Comcast Roundup: How you can sell your Web product, fighting for $0 and More

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

Get your business plan ready.

In a bruised economy that has made kingmakers of those with spare cash, Sam Schwartz, who oversees mergers and acquisitions for Comcast’s digital group, told Peter Kafka of Media Memo that he’s shopping.

“I’m ready for pitches,” he said, in the interested video interview, which you can see below.

While previous purchases, like Fandango and Daily Candy, may have had technology motivations, Schwartz may be eying sites with large unique traffic in general. So what’s your idea?

The Media Memo video interview, the fallout from Comcast’s agreement with the NFL Network, why Comcast is threatening to cancel someone’s cable over a bill for $0 and four other Comcast stories you need to know to ace the test, after the jump.

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Comcast Roundup: Two big Comcast fights end, new ad campaign and More

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

Comcast settled two hotly contested fights with major content creators last week.

Comcast and the NFL Network settled their differences and inked a nine-year deal that will broadcast the football channel to more than two-thirds of Comcast subscribers, the New York Times reports.

The Media Memo at All Things Digital also reports that after Comcast’s squabble with Disney over Mickey’s joining Hulu last month, the two came together to announce that Disney-owned ESPN will offer its streaming video service to 17 million Comcast broadband subscribers.

Comcast’s growing lobbying budget, new advertising campaign and three other Comcast stories you need to read, after the jump.

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Comcast Roundup: Comcast and NetFlix could battle, Buying good coverage and More

One particular company in our region garners more news coverage than any other by far: Comcast, of course.

This is the Comcast Roundup, what may or may not become a regular department of ours.

• The Business Insider reports that as online video streaming develops, companies like NetFlix ought to pay less attention to user generated services like YouTube and more attention to diverse, robust cable and telecommunications giants like, oh, say Comcast. ‘The coming war,’ they call it, and not just to goad you into reading their story, although that worked on us.

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Comcast Roundup: Comcast Center tallest U.S. LEED building and squabbles with Verizon

One particular company in our region garners more news coverage than any other by far: Comcast, of course.

It isn’t the region’s largest employer, nor is it even the biggest or most profitable. It just makes a lot more noise. While we cover some of it and hope to do more, a lot of that noise isn’t worth much more than a sentence or two. But much of it is worth following, and we bet many of you readers would like to, so we’re going to sort everything you need to know.

This is the Comcast Roundup, what may or may not become a regular department of ours (we don’t make promises we can’t keep, except to our illegitimate children).

• The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that the Comcast Center, the tallest building in Center City, has garnered another distinction — the tallest LEED-certified building in the country.

Read more on the company’s continued battles with Verizon, NFL Network, how Comcast might be defending your right to not pay more for heavy Internet use and more.

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Friday Tech Links: Comcast and the NFL spar, Conficker and domain extensions

4/17/09 11:09 a.m. Update amended: Thanks Jim!

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun.

Because that’s what we do best.

• USA Today reports that a “seemingly endless stream” of new domain extensions, like .philly, could join traditional fare like .com and .org next year under a landmark change approved last summer by the Orwellian-named Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the entity that oversees the Web’s address system.

Below see more stories you need to be sure you saw, including our most trafficked of the week.

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The NFL is not happy with Comcast. Must … resist … football puns.

Everyone’s favorite hometown cable psuedo-monopoly is in court this week over allegations it is favoring its own content over third-party channels.

The National Football League and Comcast have been fighting over the cable giant’s handling of the NFL Network in FCC court. Since its launch, Comcast has excluded the NFL Network from its primary channel group forcing customers to pay an extra eight dollars for an additional programming package.

The NFL is accusing Comcast of favoring its own sports channels, such as The Golf Channel and Versus, while making it difficult for the competition to be carried. The network has been relegated to MTV’s 1986 tactics begging customers to call Comcast and demand the NFL network but the result will affect the strange balancing act that Comcast does between content producer and content provider.

The NFL Network is mostly known for carrying a handful of live football games throughout the year, broadcasting classic games and covering the NFL draft. Unless you are a die-hard football nut, the result of this case will go mostly unnoticed as the Eagles are not currently scheduled for any NFL Network games.

Comcast has countered, accusing the NFL of demanding an unrealistic per-subscriber fee of 70 cents and will stop carrying the network at all when their contract expires at the end of this month. Comcast is also being taken to court over a similiar dispute with WealthTV.

via Philly.com and the Wall Street Journal