SAT TV News

Sundance Channel will debut documentary series “Brick City” on Monday, September 21st at 10:00PM ET and will be broadcast for five consecutive nights at 10:00PM ET. The series was executive produced by Forest Whitaker and filmmakers Marc Levin and Mark Benjamin. The five hour series of “Brick City”, the lives of Mayor Booker and Police Director Garry McCarthy intertwine with Jayda, Blood gang member turned youth mentor, who lives with her Crip boyfriend Creep, and other citizens on the front lines.

“Mark Benjamin and I were captivated by this city and Mayor Booker’s charisma. I grew up near Newark and I can testify, change is real here. But change is hard. It’s authentic human drama and that’s what we wanted to capture. From the personal to the political, the stories were so compelling, we used to joke, ‘We’re going to put the real back in reality programming” said Marc Levin.

Cox Communications has appointed Thomas W. Watkins as its new Director of Sales for Cox Business in Hampton Roads. Watkins as Director will lead the Cox Business sales team to promote Cox business solutions for voice, internet and video for small, medium and large businesses. Further to this, Watkins will also promote Cox Business products to educational, government and other specific markets in Hampton Roads.

Michael Braham, Vice President, Cox Business, Hampton Roads said “”We are pleased to welcome Thom to Cox, his proven ability to lead sales process improvement programs plus his proficiency in building long-term and profitable partnerships with external business partners makes him an ideal fit for the position. We are excited to work with him in the corporate leadership role and we are confident in his ability to help drive our vision to be the most trusted provider in this region.”

Verizon Communications has launched two new channels named FiOS1 to the FiOS TV subscribers in Long Island, New York and nine counties in northern New Jersey. FiOS TV subscribers will have options of new choices for local information, entertainment and sports.

The new channels FiOS1 Long Island and FiOS1 New Jersey, which won’t be available on cable, will provide news, regular traffic and weather reports, and other programming.

Michael Ritter, chief marketing officer for Verizon Telecom said “FiOS1 Long Island and FiOS1 New Jersey are all about the communities. These FiOS1 channels will redefine the delivery of truly local information about people, news and what’s going on in those areas, with industry-leading partners and a cutting-edge and energized team of mobile journalists, or Mo-Jos, we plan to bring FiOS TV subscribers the type of programming that matters most — targeted, timely and tailored for local communities.”

Cox Hampton Roads announces the recipient of Virginia’s Future Leaders scholarships for eighteen Hampton Roads students. This award is in partnership with the Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association (VCTA), and the Donald A. Perry Foundation.

2009 Virginia’s Future Leaders Scholarship recipients are:

Adrian Hill, Newport News

Andre Hill, Newport News

Chelsea Brechtel, Virginia Beach

Christopher Matthew Lester, Virginia Beach

Colby William Owens, Hampton

Derica Quanetta Owens, Virginia Beach

Isabel S. Leitsch, Virginia Beach

J Grimes, Hampton

Jaclyn Alicia Stokes, Hampton

James Dallas Hogge, Virginia Beach

Kimberly Lynne Beachum, Norfolk

Lauren Lea, Norfolk

Lauren Silliphant, Virginia Beach

Meghan Elizabeth Moore, Yorktown

Michael Snellings, Chesapeake

Nicholas Currence, Virginia Beach

Rebecca Jones, Yorktown and

Seth J. Theuerkauf, Gloucester

The awards will be delivered in an Annual Scholarship Luncheon on July 17 in Charlottesville.

Cox Communications has announced the launch of 21 high-definition channels to its subscribers in Hampton. Cox subscribers in Hampton now receive up to 56 HD channels. Cox has also included U.S. Army base Fort Monroe in this expansion.

Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Gloucester, Poquoson, parts of Williamsburg, Newport News, West Point, New Kent, and King and Queen County subscribers are also delivered with the new HD channels.

Cox has added following HD channels at no extra cost to its subscribers:

BET HD – channel 739

Bravo HD – ch.761

Cartoon Network HD – ch.717

CMT HD – ch.733

CNBC HD – ch.725

Comedy Central HD – ch.732

E! HD – ch.741

Fox News Channel HD – ch.764

FX HD – ch.716

Hallmark Movie Channel HD – ch.859

Lifetime Movie Network HD – ch.809

Lifetime Network HD – ch.709

MTV HD – ch.722

Nickelodeon HD – ch.729

Planet Green HD – ch.813

Sci-Fi HD – ch.740

Speed Channel HD – ch.763

Spike HD – ch.756

USA HD – ch.718

Versus HD – ch.734 and

VH1 HD – ch.767

James City County, York County and other areas on the Peninsula also will be blessed with these new HD channels later in the year.

Gary McCollum, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cox Hampton Roads said “We are excited about our enhanced HD services in Hampton as well as on the Fort Monroe base. These changes reflect our commitment to be the most trusted provider in Hampton Roads. We work hard to give our customers the best service and value for their money; this is one reason we provide HD channels at no additional cost to our customers.”

DirecTV has launched local high-definition programming to its subscribers in the Lafayette, Louisiana market today. DirecTV has added local HD channel in 151 cities including Lafayette. DirecTV customers will receive following local HD channels :

WLFI/CBS

WXIN/FOX and

WTHR/NBC

Including Lafayette, DirecTV offers local HD in 125 cities, which represents more than 89 percent of U.S. TV households.

DirecTV subscribers must have an H20 or H21 HD receiver or an HR20 or HR21 DIRECTV Plus HD DVR and a Ka/Ku band dish to receive these new local HD channels.

Cox Communications has launched WRIC HD on channel 708 to its subscribers in King & Queen County, New Kent, and West Point. Cox will also move CNN HD to channel 707 and following are the new channels available for West Point, New Kent and King & Queen County subscribers:

CNN – Channel 7

WRIC – Channel 8

CNN HD – Channel 707 and

WRIC HD – Channel 708

“Cox is making these changes because there will be better alignment of the HD channels with their standard definition channels and we believe this will ease channel reference for our Middle Peninsula customers. The channel moves will not affect other areas of Hampton Roads” said Jen Garrett, Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Mediacom launched four new high-definition channels in Quad Cities and surrounding area on Thursday. Mediacom will also launch FOX News in HD in coming weeks. The new HD channels added are:

Food Network HD - channel 758

FX HD – channel 760

HGTV HD – channel 757 and

Speed HD – channel 761

Cari Fenzel, Mediacom’s regional vice president said “Throughout the past year we’ve expanded high-definition programming to offer the HD experience for more of the most popular television networks, the great value for our customers is that most of our high-def programming is automatically available as part of Mediacom Family Cable.”

Verizon has announced that it will soon launch its FiOS TV serivce to the Onandaga County town residents. The central New York region has approved Verizon as the television franchise and the Clay Town is the first municipality in the central New York region to approve, and Verizon have started building the infrastructure to deliver FiOS TV service later in the year.

This is the 148th TV franchise Verizon has secured in New York and The Telco is expecting more TV franchise discussions with other central New York municipalities during 2009.

Andres Irlando, Verizon senior vice president for the New York region said “This marks yet another milepost in the expansion of our revolutionary FiOS TV product; bringing FiOS TV to a new region demonstrates Verizon’s commitment to the state in terms of investment, jobs and state-of-the-art broadband technology that leapfrogs anything currently available from other carriers. I want to commend the Town of Clay for recognizing the economic and consumer benefits of broadband investment and competition.”

Cox Communications will add MLB Extra Innings and MASN HD on April to its subscribers in Hampton Roads. Cox is planning to bring MLB Extra Innings to channels 671 – 684. MASN HD will be added on channel 739 on April 1 and will deliver unprecedented baseball coverage in high-definition.

MASN HD will bring 200 games of the Washington Nationals and the Baltimore Orioles and also will carry Baltimore Ravens pre-season games, selected NCAA basketball, football and lacrosse games, and ESPN News. The sports network has lined up more than 500 live sporting events in 2009.

Gary McCollum, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cox Hampton Roads said “We are very pleased to add MLB Extra Innings and MASN HD to our extensive coverage of baseball games which includes FOX HD, ESPN HD and Cox 11. These two additions are a double treat for sports fans, especially baseball lovers.”