Directv

Are you homesick for news and culture from the old country? Later this year, the DirecTV direct broadcasting system will let you reach out and touch a homeland halfway around the world, when it adds the most extensive ethnic and foreign-language channel offerings of any small-dish satellite or cable system. Initially, the package will include six channels from the Ethnic America Broadcasting Company - Russian-based WMNB-TV, Network Asia (serving Asians from the Indian subcontinent)

Sen. John Kerry urged baseball to hold off on a deal to put the sport's "Extra Innings" package of out-of-market games exclusively on DirecTV, but the sport's No. 2 official wouldn't make a commitment. The Massachusetts Democrat made the push at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing he chaired yesterday in an effort to keep the games on cable TV and EchoStar's Dish Network. The dispute revolves largely over how many homes will receive baseball's new television network in 2009, with DirecTV agreeing to carry it on a basic tier available to about 15 million homes.

The NFL extended its agreement with DirecTV for 5 years yesterday, giving the satellite service exclusive rights to the league's subscription package in a deal worth $2 billion. The NFL's average take will rise to $400 million, more than three times the $130 million it is getting from DirecTV this season under an expiring 5-year contract, an industry source close to the negotiations told the Associated Press. Included in the agreement, which runs from 2003 to '07, is the launching of a 24-hour NFL Channel on DirecTV as early as next year.

Comcast Corp., which refuses to put its new regional sports channel on the DirecTV and PrimeStar satellite television systems, defended itself yesterday in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission. As the company said last month when its competitors complained, it didn't make the service available to them because it didn't have to. Comcast SportsNet was introduced with fanfare on Oct. 1 and will broadcast 140 Flyers, Sixers and Phillies games. The service was made available to local cable companies, but not to their upstart rivals, DirecTV and PrimeStar, which beam digital programming to 80,000 Philadelphia-region subscribers with small satellite dishes.

In a bid to strengthen its hold on the rural satellite TV market, Pegasus Communications Corp. of Bala Cynwyd said yesterday that the country's largest satellite TV broadcaster, DirecTV, would help it gain access to a new pool of rural subscribers. Pegasus also said it would begin selling high-speed and dial-up Internet service to rural customers, a move that expands its product suite beyond reselling satellite TV. Pegasus hopes to profit by bridging what it calls the "rural-digital divide.

The Phillies are back, with high hopes and a couple big question marks named Utley and Howard. The Flyers have made it into the National Hockey League playoffs, and the Sixers are fighting to secure a postseason slot. Another Philadelphia April is halfway gone. If you're a sports fan and a cable subscriber, you could have caught much of this winter and spring's action on Comcast SportsNet, which carries a majority of this city's baseball, hockey and basketball games. But you still can't watch most of your local teams' games on Dish Network or DirecTV — unlike almost everywhere else in the country.

Bell Atlantic will begin offering digital satellite television service in two undisclosed major markets this summer, under distribution agreements with DirecTV Inc. and U.S. Satellite Broadcasting. Under two deals announced yesterday, Bell Atlantic will take orders for the satellite services, lease and sell equipment, and handle installation, billing, maintenance and customer service. Customers will get access to DirecTV's 175-plus channels and to premium movies and pay-per-view programming from USSB, which is a DirecTV partner.

The nation's two largest independent providers of DirecTV programming to rural areas have signed an agreement to join forces early next year. Under the deal, Pegasus Communications Corp. of Radnor will pay $250 million to acquire Digital Television Services, a Georgia-based firm. The purchase price includes the assumption of $140 million of debt by Pegasus. The Radnor firm will also give Digital shareowners 5.5 million of its own shares, valued at about $110 million dollars.

DirecTV's new NFL SuperFan package is a football nut's sugar-coated dream - and Comcast's scariest nightmare. It's the answer to the question, "What if you could invent a way to watch every football game every Sunday?" as answered by an 11-year-old who just visited Willy Wonka's candy factory. With the ability to show eight live NFL games at a time on one screen, interactive statistical feeds, condensed-game replays, and assorted other mouthwatering overkill, it's the one thing the satellite-TV guys can offer that even the sports-crazy cable company can't.

Major League Baseball had said all along that it wanted its Extra Innings package of out-of town games available on cable and satellite, and that is how the prolonged negotiations ended. Talks were originally supposed to end Saturday, but continued until late Wednesday. That is when MLB announced that iN Demand, a consortium owned by Comcast, Time Warner and Cox Cable, had entered into a seven-year agreement in principle to carry the Extra Innings package and would distribute the Major League Baseball Channel, scheduled for launch in January 2009.

The Phillies are back, with high hopes and a couple big question marks named Utley and Howard. The Flyers have made it into the National Hockey League playoffs, and the Sixers are fighting to secure a postseason slot. Another Philadelphia April is halfway gone. If you're a sports fan and a cable subscriber, you could have caught much of this winter and spring's action on Comcast SportsNet, which carries a majority of this city's baseball, hockey and basketball games. But you still can't watch most of your local teams' games on Dish Network or DirecTV — unlike almost everywhere else in the country.

NEED NEW nudges to dive into a 3-D TV? Almost all of Chicago blows up in the sci-fi spectacle "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" (Paramount), just out in 3-D form. Also new, "WWII in 3D" (A&E Networks) using stills and movies shot by the Nazis. "A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas" (Warner Bros., out Tuesday) is the most amusing use so far of the new technology. The Royal Opera House's "Carmen in 3D" (Opus Arte) represents a most classy "first of breed. " German rockers the Scorpions "Get Your Sting and Blackout - Live in 3D" on Feb. 21 from Sony Legacy.

WPCS International Inc., of Exton, which agreed last June to be acquired by DirecTV installer Multiband Corp., of Minnesota, said Multiband called off the deal and will pay WPCS a $250,000 breakup fee. In addition, WPCS directors will meet to discuss the termination of the strategic alternatives process that has been under way for over a year, the company said. Multiband had offered $3.20 a share for WPCS, a communications infrastructure engineering company whose shares have traded in a 52-week range of $1.57 to $3.04.

Satellite-TV provider DirecTV will pay the Attorney General's Offices in New Jersey and Pennsylvania a total of $790,000 to reimburse them for investigating allegations of deceptive advertising and unfair sales practices. The payments are part of a settlement with 49 states and the District of Columbia worth $13.25 million. DirecTV Group Inc. is the nation's second-largest pay-TV provider behind Philadelphia's Comcast Corp. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office will receive $605,000; its New Jersey counterpart will get $185,000.

THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH. 10 p.m. Friday, Starz. WRITING ABOUT television might not have been as interesting back in the days when there were only a handful of channels, but it had to have been simpler. For one thing, if a TV critic praised or panned a program, chances are it was one most readers would actually have the opportunity to see, assuming the rabbit ears worked. Now? We get what we pay for (or can otherwise track down), whether it's a first look at "Friday Night Lights" - whose seasons now run on DirecTV's 101 Network before coming to NBC - or another two years of "Damages," which won't be available to FX fans unless they're signed up for DirecTV and its 101 Network.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. 8 p.m. Friday, Channel 10. THERE AREN'T many high school shows - or shows, period - that get better in their fourth seasons. Too often, as original characters move on, or worse, discover a fine, but hitherto unmentioned college on the outskirts of town, the writing gets a little desperate, the drama a bit less believable. "Friday Night Lights," which returns to NBC Friday after its latest 13-episode run on DirecTV, has never followed any other show's playbook.

Cowboy Maloney's Electronics City store in Jackson, Miss., wasn't the most auspicious place to launch a national pay-TV service. But that's where it happened, on June 17, 1994, when 35 Cowboy Maloney salesmen dressed in tuxedos and starched shirts opened the store in a strip shopping center. Buyers had jetted in from around the nation to sample the innovative 18-inch DirecTV satellite dish. It screwed onto a home's roof for catching digital streams of data from space and cost $699 or $899.

David Stern is in the same situation as the owners he welcomed to New York this week: His business has been hurt by the financial crisis. The NBA commissioner slashed millions from the All-Star budget, and he'll send two teams to Europe for exhibition games in the fall, half of what he used to. But he knows things could have been worse. "We did relatively well in a difficult year in the economy," Stern said yesterday. "Our prospects . . . are terrific and we're going to work together with our players to come up with a model that makes it more profitable.

Primeval, an exciting British sci-fi adventure series, takes place in that, um, primeval time and place where dinosaurs roam - the local shopping center. (Where they hunt down and viciously kill and eat unwary shoppers.) The dangerously addictive and entertaining show, which has its U.S. premiere tonight at 9 on BBC America, is a melange of sci-fi, mystery and comedy genres. It is the brainchild of Tim Haines, the writer and director behind the popular BBC nature docs Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts, which show the life of those extinct giants through the magic of computer-generated imagery.

IHAVE DirecTV and can't get Comcast Sportsnet of Philadelphia, so I miss a lot of Phillies, Flyers and Sixers games. I realize that was the price I had to pay to save a great deal of money for my TV programs. I thought Comcast could offer that channel to DirecTV customers for a premium, but they said they didn't want to give it to the competition. Then I went to visit my sister-in-law in Virginia, about 30 milies south of Washington. She also has DirecTV, and not only does she have Comcast Sportsnet of Washington, she gets it as part of her basic service.