EchoStar Communications is reportedly ready to top Liberty Media's $755 million bid for Ascent Entertainment. Last week, Liberty, the programming arm for AT&T's cable business, revealed its plans to buy the entertainment and sports franchise company. EchoStar's bid reportedly comes in at $800 million. A spokesperson for EchoStar declined to comment on the reports. Just like Liberty, EchoStar is rumored to be interested in On Command, a provider of in-room TV and movie entertainment for hotels. On Command reaches one million rooms. Clients include Hilton and Marriott. Ascent also has pro sports franchises.

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News Corp-Yahoo Reportedly In Talks

News Corp., Rupert Murdoch's media empire that has stakes in satellite platforms and TV programming and movies, and Internet giant Yahoo! are in talks to form a partnership, The New Yorker magazine will report in its upcoming issue. Under the deal, News Corp. will reportedly provide access to Yahoo's web sites via satellite. In return, Yahoo! would get access to News Corp.'s news and entertainment content. The two companies would initially remain separate, though they would take financial stakes in each other's assets, the magazine said. Any deal would follow America Online's proposed multi-billion dollar merger with Time Warner.

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SkyPerfectTV Eyeing DirecTV Japan

SkyPerfectTV!, the leading Japanese satellite broadcaster, may take over its main competitor, DirecTV Japan, a Japanese newspaper reported. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun financial daily said SkyPerfecTV! will issue nine billion yen in new shares by the end of March to DirecTV Japan shareholders, including Hughes Electronics. It also said DirecTV subscribers will be transferred to SkyPerfecTV! within the year. Because of the weekend, personnel with DirecTV Japan or SkyPerfecTV! weren't available for comment. Five companies have stakes in SkyPerfecTV! They are Sony, Itochu, Softbank, News Corp. and Fuji Television Network. Hughes Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial and Mitsubishi own DirecTV Japan.

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SkyBOX: A Roll By Charlie and Cyber Capers

Even for a guy who can normally out-P.T. Barnum and Bailey, Charlie Ergen had a heck of a week last week. Wowing DISH Network retailers at his annual Team Summit meet in Denver, Charlie unveiled a host of new channels in sports, movies, kid shows and others. He also has plans for three new satellites, including two spot-beam numbers, a $100 million national ad blitz (Charlie spending money?), and a new deal with Gilat Satellite Networks. It's the last, of course, that really caught our eye. For the past year or so, several top satellite analysts (notably ING Barings Rob Kaimowitz and Merrill Lynch's Tom Watts) have been telling us, and telling us, and telling us about Gilat. For those of you who missed the mentoring, Gilat is a $155.3 million (1998 sales) Israeli company, a VSAT and satellite network provider to some of the world's biggest biggies and a techno-whiz which has long been plotting its debut in two-way, always-on consumer Internet via satellite. (In the "oh by the way" category, General Electric reportedly holds a 24 percent stake in Gilat, which should tell you something.) For several months now we'd been hearing that EchoStar and Gilat would partner and sure enough - on cue for the dealer rally - Charlie pulled the Gilat-to-Home (it'll get a more consumer friendly name later) rabbit out of his hat. To be sure, the new service won't debut until the end of this year at the earliest. Nonetheless, as everyone from The Summit Daily News (our local paper) to The New York Times has been telling us, broadband Internet is where it's at for multichannel platforms these days. Now the cable guys have a heck of a head start in this category. Some recent numbers suggest that cable's fiber product now passes 55 percent of all TV households. That's a big advantage for the longtime monopoly. But the beauty of satellite, of course, is that when it turns on, it turns on EVERYWHERE within its continent-plus sized footprint and it turns it on ALL AT ONCE. Thus the most interesting race to watch in the next few years should be the satellite sweeps in broadband. Even longtime cable dude Dr. John Malone has thrown his hat into the satellite orbit via iSKY, a broadband play due to launch in 2001 and 2002. (Malone's Liberty Media Group owns a considerable stake in iSKY.) Of course, Charlie should beat Malone into the Internet skies (suppose Charlie's interest in Ascent Communications, which Malone wants to buy, figures anywhere in this?) And Hughes' DirecTV will be running neck in neck with Charlie. (If you missed it, be sure to check the big article on Hughes which graces page one of yesterday's New York Times' business section.) Both DirecTV and DISH promise two-way satellite Internet by the end of this year. Which brings us to one final, nagging question: Suppose any of these guys (the cable dudes most definitely included) will be able to figure out how to service this stuff? Two weeks ago, we reported on the problems we've been having with our DirecPC (Hughes' current satellite-down, telephone-up Internet service). We got LOTS of mail on that one ... but all of it from folks experiencing similar problems. Not one peep from Hughes or any of its minions. Two weeks later and still no peep. Still no DirecPC. So here and now we start our own personal sky watch. How long (and how many hours of calling, fiddling and so forth) will it take us to get our DirecPC back up? The answer to that one should tell us a lot about the future of satellite Internet. EH Do you have a comment or letter for SkyBOX? Write the editors at: editor@skyreport.com.

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PEOPLE: Loral Names President