Today’s announced acquisition of Fandango.com – and its planned integration into Fancast – is yet another indication that Comcast is not so much abandoning multichannel video service as it is augmenting it. By owning the nearly 5 million monthly unique visitors to the movie listing site, it will be able to expand its relationships with Hollywood and develop a new footprint with theatre owners across the country. Should Fancast live up to even half of its promise of being a one-stop site for video discovery and multi-device management, it would expand Comcast’s video relationship with consumers beyond the set top box. Even more significantly, it will continue to expand Comcast’s relationships with consumers beyond its traditional multichannel subscriber model. It’s only a matter of time when we’ll see an online revenue category in their quarterly announcements.

Now doesn’t this make Brian Robert’s coveting Disney seem quaint?

The legal issues raised by the plaintiffs – which, ironically, also included Time Warner, as well as News Corporation and Disney – center on the rights to store and retransmit content, claiming that Cablevision’s deployment would violate such rights. Yet, consumers would be the arbiters of timing of any “retransmission,” consistent with the on-demand world in which we reside. However, DVR revenues are not shared with content providers – and that may be the real issue upon which the studios are pouncing. Time Warner’s Start Over service does, in fact, allow for revenue sharing with the networks whose programming is being shifted by subscribers. Is this legal battle but a ploy to pressure the cable industry on concessions to programmers? Certainly if unauthorized duplication or distribution of stored content were at issue, these are readily answered by the conditional access and DRM applications available.

What is undoubtedly true is that a network DVR blurs the lines even more between DVR functionality and VOD. More and more VOD is free – and ad supported. Check out my recent report on Advertising on DVRs to see how just how blurred these lines are.

America is the original version of modernity – the rest of us are living the dubbed and subtitled copy. America is utopia achieved.

With these words, and many more, the late Jean Baudrillard cut into the heart of our modern, media-drenched world. Reading his 1986 volume “Amerique,” I was struck by the image of a lone TV set, always on, in a dank, unoccupied motel room. It was a trenchant comment on the ubiquity of media in American life and, at the same time, the emptiness that can sometimes be its result. Baudrillard died this past Tuesday, March 6th, and had a forty-year career challenging the assumptions of the consumption-obsessed society. If you haven’t heard of him, check out his opus.

By integrating local affiliates with their digital offerings to consumers, Fox acknowledges the role local stations play. After all, what is a “network?” Of course, Fox has a vested interest, as well: the Fox Television Stations Group owns 25 Fox stations. The success of a network TV program depends on the nuanced relationship between local affiliate support and network promotion. The network needs stations to broadcast the program: the stations need these high-value assets against which to sell local advertising. Fox is enabling affiliates to deepen their relationships with their audience, increasing engagement with the network’s programming. Both parties benefit. I’ll be looking at affiliate relations further in an upcoming report.

There’s another side to this story: by creating ancillary revenues for affiliates – including its O&Os – Fox is sending a signal that unlike CBS, it may not yet be interested in tackling the cablers for retransmission fees. Another indication that Fox embraces the new, while respecting tradition.

How quaint.

Certainly every media company has an obligation to explore the frontiers of what are now quaintly called “alternative distribution platforms,” but unlike ABC’s dramatic initiative last spring to stream – at extremely high quality, no less – primetime programs, or News Corporation’s bold acquisition of MySpace, Viacom’s alliance with Joost is but a dalliance. As sleek as the application may be, Joost has a limited user base. Comscore data on Joost isn’t in yet, but let’s put the platform in context: YouTube garnered over 30 million unique visitors last month. MTV.com yielded about 7 million. The deal is certainly a great boost for Joost, but it is unclear what immediate benefits accrue to Viacom.

Recalling “I Want My MTV,” how about “Just give me my Joost” or “Juice Up with Joost!” Viacom is certainly hoping that this latest deal is “Joost in Time.”

Sounds all well and good, but the real question here is – is it worth it? Audio Magic’s proposition relies on some heavy lifting by media companies – the provision of thousands of hours of media content to Audio Magic for ingestion and “fingerprint” processing. Having worked in network television, I know firsthand that coordinating efforts among producers, tape librarians and Avid editors is no easy task. In fact, it’s a big drain on resources and diverts precious energies away from a media company’s core business – creating content. Moreover, media companies would be obliged to continually supply Audio Magic with new TV shows, films and music as such content is produced. That’s a real expense. Given the media industry’s historical reluctance to pay for DRM – the cost for conditional access, for example, is borne by Pay TV operators – would media companies be amenable to Audio Magic’s approach?

Moreover, the situation for MySpace is not without considerable irony. How long will the site continue to attract fans if the uploading of personal creativity – copyright be damned – is thwarted? Of course, this assumes that Audible Magic’s solution would work so flawlessly. In the meantime, News Corporation can take the lead in advancing both the causes of media companies’ intellectual properties and user generated websites – a delicate balance indeed.

Reduce costs? While adding features? How is this possible?

Enter NDS. Majority owned by News Corporation, this leading provider of conditional access, middleware and DVRs is introducing DVRs that have no hard drive. We’re not talking about Network PVRs – that’s so 2006 – but rather a “Distributed DVR” which leverages disk space on a subscriber’s network. NDS recently acquired Jungo, which supplies Residential Gateway software that seeks suitable external hard disk space for DVR TV storage. Consumers can add as much storage as they like without waiting for the latest set top box upgrade, while the Pay TV provider would pay less than it would for a conventional DVR. Perhaps telcos could make a bold move: boost subscriber acquisitions by passing these savings on to consumers, either by reducing DVR subscription fees or, as DISH is doing right now, abandoning them all together. Such a tactic would translate into larger SAC but telcos’ sub numbers might really perk up.

Of course, a “Distributed DVR” essentially shifts the burden of storage cost onto the consumer – which could conceivably depress demand for a device already facing challenges in consumer adoption. Will average consumers really be induced to explore the arcane world of gigabytes and research how to supplement the storage they already have? Do most consumers even know how large their hard drive is – or what that means in terms of hours of TV content storage potential?

Even more provocative, though, is ShareTV, NDS’ P2P solution that allows subscribers to share content with other subscribers. Unlike copyright issues posed by an operator’s storing content on a network PVR – such as Cablevision faced regarding a proposed deployment of Arroyo’s technology last year – ShareTV’s solution may encounter fewer legal objections. It should be noted that content would remain encrypted and could only be viewed from the DVR. “Desperate Housewives” so obtained could never make its way to Kazaa. So telcos can promote DVR features that accommodate subscriber’s over-subscribed lives – without worrying ABC, et al.

Moreover, since the providers would manage the exchange of programming so recorded, they can provide measurement of which programs are downloaded and shared. This would a new dimension to non-TiVo DVRs, providing additional insights into users’ DVR behaviors and which shows are being recorded and traded.

A boon for advertisers and providers alike.

Now many a pundit has predicted the demise of physical media and the ultimate dominance of the purely digital. True, there is no arguing against the raw data that suggests that DVD sales have slowed considerably in the past two to three years. Yet, even in the age of iTunes, iPods and now iPhones, at least one major media company is not yet abandoning physical goods. Ironically – or perhaps not so much – it is this same company that launched its well-intentioned Innertube last year and announced a beta test with Sling at CES earlier this month. Yet, let us not forget that CBS is a broadcast network – and that good old rabbit ears can still pull down its signal. Traditional delivery still apparently has its place in the media firmament – 92% of online consumers regularly watch movies & TV shows on a TV.

So in other words, the same population that subscribes to PayTV and complains that there is nothing on in the multichannel universe will now be able to take their complaining anywhere. This is progress.

Meanwhile, from the other double-take department: now children of all ages will be able to more fully enjoy the depth and nuance of “Top Cat,” “Tom and Jerry,” and “Huckleberry Hound,” as The Cartoon Network announces its HD launch.

You can’t make this stuff up.

What is striking about Fox’s launching a business network now is that it is doing so on the traditional TV platform, demonstrating the immense power Pay TV operators continue to have even in the so-called Web 2.0 environment. Nevertheless, Fox parent News Corporation divested itself of DirecTV last month and continues to focus its energies on broadband.

Enough with Redstone’s old canard “content is king.” Distribution still has considerable leverage.