SOME INFO FROM SOPRESA AND FIRESTONE WEBSITE:You won't find better network origination and playout anywhere.
Backed by the best technology including SeaChange Media Servers, Sundance FastBreak Automation, and the VCI Stars II Traffic System, Firestone Communications ensures premium functionality and flexibility at value-creating rates.
But what truly sets Firestone Communications apart is our deep experience in network operations, thanks to running our own 24-hour-a-day network, ¡SORPRESA!, the first and only U.S.-based, 24-hour network dedicated to America’s Hispanic children, and broadcast entirely in Spanish. This experience gives Firestone Communications a unique perspective and understanding that directly benefits our customers.
Additionally, we offer affiliate sales and marketing services; production and creative services; and shared transport services.
If you are looking for a high-performance partner that delivers more than just network origination, we'd like to welcome you to Firestone Communications.
http://www.sorpresatv.com/goout.asp?u=http://www.firestoneinc.com
Network Origination & Distribution
Firestone provides its clients with access to cable and satellite audiences with its 24/7 network origination facility. Origination is one of Firestone's core services, providing master control and delivery of video programming using an optimal combination of high-performance fiber optic, satellite, Internet protocol, and conventional delivery methods to reach cable and satellite audiences.
On-site Network Origination Services Include:
* Satellite uplink
* Downlink antennas
* Fiber delivery
* SeaChange media servers
* Sundance FastBreak automation
* VCI Stars II+ traffic system
* 3.7 Meter C-band antenna
* 8 broadcast channel uplink capacity
* Fully digital system
* PowerVu Plus Encoders
* Domestic or International transport of signal
* MPEG 2 and DVB formats
* Bilingual (Spanish/English) master control operators
* Two production studios
As the first network dedicated to America's Hispanic children, ¡SORPRESA! speaks to its young audience in Spanish and is distributed nationally on major cable systems. Around-the-clock programming features award winning animation, educational series, variety and the nation's only "teen novela." The Soundtrack Channel (STC) is a 24-hour cable and satellite channel featuring the hottest movie and television music from across the globe. It brings viewers up close and personal with celebrities, the movie making process, and offers the latest movie news from Hollywood. America One is a 24-hour broadcast network that provides Western, equestrian and homeland values programming to more than 20 million households via 123 broadcast affiliate stations located in 40 states. It's the first network built by and for people who are passionate about America
http://www.sorpresatv.com/goout.asp?u=http://www.firestoneinc.com
Affiliate Sales & Marketing Services
Firestone provides shared affiliate sales and marketing services for its network clients via strategic partnerships. Providing a full-range of services that can be customized to each client's needs, Firestone's services include market analysis and assessment, business modeling, contract negotiations, field sales, affiliate marketing, and promotions. Our partners' field sales and marketing executives are among the best in their area of expertise with proven track records for delivering results in the most competitive of markets.
Shared Transport
In today's digital environment, cable operators favor networks that are strategically clustered together on a single transponder for maximum cost efficiency. Firestone is building a "pod" of services that cable operators can receive without requiring a cherry picker, dramatically enhancing its client's distribution opportunities by providing operators with a cost-effective alternative.
Production and Creative Services
Firestone offers full network production and creative services. The Production Systems features an Avid media composer, Adobe Graphics After Effects System, 3DS Max 3D graphics, off-line editing systems and Betacam SX and Digital Betacam tape formats. Supported by its creative talent and advanced technologies, Firestone produces high-end broadcast quality promos, animation and other network interstitial. The creative staff is fluent in English and Spanish and is led by the director of creative services, Francisco Cuevas. Firestone's executive leadership team has more than 75 years of broadcast and production experience, with experience from noted companies such as Allbritton Communications, Univisión, Telemundo, and CMT International.
Firestone Production Services Include:
* Pre-Production Creative Meetings
* Set design and location scouting
* Talent casting
* Storyboards and shot plan production
* Graphic design for print or screen
* Craft services
* Complete shot acquisition on location including floor direction
* Mobile field acquisition
* Full audio, video, and lighting trucks with engineers
* Production available on video or film
* Mastering to any format for video or audio including CD and DVD
* Tape duplication
* Full post production services including graphic design, animation, and digital editing
© 2004 FIRESTONE COMMUNICATIONS, INC. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.sorpresatv.com/goout.asp?u=http://www.firestoneinc.com
Telstar 7 Satellite
Firestone utilizes Telstar 7, a very cable friendly satellite, which is currently home to multiple broadcast networks, including: Lifetime, The Biography Channel, HBO HDTV, Trinity Broadcasting, CNBC, Court TV, and ¡SORPRESA! Telstar 7 covers the continental U.S., Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and into the Caribbean and Latin America from its orbital slot at 129° West Longitude. The satellite carries a total of 48 transponders - 24 at C-band and 24 at Ku-band, and Firestone leverages its exclusive access to Transponder 18. Its design is based on Space Systems/Loral's three-axis, body-stabilized FS-1300 bus, which has proven its worth during more than 300 years of cumulative on-orbit service, close to one-half of the total of nearly 700 plus years amassed by all Space Systems/Loral satellites to date. Firestone has non-preemptible access to TelStar 7 until the satellite's end of life in 2014.
SeaChange Media Servers
The installation of SeaChange International's powerful server and software systems enable Firestone clients to provide on-demand services and to gain greater efficiencies in advertising and content delivery. With its MediaCluster technology, SeaChange systems help broadband, broadcast and satellite television companies to streamline operations, expand services and increase revenues. Firestone's MediaCluster technology provides the best redundancy possible.
Sundance FastBreak Automation
Sundance's FastBreak Automation is a comprehensive facility automation solution designed to manage information and control the playback of all material in broadcast master control. Designed from the ground up for video server-based operations, FastBreak Automation integrates powerful SQL-based database management with frame-accurate server, tape transport and switcher/router control for complete command of the broadcast process.
VCI Stars II+ Traffic System
Firestone's VCI STARS II+™ offers an open, standards-based solution designed for modern broadcast and cable business practices. The system enables broadcasters in all size markets - from small market independents to the multi-station cluster operations - to assemble and edit logs faster, while managing commercial inventory more efficiently. The systems are capable of generating a variety of reports including accounts receivable, average unit rates, spot avails, and other accounting functions. Based on the popular Microsoft Windows operating systems, STARS II+ offers powerful functionality, an easy-to-use graphical user interface, and open database connectivity (ODBC) database support for flexible customization and reporting.
PowerVu Plus Encoder
Scientific-Atlanta's PowerVu Plus Encoder performs video and audio compression with data capabilities in accordance with MPEG-2, DVB, and ATSC standards. Advanced features include a flexible architecture, compact design and unsurpassed throughput.
Digital Services
All of Firestone's services are fully digital.
http://www.sorpresatv.com/goout.asp?u=http://www.firestoneinc.com
Time Warner Cable's Lynne Costantini Wields Programming Clout
Nimble Negotiator
By Linda Moss
Copyright © Multichannel News
When Lynne Costantini talks, programmers listen.
Costantini, Time Warner Cable's vice president of programming, played a key role in the creation of a new channel called ¡SORPRESA!, a Spanish-language children's network. Citing research, she suggested the need for such a Hispanic network, aimed at kids, to officials at programmer Firestone Communications.
"No one else was pursuing the niche, so she encouraged us to develop it," said Firestone chairman Leonard Firestone. He rolled out ¡SORPRESA! last year.
"We were very pleased and supportive of that network when it launched," Costantini said. "There were dozens of Spanish-language networks, but nothing in the children's area."
Costantini, 43, is a gatekeeper in a department that helps decide what networks almost 11 million subscribers will see on their TV screens.
LESSONS LEARNED
After years toiling as a corporate lawyer, Costantini came to cable fairly recently, joining Time Warner in 1996, as the chief lieutenant of Fred Dressler, the MSO's executive vice president of programming.
"She started out being a lawyer and has really grown into one of the top negotiators in the business, someone that Fred relies on heavily," said Bill Goodwyn, executive vice president of affiliate sales and marketing for Discovery Networks U.S. "There are a lot of issues Time Warner feels strongly about. There's a lot at stake and it's a big job and she does a great job with it."
Dressler is considered one of the most astute, respected - and feared - MSO programming chiefs, so Costantini has been tutored in the cable business by one of the best.
"You'll learn more in six months [with Dressler] than you would in three years somewhere else," Goodwyn said.
Costantini's grandparents immigrated from Poland to Yonkers, N.Y., where her father made his career as a plant manager for Otis Elevator.
"We lived in a three-family house: My aunt on the top floor; my grandparents were downstairs and we were in the middle," Costantini said. "I tortured my grandfather: He thought I walked like an elephant."
At her all-girl's high school, Costantini decided she wanted to go to law school "to help poor people and change the world somehow." But while serving on the school's student council, she got a taste for politics, for wheeling and dealing at that very grass-roots level. She loved it.
LOVE OF THE DEAL
Costantini graduated from Manhattanville College, and then New York Law School in 1984. Working for two big New York firms, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius and Kelley, Drye & Warren, she practiced for 10 years - specializing in mergers and acquisitions. "I just got caught up in deal-making," Costantini said. "I liked corporate law."
Her firm was retained by Time Warner Cable as outside counsel to negotiate the MSO's "thousands" of retransmission-consent deals. She worked on that account, getting to know the crew over at Time Warner, which ultimately recruited her.
"When Fred and I first started to work together we were like hand in glove," Costantini said. "As I've grown into the job and he's grown more confident with me, there are some deals that he does and some deals that I do, but we work in a very collaborative fashion. I'm not out here doing deals without his input and insight. And he's not out there doing deals without bouncing ideas off me as well."
One of the things that Costantini said she's learned from Dressler was to tone down the aggressive, pit-bull-type negotiating style she had adopted as a lawyer.
"I'm a little bit more direct and in-your-face," Costantini said. "Fred is more of an elegant negotiator ... I've been able to incorporate some of his styles in with mine. Over the years, I have a little softer approach than I did. Fred always used to say to me you catch more bees with honey than vinegar."
Today, Dressler has nothing but praise for Costantini, who some predict will be his successor.
"She's one of the smartest people that we have," Dressler said. "She understands both sides of the issues. And so she is able to be creative in coming up with solutions that are satisfactory for both sides."
For the most part, Costantini has maintained a very low public profile. But last summer, during the CTAM conference in Seattle, Costantini had a coming-out party of sorts, by making a rare public appearance at a session on programming with Insight Communications Co. CEO Michael Willner and Cox Communications Inc. chief operating officer Pat Esser. And she more than held her own.
"She did a great job at that panel," said Lindsay Gardner, executive vice president of affiliate sales and marketing for the Fox Cable Networks Group. "That should have been a tipoff to the industry that she has stature on her own, that she has her own voice in this industry."
GROWING DIVIDE
Today, both MSOs and programmers are having difficulty keeping their ambitious, difficult-to-achieve promises to Wall Street, which is a major reason why tensions between both those parties have been boiling over, according to Costantini. The interests of networks and cable operators are no longer aligned, she said, and that has created a greater strain compared with times past.
"We weren't haggling about half cents and cents, as we are now," she said. "There's a lot more thinking outside of the box that needs to be done these days, and not everybody can do that; not everybody wants to do that. Change is really hard on our side and their side, but we're all trying to find ways to reconcile our conflicting goals, and sometimes it gets acrimonious. But it's never personal."
Costantini, who spent much of last year focused on helping develop Time Warner's video-on-demand platform, lives in Connecticut with her husband and teenaged son and daughter
http://www.sorpresatv.com/goout.asp?u=http://www.firestoneinc.com
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Who knows, but at this rate, it's all looking fantastic...If you read the last couple of pages, Marco's 'predictions' are listed by Betting Babe and Winsum. Hope this helps.
