> Transitional technology vendor BNI Video has raised $16 million from investors ranging from Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) to Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC-WI) as it pushes forward with a cloud-based video control plane to help cable providers move video services to all-IP networks. Story.
> Cable's interactive advertising joint venture Canoe has signed up for a multi-year collaborative effort with the Association of National Advertisers to focus on "interactive television, video-on-demand and addressable advertising services" via what the two call the CEE MEE (Connection Emotion and Experience/Measurement, Efficiency and Engagement) Project. News release.
> Considering the rancor surrounding the latest (one might dare say eternal) retransmission spats with service providers across cable, satellite and telco spaces and the threat that their over-the-air spectrum might be yanked and given to wireless providers, it's not unreasonable to suggest, as Tim Goodman does in the San Francisco Chronicle that broadcasters "could use a visionary." The "big broadcast networks have been both blind and resistant to change for decades" and the industry "has run on archaic principles for more than 40 years," Goodman writes. Story.
And finally... Speaking of visionaries, one of the cable industry's leaders, Time Warner President-CEO Glenn Britt has apparently called FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to discuss net neutrality and the reclassification of broadband services under Title II. No word on whether Britt used a digital phone via a cable broadband network to make the call. Story.