VOOM to be Shut Down April 30th

Cablevision said in an SEC filing this morning that it has decided to shut down its fledgling VOOM satellite HD service following the March 31st termination of an agreement with chairman Chuck Dolan and Rainbow DBS CEO Tom Dolan to keep the company alive. Cablevision's board said that it will begin advising customers that VOOM will officially cease providing service on April 30th and that the company's management has already begun implementing shut down steps.

Cablevision is in the process of analyzing whether the VOOM 21 HD channels can be marketed to other satellite and cable providers as part of the Rainbow programming operations.

It's a sad day in the media business when an innovative competitor is lost, because although it only had fewer than 50,000 customers, VOOM was far ahead of the rest of the industry in delivering HD content. With a programming lineup that includes stalwarts like ESPN HD and HBO HD but also the less-carried Universal HD, TNT HD and WealthTV HD, among others, VOOM was truly on the cutting edge of HDTV. Unfortunately, given the consolidation that has taken hold in the media industry as of late, along with the economies of scale that come with being a multi-billion dollar player, there just isn't room for start-up service providers anymore.

Not that VOOM is without fault in this saga, however. Its network of installers seemed ill-trained on the intricacies of many parts of the installation process, most notably the over-the-air antennas needed to pull down local broadcast channels in HD. The company began its retail distribution strategy by inking a deal with Sears, which seemed illogical considering at the time VOOM was touting itself as a premium satellite service and backing that up with a premium $750 price tag for the equipment. The company spent heavily on marketing, but over the last year was losing customers as fast as it was signing them up.

With a few exceptions I never found the VOOM 21 to be all that compelling. In fact, I would be surprised if it gains any carriage deals with larger cable and satellite providers given the difficulty much more established brands like Universal HD and TNT HD are having in doing the same. However, in the final analysis, VOOM did one thing really well and that was deliver HD programming. VOOM made it its mission to seek out new HD networks and bring them on board as quickly as possible, and that is a lesson I hope the other cable and satellite providers will take to heart.