similarly unbundled. And before long, we'll arrive at the only reasonable destination: allowing consumers to pick their channels in the same way they decide all other purchases: based on their individual wants and not on the demands of some broadcasting executive in New York.

Flexible work arrangements and better prospects to grow their skills could attract thousands of recently laid off employees at Microsoft to jobs at startups.

Forced out the door, the employees are poised to see plenty of demand from quickly growing startups, according to Chandra Shekaran, a general manager in Microsoft’s Bing search unit. He’s hoping to hire some of them to start an engineering office in the Seattle area, where about 1,300 Microsoft staffers were let go.

Time Warner Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes is in an uncomfortable position: The cross hairs of Rupert Murdoch. With Murdoch and his 21st Century Fox team are banging on the door, top TW management is "very resolved" to fend off Murdoch's advances.

Analysts are not so certain that's the case. Wall Street clearly expects Fox to sweeten its offer. Murdoch might even be willing to go as high as $100 a share, according to Wells Fargo Securities senior analyst Marci Ryvicker. That would place the deal's value at $91 billion.

The key question, according to veteran media analyst Michael Nathanson, is: "At what price is 21st Century Fox willing to walk away?"

Junior high students are having trouble turning away from the television. A new study from the Centers for Disease Control found that watching TV is a daily habit for close to all middle school age students in America.

It's not surprising that most children watch television every day, but even so, the numbers are staggering.

Researchers from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics found that in 2012, 98.5% of children between the ages of 12 and 15 said they had watched television every day for the last 30 days. The percentage of children that spent time in front of a computer every day was slightly smaller -- "just" 91%. But it's not the percentage of children that are looking at screens each day that is worrying public health advocates -- it's how much time they are spending that is the concern.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children spend no more than two hours a day watching TV and on a computer. That's because excessive screen time has been linked to children having higher blood pressure, higher serum cholesterol and being overweight or obese.

Unfortunately, most children are spending more time looking at screens than that. Looking at data from the 2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and the National Youth Fitness Survey, the researchers found that 27% of the children surveyed were meeting the two-hour limit.

Nielsen said it has concluded an investigation into tampering of Los Angeles radio ratings, but stopped short of sanctioning Univision Communications for unethical conduct by a former station executive.

Dramatic swings in ratings in 2014 were primarily isolated to Univision's KSCA-FM (101.9) Spanish-language radio station, Nielsen said after its review of the tainted data. The measurement firm said the breaches did not substantially affect audience levels reported for other stations in the nation's largest radio market.

The probe into possible ratings manipulation was launched after KSCA morning show "El Bueno, La Mala y El Feo" leapfrogged to the No. 1 slot over big names such as KIIS-FM (102.7) morning host Ryan Seacrest. The big jump rattled radio circles because strong ratings help stations fetch more money from the nearly $1 billion spent in LA each year on radio commercials and promotions.

Nielsen found that a high-ranking Univision executive at KSCA had access to several of the devices used to collect listening data. That violated Nielsen's rules, and Univision fired its program director for the alleged misconduct; no other station employees were reprimanded.

LA radio stations were notified that Nielsen would not reissue ratings for 2013 or the first quarter of 2014. Nielsen said there "were minimal differences in the estimates for the overwhelming majority of other stations in the market" and did not discipline Univision.

US goalkeeper Tim Howard made plenty of saves in the World Cup match against Belgium, but ESPN's ratings needed no rescuing.

The United States team's 2-1 loss in extra time to Belgium drew an average of 16.5 million viewers to ESPN, making it the third-most-viewed soccer telecast ever in the US. The US team’s 2-1 loss in extra time to Belgium drew an average of 16.5 million viewers to ESPN, making it the third most-viewed soccer telecast ever in the US.

That's an impressive feat for the Disney-owned cable sports network, particularly considering that many of the US fans were still at work during the game that started at 1 p.m. on the West Coast.

The viewership levels came in behind only the 18.2 million who watched Team USA's tie with Portugal on June 22 and the nearly 18 million who saw the US women's team defeat China in 1999.

The US viewership total climbs when adding viewers for the Spanish-language network Univision. An average of 5.1 million people tuned in to Univision's coverage of the match, bringing the total to 21.6 million. The combined viewership on ESPN and Univision for the US match against Portugal was nearly 25 million.

Los Angeles school district officials have allowed a group of high schools to choose from among six different laptop computers for their students -- a marked contrast to the 2013 decision to give every pupil an iPad.

Contracts that will come under final review by the Board of Education would authorize the purchase of one of six devices for each of the 27 high schools at a cost not to exceed $40 million.

In the fall, administrators, teachers and students at those schools will test the laptops to determine whether they should be used going forward. What they learn will affect the future of an ongoing effort to provide computers for all students in the nation's second-largest school system.

"The benefit of the new approach is clear," said Los Angeles Unified school board member Monica Ratliff, who chaired a panel that reviewed the technology effort. "Why would we treat all our students -- whether they are a first-grader or a high school freshman -- as if they all had the same technology needs? They don't.... To have a one-device-fits-all approach does not make sense."

Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive of Comcast, is looking to fortify his company for an increasingly competitive era. He believes that the $45-billion takeover of Time Warner Cable will help do that, particularly as major technology companies -- including Google, Apple and Amazon -- try to crowd into America's living rooms to control the TV-watching experience.

He still needs the blessing of federal regulators, who are expected to decide soon. If they approve, Comcast would be a dominant provider of cable TV and Internet service -- an increasingly vital connection for tens of millions of families -- along the nation's East and West coasts. It would gain 7 million subscribers and claim two major pieces on the chessboard, Los Angeles and New York, an audacious move even for a company known for its daring bets.

Comcast would command the major population centers: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle and San Francisco. In Los Angeles, Comcast would become the sole cable TV operator, with reach into nearly 1.8 million homes. The deal would complete Comcast's transformation into a national company from a regional cable operator, all of it done without having to dig trenches and extend its fiber lines through every state.

"Something closer to world domination" was how veteran cable analyst Craig Moffett described Comcast's ambitions.

In its ruling against the TV streaming company Aereo, the Supreme Court has removed one of the most visible threats to the pay-TV industry's notoriously expensive bundle.

There is also a generation of viewers, particularly young people, who increasingly forgo cable and satellite in favor of online outlets including Netflix and Hulu. Analysts contend the media industry will lose this key TV-watching demographic without adopting less restrictive, and more affordable options.

"If Aereo had been upheld, you could've told your cable company to jump in a lake," said Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. "With Aereo, and also things like Netflix and Hulu, that would have been the start to a pretty good package."

Broadcasters worry that services like Aereo encourage so-called cord-cutting and undercut the rising fees they charge distributors including Time Warner Cable and DirecTV to carry their programming. Those fees account for billions of dollars in revenue a year.

Los Angeles, once the king of TV pilots, is rapidly losing its domain to New York and other rivals. The LA region's share of pilot production dropped to a historic low in the most recent pilot season, as producers took their business to the Big Apple and other cities offering stronger tax breaks and rebates, according to a new report.

Among 203 pilots produced in the 12 months ended in May, only 44% (90 pilots) were filmed in the LA region, down from 52% the previous season and 82% from the 2006-07 pilot season. The rest mainly filmed in New York, Atlanta, and the Canadian cities Vancouver and Toronto, an annual survey released by FilmLA concluded. The decline has been especially sharp in the category of TV dramas -- New York surpassed Los Angeles for the first time in filming one-hour TV drama pilots.

The Big Apple drew 24 TV drama pilots versus 19 in LA. The decline in the number of TV drama pilots is especially significant because dramas are considered the most economically valuable type of TV production, employing large crews and often over a period of several years. A TV drama pilot costs about $6 million to $8 million to produce.