TELEVISION

A LA CARTE COULD CUT CABLE PRICES TO CONSUMERS

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin Martin, stepped up pressure on cable-television providers to sell channels separately, releasing a report showing the move would cut prices by as much as 13%.

The FCC study released yesterday in Washington reverses the findings of a 2004 report commissioned by a former chairman, Michael Powell, and supports Mr. Martin’s push for cable providers such as Time Warner and Comcast to offer “a la carte” pricing.

“Martin could use this study to continue to use the bully pulpit to push for a la carte,” said Christopher Stern, an analyst for Medley Global Advisors, an investment research firm.

The report is a setback for companies including Comcast and Time Warner, the two largest cable providers, who have offered measures such as family programming packages to avoid having to sell individual channels. Comcast has said that a la carte sales would raise prices and reduce consumer choice because some channels would fail.

– Bloomberg News

MOBILE DEVICES

BLACKBERRY MAKER TESTS NEW SOFTWARE

Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry hand-held computers, began testing software that would allow its e-mail service to keep running if the company loses a patent infringement lawsuit. The company said it modified the underlying elements of the message-delivery system to be “fundamentally different” from the NTP patent claims. Waterloo, Ontario-based Research In Motion didn’t give a release date for the software yesterday in a statement.

The design may help the company’s co-chief executive officer James Balsillie keep the company operating in America, which accounts for almost 70% of sales. He says the fix works as well as the current system, which may sooth concerns after clients including United Parcel Service and FedEx said in December they were talking with competitors.

“They’re feeling pressure from large customers and this alleviates a lot of those concerns,” said Benjamin Bollin, an analyst at FTN Midwest Research in Cleveland who rates the shares “buy” and said he doesn’t own them. “This is going to mitigate the risk.”

James Wallace, an NTP lawyer, disputed that the new software would work as well as the current system and said the company isn’t backing down.

– Bloomberg News

IN THE COURTS

CENDANT CASE ENDS IN MISTRIAL

The retrial of a former chairman of Cendant Corporation, Walter Forbes, ended in a second mistrial after federal jurors deadlocked on charges that he led the largest accounting fraud of the 1990s.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Thompson dismissed the 11-member jury, which failed to reach a unanimous verdict after 27 days of deliberations in Hartford, Conn. He dismissed one juror on February 7 for doing improper research. In January 2005, Judge Thompson dismissed another jury that deadlocked after 33 days. Prosecutors must decide if they will retry Mr. Forbes, 63, who denies wrongdoing.

“It’s very unusual for prosecutors to go after people a third time,” said John Fahy, a former federal prosecutor. “If the government can’t get a verdict after two trials, they know they have major problems with the case.”

– Bloomberg News

CURRENCY

LOST GOLD COIN SELLS FOR A RECORD PRICE

A gold coin lost 1,200 years ago on an English river bank became the most expensive British coin when it was bought by the British Museum this week for $623,421.

A little smaller than a pound coin in diameter and much thinner, the glittering mancus, the value of 30 days’ wages for a skilled Anglo-Saxon worker, now ranks among the museum’s most valuable artifacts.

Experts described the coin, found in Bedfordshire, as “the find of the last 100 years.”

Made from more than 85% gold, weighing 0.152 ounces and showing almost no sign of wear, the coin was struck in 805-810 during the reign of Coenwulf, the King of Mercia, East Anglia, and Kent, the most powerful ruler in Britain at the time and a significant figure in the gradual unification of England.

The coin carries his name, title, and an image of him and, on the reverse, the intriguing inscription DE VICO LVNDONIAE (From the trading place of London).

Besides being in almost perfect condition, its significance, says the museum, is that it is the earliest gold coin in the name of an English ruler intended as part of a circulating currency.

Many dozen Anglo-Saxon silver pennies have been unearthed but the Coenwulf mancus is only the eighth British gold coin – the museum now owns seven of them – cast between 670 and 1257 to be found. Earlier gold examples, including one from the reign of Offa, Coenwulf’s predecessor as ruler of Mercia, were ceremonial coins.

– The Daily Telegraph