Comcast in "Exclusive" VOD Partnership with Singer, Taylor Swift

Comcast, which, as [itvt] went to press, was expected to announce imminently a deal that will give it a 51% stake in NBC Universal, on Wednesday announced an "exclusive" partnership with singer, Taylor Swift, that sees it offering an extensive collection of music videos, behind-the-scenes clips and other programming featuring the singer on its Comcast On Demand service. The collection, all of whose content is offered in HD, is accessed by selecting "Top Picks" from the Comcast VOD menu, and then "Taylor Swift HD." Its line-up includes, among other things, the music videos for "Fifteen," "Teardrops on my Guitar," "Picture to Burn" and "Our Song," and a recent "Saturday Night Live" episode that was hosted by Swift.

According to Comcast, music is one of the most popular programming categories on its VOD service, generating 50 to 60 million views each month (out of a total of 350 million views per month). Musical artists recently featured on Comcast On Demand include Green Day, U2, Sheryl Crow, Counting Crows and Mariah Carey. "Taylor Swift is hugely popular on-demand, consistently having the top-performing music videos on the service," Derek Harrar, Comcast's SVP and general manager of video and entertainment services, said in a prepared statement. "Through exclusive partnerships with artists like Taylor Swift, Green Day and U2, combined with thousands of assets and incredible usage on-demand, Comcast is reinventing music television."

In other Comcast news:

• The MSO will brand its soon-to-launch implementation of the TV Everywhere distribution model, which is currently known as Comcast On Demand Online, as "Fancast Xfinity TV" or "Xfinity" for short, according to promotional materials obtained by Broadcasting & Cable (note: the "TV Everywhere" distribution model seeks, via authentication technology, to make programming that pay-TV customers have already paid for through their cable, satellite or IPTV subscriptions available to those customers on multiple Web sites and platforms, and thus aims to head off the threat posed to pay-TV services by the increasing availability of over-the-top programming--for some background on TV Everywhere, see the articles published on itvt.com, April 30th, May 14th, June 25th and July 15th). The publication--which said that Comcast had yet to respond to a request for comment by close of business Wednesday--also discovered that the MSO has secured various domain names featuring the name "Xfinity" (http://www.Xfinity.com, http://www.ComcastXfinity.com, http://www.FancastXfinityTV, etc.), as well as the Twitter account, Twitter.com/Xfinity. In addition, B&C reported, Comcast has filed a trademark for Xfinity, and shot a commercial that uses the new branding.
• According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, as it prepares to take control of NBC Universal, Comcast is exploring new ways of "windowing" movies and how it might "use Universal's vast film library to expand its own video-on-demand opportunities." Among other things, the Journal reports, the MSO is considering allowing consumers to watch a movie at home while it is still in theaters, anticipating that its customers would pay a premium for the opportunity to watch a newly released movie on their TV sets. The Journal article (subscription required) is available here.