PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Music fans unable to attend the Newport folk and jazz festivals will be able to listen to some of the concerts online.

NPR Music, dividend of National Public Radio, plans to stream select performances from both festivals. The webcasts also will be archived and available on-demand.

This is the first time NPR Music is webcasting the Newport, Rhode Island, festivals. The folk anniversary runs Friday through Sunday, and the jazz festival is next weekend.

Bob Boilen, host of the NPR Music show “All Songs Considered,” says the initiative is a way to reach more fans than can actually attend the concerts.

He also says it’s a reflection of the excitement generated by the eclectic lineup of this year’s folk festival, which includes Jimmy Buffett, Trey Anastasio and the Black Crowes.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable service provider, posted a higher quarterly profit as it gained market share in telephone and Internet services and controlled expenses, sending shares up 3 percent.

Comcast reported a tripling of its free cash flow — a measurement of net cash the company prefers — largely due to a drop in capital expenditure, as a slowdown in U.S. homebuilding meant that it spent less expanding its cable systems to new communities.

While the slowdown contributed to weaker video subscriber growth, analysts said Comcast was winning market share from phone competitors including AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc.

"Free cash flow was better than we expected and that was partly due to the fewer customer adds, so they didn't incur costs of adding new subscribers," said Tom Eagan, analyst at Collins Stewart.

Free cash flow is a closely watched metric by U.S. cable investors, who are concerned that cable companies may be overburdened by capital costs in building out new cable lines. Comcast's second-quarter free cash proceed jumped 216 percent to $1.163 billion.

"Investors are likely reacting to the big outperformance in free cash flow growth," said Robin Diedrich, analyst at Edward Jones.

Shares in Comcast rose 58 cents to $19.76 on Nasdaq. Shares of competitors also gained, with Time Warner Cable Inc up 2 percent and Cablevision Systems Corp up 1.9 percent.

SUBSCRIBER NUMBERS

Comcast uttered its net profit in the second quarter rose to $632 million, or 21 cents a share, from $588 million, or 19 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 11 percent to $8.553 billion.

Wall Street had expected Comcast to post revenue of $8.574 billion and per-share profit of 22 cents, according to Reuters Estimates.

Comcast, which has 24.6 million subscribers, said it added 278,000 high-speed Internet subscribers and 500,000 phone subscribers in the second specific place. Seven analysts polled by Reuters had on average forecast Comcast would add 327,000 new Internet subscribers and 579,000 modern phone subs.

While executives acknowledged a difficult U.S. economic environment, they said Comcast had been still able to meet its targets.

"We're pleased we found a balance between the slowing economy and still growing income by 8 to 10 percent," Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts said in an interview with Reuters.

Chief Operating Officer Steve Burke told analysts on a conference call that Comcast's faster Internet access speeds are helping to win over phone company DSL customers who want to watch more online video. He said nearly two-thirds of Comcast's new Internet customers previously used DSL.

"When you look at our results compared to our wireline competitors, I think it speaks volumes about the strength of the cable platform," said Burke.

Both Verizon and AT&T's net additions of Internet subscribers were down by around 90 percent in the quarter, according to numbers posted earlier this month.

Burke also said Comcast is on target to add more than 2 million phone subscribers by the end of the year. It currently has 5.6 million, making it the fourth-largest U.S. phone provider.

Comcast lost 138,000 basic video subscribers during the quarter. Analysts had on average been expecting the company to lose 129,000 such customers.

The cable company added 320,000 digital video subscribers, compared with analysts' forecasts of around 450,000.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Derek Caney and Gerald E. McCormick)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Internet conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp posted quarterly results on Wednesday that beat Wall Street forecasts, although charges for its online mortgage and catalog units resulted in a net loss.

IAC, run by media proficient Barry Diller, plans to spin right side its HSN cable shopping network, Ticketmaster box office service, Interval time-share network and LendingTree mortgage broker into four publicly traded companies in early August.

The remaining IAC will comprise web media and subscription businesses like its Ask.com search site and Match.com online dating service, particularly.

"We're almost there with the spins," Chief Executive Diller said on a conference call.

"Focusing on consolidated results is only about the past, and I would think it far more productive for the future to analyze and judge the entities on their own merits," he said.

In what will probably be the company's last consolidated earnings report, IAC reported a second-quarter toil loss of $421.6 million, or $1.51 per share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $94.6 million, or 31 cents per share.

Excluding special items, earnings were 35 cents per share, ahead of the analysts' average forecast of 31 cents, according to Reuters Estimates.

Special items included a $300 million asset impairment charge for the Cornerstone catalog unit and a $166 million charge for the online mortgage unit, what one. will be called Tree.com in the spin-off.

Revenue rose 7 percent to $1.6 billion, in line with analysts' estimates.

"The HSN numbers looked good and the Ask numbers looked good," said Alan Gould, an analyst at Natixis Bleichroeder. "We like the New IAC."

IAC shares barbarous 1.6 percent to $17.66.

Several analysts estimate the spun-off IAC companies will eventually be worth more to investors than the current combined texture, but have warned the new shares could trade at a significant discount in their first year on the market.

"New IAC" posted revenue growth of 11 percent, helped by dint of. a search advertising partnership with Google Inc, and said its operating loss narrowed to $18.4 million. Ask.com posted revenue growth per search even lacking the Google deal, and Diller said he expected to invest more in marketing of the site beginning late in the fourth quarter.

HSN revenue without its troubled Cornerstone business rose 11 percent and operating profit rose 23 percent to $26.7 million. Including Cornerstone, revenue rose 2 percent, and the unit posted an operating loss of nearly $272 million.

Ticketmaster revenue rose 30 percent, but operating profit implacable 10 percent to about $45 million.

(Editing by Derek Caney, Lisa Von Ahn and Leslie Gevirtz)

NEW YORK - Some users of Yahoo’s music-download duty will find songs they bought inaccessible after Sept. 30, adding fuel to criticisms past copy-protection measures known as digital rights management.

Yahoo Inc. promised it won’t entirely abandon loyal customers. Spokeswoman Carrie Davis said the company was considering refunds, gift certificates or other satisfaction for the “small number” of users affected by the change. Yahoo wouldn’t disclose the actual number.

Yahoo announced this year it was ceasing its online music subscription service and switching customers to RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody. Subscriptions will continue at the same monthly rates for an unspecified period.

For people who bought songs outright — paying a one-time fee for a specific track rather than a continuing subscription for unlimited minstrelsy — Yahoo will be shutting the digital-rights management servers needed to verify eligibility. Copy-protection measures placed on the tracks require access to those servers when users buy a new computer or upgrade their operating system.

The company warns that “after the store has closed, you determine not be able to transfer songs to another computer or relicense these songs after changing operating systems.”

Yahoo says users can burn songs onto a regular audio CD and rip them back as an MP3 file without the copy-protection technology, but that requires time and blank CDs, and can fruit in a loss in quality.

Critics of digital rights management point to Yahoo’s decision to end support for legally purchased music as yet one more reason to push for tracks free of such limits, something the recording industry is starting to embrace.

Earlier, Microsoft Corp. backtracked from plans to shutter its MSN Music servers this year and agreed to continue authorizing harmony on new computers through at least 2011.

But Davis said Yahoo opted to shut down its system to avoid “delaying the inevitable.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Help-wanted postings on major U.S.-based Internet job boards fell 7.9 percent in July from June and there is little sign of any upturn soon, a private exploration group said adhering Wednesday.

The Conference Board said its measure of the total number of unduplicated online jobs fell to 3.86 million in July from on the punctilio 4.19 million in June.

The shape was 4.08 million a year ago.

"July is typically a slow month in terms of labor demand, but this month advertised vacancies were weaker than we would expect," said Gad Levanon, economist at the Conference Board.

"There is little evidence of a single one approaching turning point in labor demand," he added. "Considering the declines in advertised vacancies for all of 2008, the outlook for the labor market remains gloomy — exactly the sentiment weighing on consumer attitudes."

Earlier on Wednesday, the ADP National Employment Report showed the U.S. private sector added 9,000 jobs in July following a 77,000 fall in June. According to a Reuters survey, economists had expected a further decline of 60,000 jobs.

The Conference Board said online advertised jobs declined in all of the 9 U.S. census regions in July compared to June.

Adjusting for the size of the state civilian labor force, Alaska led in offerings with 4.99 online piece of work ads for 100 people, followed by Delaware and Colorado. In the number of total ads, California led with nearly 520,000.

The Conference Board said historical data from February has been revised for a change in methodology and the complete series has been revised for a processing error.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by James Dalgleish)

BEIJING (AFP) - The Beijing Olympics were plunged into another controversy on Wednesday as China announced a backflip on Internet freedoms for the thousands of foreign reporters covering the Games.

China's decision to reverse a pledge on allowing unfettered web access proved an perplexity for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which had repeatedly said foreign press would not face any Internet curbs in Beijing.

It was also the latest in a long line of issues to have tarnished the run-up to the Olympics, which start on August 8, following controversies over pollution, human rights and government by terror threats.

Beijing Olympic organising committee spokesman Sun Weide triggered the latest public relations flare-up when he confirmed foreign reporters would not have access to some sites deemed sensitive by China's communist rulers.

"During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters," Sun said.

However "sufficient access" falls abrupt of the complete Internet freedoms for foreign reporters that China had promised in the run-up to the Games.

Sun specified sites linked to the Falungong spiritual movement, which is outlawed in China, as ones that would remain censored for the foreign press at Olympic venues.

He did not identify any others only reporters trying to surf the Internet at the main press middle point for the Games on Wednesday found a wide array of sites deemed sensitive by China's rulers to be out-of-bounds.

These included sites belonging to Tibet's government-in-exile and Amnesty International, as well as those that had information on the 1989 Tiananmen massacre in which the military used deadly force to crush democracy protests.

The head of the IOC's press commission, Kevan Gosper, told AFP early on Wednesday that he would take the matter up with Chinese officials.

"I will speak with the Chinese authorities to advise them of the restraints and to see what their reaction is," he said.

Australian Olympic team chief John Coates, who is also an IOC member, expressed frustration with China's Internet about-face, pointing out that the Chinese authorities had gone back on one of their "key" Olympic promises.

"It certainly is disappointing… I think it's a matter that the IOC will take in earnest," Coates told reporters.

In an exclusive interview with AFP two weeks ago, IOC president Jacques Rogge insisted in that place would be no censorship of the Internet.

"For the first time, foreign media will have being able to report freely and publish their work freely in China," he said.

"There will be no censorship on the Internet."

However, the IOC admitted later Wednesday it knew that China had never planned to lift Internet restrictions for journalists case the Olympics contempt IOC promises to the contrary.

Spokeswoman Giselle Davies said IOC officials had been repeatedly told in talks with the Beijing organising committee (BOCOG) that some Internet websites would be unavailable for the 20,000 reporters covering the Games.

"The IOC holds regular discussions with BOCOG on providing the media with the kind of Internet access and facilities they need to report on the Games," Davies told AFP.

"They have always made clear that some websites would be an issue, and we're working with them to ensure the media face the minimum possible restrictions."

The South China Morning Post newspaper had quoted Gosper as also saying later Wednesday that the IOC knew some sites would be blocked.

"(Recently) I have also been advised that some of the IOC officials had negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked," the Hong Kong-based newspaper quoted Gosper as saying in an exclusive interview.

"If you possess been misled by what I have told you about in that place being free Internet adit during the Games, then I apologise."

Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based press freedom group, related it was surprised the IOC had kowtowed so easily to China's leadership over web access.

"When China applied to host the Games they promised total press independence and that must include Internet access," said Vincent Brossel, the group's Asia Director.

"What a total humiliation this is for the (IOC President) Jacques Rogge. How can the IOC be so weak and without vigor?"

Some space of time back, Marc Benioff had this crazy essence he was trying to barter about turning software into a service. After the collapse of so many application service providers during the Internet bubble, who was this guy kidding?

As it turned out, Benioff's but mistake was that his idea was slightly ahead of its time. Salesforce.com went forward to become one of the most successful software companies of the decade.

So it is that I've become intrigued about the prospects for a start-up called Zuora that's taking a serving-boy out of the Salesforce playbook. Coincidentally, it was founded by a Salesforce alumnus. Zuora offers what its founder, Tien Tzuo, calls "on-demand subscription." The idea is quite straightforward: Zuora give by will handle subscription billing, thus freeing customers from having to invest time and supplies grappling with the administrative chores related to billing procedures. Zuora makes money by charging a small percentage of the bills collected by the company.

In theory, it's a sweet idea, especially for start-ups that privation to pour all their sweat and muscle into staying afloat. As my colleague Rafe Needleman pointed out when Zuora made its debut at the Demo conference earlier in the year:

"The whole idea of running a billing service for Web 2.0 companies is very smart. Small companies building Web apps shouldn't be saddled with creating billing software from mark with a scratch any more than they should write their own accounting software or e-mail apps…The downside to the model…is not so much a need of customers but a lack of knowledge among potential customers that they should be working on integrating a Z-Billing-like solution sooner rather than later."

That's the biggest question mark hanging over this company. When I spoke recently with Tzuo, he acknowledged the point, but quickly added that nobody will know whether he's too at the opening of day until after the fact.

"It's definitely a bet," he said. "Do you wait for people to want it and build the technology? It's never clear."

By way of example, Tzuo raised the what-might-have-been scenario for Quokka Sports, a now-defunct digital supplier of sports entertainment content, which at its zenith, generated $50 million in sales.

"(CEO) Al Ramadan started that company a couple of years early," he said, adding that Quokka might have survived had it launched later. "But it took online advertising another couple of years to get going. He was early. So was Opsware, for that matter."

Tzuo, who spent nine years working at Salesforce, said his former company wasn't an easy sell in its early days and required missionary work by Benioff for about seven years.

"It's only in the last couple of years that the tide has turned," he said. "Now we want to do same thing–not just for other software companies but for the entire economy."

Venture capital firm Benchmark Capital is buying into the idea. The company led a $6.5 million first round of funding in Zuora. Benioff is in like manner an investor in his company.

"We think this business model is the future," Tzou told me. "It's the same stuff we had to do at Salesforce. You sit down with customers, one at a time."

BEIJING (Reuters) - Some International Olympic Committee officials cut a deal to let China block sensitive websites despite promises of public access, a senior IOC official admitted on Wednesday.

Persistent pollution fears and China's concerns about security in Tibet also remained problems for organizers nine days before the Games begin.

China had committed to providing media with the same freedom to report on the Games as they enjoyed at previous Olympics, but journalists have this week complained of finding access to sites deemed sensitive to its communist leadership blocked.

"I regret that it now appears BOCOG has announced that there will have being limitations on website access during Games time," IOC press chief Kevan Gosper said, referring to Beijing's Olympic organizers.

"I also now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would have existence blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related," he said.

Attempts at the main hasten centre to access the website of Amnesty International, which released a report on Monday slamming China in spite of failing to honor its Olympic human rights pledges, continued to prove fruitless by mid-week.

Other websites, including those belonging to the banned spiritual group Falun Gong, are also inaccessible.

Beijing organizers said censorship would not stop journalists doing their jobs in reporting the Games.

"We are going to transact our best to facilitate the foreign media to do their reporting work through the Internet," BOCOG spokesman Sun Weide told a news conference.

"I would remind you that Falun Gong is an evil, fake religion which has been banned by the Chinese government."

Reporters without Borders, a Paris-based media watchdog, said it was increasingly concerned that there would be many cases of censorship during the Olympics.

"We condemn the IOC's failure to do anything about this, and we are more skeptical about its ability to make sure that the media are able to report freely," the group said in a statement.

SMOG-WATCH

But the admission that the Internet will be partly censored is sure to lead to more criticism for the Olympics host nation, which is already deflecting barbs over everything from the quality of its air to its human rights record.

On Wednesday, Chinese experts said they were working forward emergency plans to keep Olympic skies clear, including keeping cars off the roads in nearby provinces, but expected not to need them unless unusual pollution-trapping weather continued.

The city has already banned cars from roads on alternate days subject to an odd-and-even license plate scheme, suspended some factory fruit and opened reinvigorated subway lines to try to clear its notorious pollution.

"The likelihood of needing stronger measures is very small," said Zhu Tong, a professor at Peking University and leader of a technical group advising Games organizers on air quality.

Slightly cooler temperatures and rain on Tuesday have thinned the haze, but with below-par air quality readings on several days inasmuch as the emergency measures took effect steady July 20, worries remain about athletes wheezing air laced with fumes and dust.

Experts said that given the size of Beijing, the volume of pollutants that flow into the city from other parts of China, and the short time period before the Games open on August 8, there was little more that could be done.

"In this imperfect a time-frame, even if you took aggregate the personal cars off the highway, you might see another 10 percent improvement, but it would be small," said Staci Simonich, an analytical chemist at Oregon State University who has been studying Beijing's air quality.

"The most of all thing that could happen during the Games is to have it rain every night," she said.

China also has other issues on its mind, including pledge in the restive region of Tibet, where official media said Chinese police had been mobilized to ensure "absolute security without a single lapse."

The remote region erupted into rioting in March that sparked protests across China's ethnic Tibetan areas and brought into focus international criticism of Beijing's policies on the issue.

The Tibet Daily announced on Wednesday tough policing for the period of the Games on top of a sweeping over-confidence crackdown already in place. China is at pains to avoid any shows of defiance by pro-Tibet independence groups that could embarrass the government before a worldwide audience.

(Additional reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison, Lindsay Beck, Chris Buckley, Liu Zhen and Simon Rabinovitch; Writing by Lindsay Beck; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

(For more stories visit our multimedia website "Road to Beijing" at http://www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008olympics)

BEIJING (Reuters) - International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials have cut a deal with China to allow the blocking of sensitive websites from media during the Beijing Games, press chief Kevan Gosper said on Wednesday.

Gosper, chairman of the IOC's press commission, had previously uttered that internet access for the 21,500 media accredited for the August 8-24 Games would be "open."

"I … now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related," the Australian told Reuters on Wednesday.

China is committed to providing media with the same freedom to report upon the body the Games as they enjoyed at previous Olympics and it loosened controls over foreigners reporting in the country in January 2007.

But attempts to use the internet at the main press centre to access the website of Amnesty International, which released a report on Monday slamming China for failing to honor its Olympic human rights pledges, continued to prove fruitless on Wednesday.

Other websites, most specifically those relating to the banned spiritual group Falun Gong, were also inaccessible to reporters.

'SENSITIVE MATERIAL'

"It has been my belief, and I have expressed it consistently, that the international media would enjoy free and open access to the internet at Games time for reporting the Olympic Games and that censorship would not be an issue," Gosper said.

"I regret that it now appears BOCOG has announced that there direction be limitations on website access during Games time and, while I understand that sensitive material not related to the Olympic Games continues to be a matter toward the Chinese, I believe BOCOG and the IOC should have conveyed a clear message to the international media, in so far as this affects internet access, at an earlier stage."

Beijing organizers (BOCOG) said censorship would not stop journalists doing their jobs in reporting the Games.

"We are going to work out our best to facilitate the foreign media to do their reporting work through the Internet," BOCOG spokesman Sun Weide told a news conference.

"… I would remind you that Falun Gong is an evil fake religion which has been banned by the Chinese government.

"I said we would provide equal, convenient internet access for foreign journalists to report on the Olympics," he added.

John Coates, the president of the Australian Olympic Committee, told an earlier news conference that he was "disappointed" that the internet was censored, saying freedom of the media and transparency were vital to the Olympic Charter.

Despite the new regulations, foreign media in China continue to express pain of harassment by officials and Human Rights Watch released a report earlier this month saying China was not living up to its pledges.

Liu Binjie, the head of China's Ministry of Press and Publications, told Xinhua on Wednesday that such criticisms defamed China "with stereotypes constructed from hearsay and prejudice in their mind, regardless of the reality."

The minister also said new media regulations were being drawn up to replace those issued for the Olympics, which will expire in October.

"China's open door to the foreign media will not close after the Games," Liu Binjie said.

"We regard the May 12 earthquake and the Olympic Games press coverage as an 'important test' of the media operation system reforms and will explore building a more open and transparent media system after the Games."

China drew wide praise for its openness to foreign media coverage of the Sichuan earthquake, which killed nearly 70,000 people.

That was a stark contrast to the aftermath of the March riots in Tibet then foreign media were banned from entering the Himalayan region except on carefully choreographed trips limited to a handful of reporters.

(Additional reporting by Paul Radford and Liu Zhen, editing by Jon Bramley)

BEIJING (AFP) - Foreign reporters will not have complete access to the Internet during the Beijing Olympics, Games organisers said Wednesday, reversing a pledge to bring down the Chinese firewall of censorship.

Sites linked to the banned Falungong spiritual movement and other unspecified ones would remain blocked for the thousands of foreign reporters covering the Games, organising committee spokesman Sun Weide told AFP.

"During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters," said Sun.

However "sufficient" access falls short of the complete Internet freedoms for foreign reporters that China's communist authorities had promised in the run-up to the Games, which begin on August 8.

The head of the International Olympic Committee's press commission, Kevan Gosper, told AFP that he would charm the matter up with Chinese officials.

"I will speak with the Chinese authorities to advise them of the restraints and to see what their reciprocal action is," he said.

Australian Olympic team chief John Coates, who is also an IOC member, expressed frustration with the decision to continue to censor the Internet, pointing out that China had gone back on one of its "key" Olympic promises.

"It certainly is disappointing… I think it's a quantity that the IOC will take seriously," Coates told reporters at the main press centre for the Games here where sensitive Internet sites remained blocked.

In an exclusive interview with AFP two weeks ago, Rogge insisted that there would be no censorship of the Internet.

"For the first time, foreign media will be good to report freely and publish their work freely in China," he said.

"There will be no censorship on the Internet."

However Sun said China's pledge was only to allow foreign reporters enough information to carry out their duties to cover the Games, not to have unfettered Internet access.

"Our promise was that journalists would have being able to exercise the Internet for their work during the Olympic Games," he said. "So we have given them sufficient access to do that."

Falungong is a particularly sensitive impression for China's communist authorities, who outlawed the group in 1999, describing it of the same kind with an evil cult.

Sun would not say that other sites would remain censored for foreign reporters.

But journalists working at the sheer crowd centre for the Olympics could not access a wide range of sites on Wednesday.

When AFP accessed the Internet through the wireless system at the centre, a wide range of sites considered sensitive by the Chinese government were blocked.

These included sites for Amnesty International, the Tibet government-in-exile, dissidents, and ones giving information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which the Chinese military crushed democracy protests.

Chinese authorities operate strict Internet censorship with a so-called "Great Firewall of China" that blocks information the Communist Party views as improper, unhealthy or a threat to its rule.

Amnesty describes China as one of the world's "enemies of the Internet".

Last year China introduced new regulations relaxing general media curbs for foreign journalists in the run-up to the Games.

However, domestic journalists, who work under strict censorship, were not included in the measures to relax reporting restrictions, nor were they promised any greater Internet freedoms during the Games.