Verizon Gets Deals For Its TV Content
With Starz, Others

Verizon Communications Inc. has signed content-programming deals with Starz Entertainment Group LLC as well as content providers representing roughly 100 television channels, as the phone company steps up its push into the world of entertainment.

Under the agreement with Liberty Media Corp.'s Starz, announced yesterday, Verizon can carry Starz' 13 movie channels on the phone company's new fiber-technology network. Verizon is expected to launch its television operations in various markets around the U.S. this year. People familiar with the situation said the deals for the 100 channels, expected to be announced in the next few months, include niche programming as well as several highly popular channels.

Verizon is still negotiating with programmers representing an additional 50 channels, these people say.

Verizon and several other large phone companies, including SBC Communications Inc., San Antonio, last year began rolling out new technologies that will allow them to offer television and super-high-speed Internet-access services. Phone companies are entering the new arena because their core local phone operations are suffering from increased competition from cable operators and the impact of new Internet technology.

Verizon has been rolling out a fiber- optics network to consumers' homes and expects to make its new network available for subscription to some three million homes by the end of this year. SBC, which is rolling out fiber-optic lines to neighborhoods rather than to homes, is more aggressive and expects to reach 18 million homes in the next three years.

For its newborn television efforts, Verizon, New York, can't rely only on Starz, which has struggled to build an identity as strong as that of well-known pay channels such as Time Warner Inc.'s HBO. Among the channels Verizon has been wooing are Time Warner's HBO and Viacom Inc.'s cable networks, which include MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.

The emergence of Verizon as a content distributor is good news for television programmers, which have seen their clout eroded amid consolidation in the cable-TV industry. As the cable industry has consolidated into a few major players such as Comcast Corp., Cox Communications Inc. and Time Warner, leverage has shifted away from programmers to distributors, which have pushed back on rising programming costs. If Verizon and others emerge as viable competitors to cable, programmers may be able to swing the pendulum back.