The fate of Cablevision‘s Rainbow DBS direct-to-home satellite television unit, which does business as Voom, took another twist. On March 3, Cablevision reported in a Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Chairman Charles Dolan said in a letter to the company that he was, on behalf of the holders of the company’s Class B Common Stock, removing William Bell, Sheila Mahony and Steven Rattner as directors of the company. They will be replaced with Rand Araskog, Frank Biondi, John Malone and Leonard Tow as directors to fill the vacancies created by the removals and the passing of Cablevision co-founder John Tatta. The filing also indicated that Dolan would ask Cablevision to increase the size of the board to allow for the election of Brian Sweeney, son-in-law of Dolan and senior vice president for eMedia. Dolan added that Class B holders would exercise their right under the company’s charter to elect 75 percent of the company’s directors at the forthcoming annual stockholders meeting.

In other news, the company reported in the same filing that it was extending the deadline to March 7 for Voom HD LLC, the company headed by Dolan, to submit its plan to acquire the Rainbow DBS assets not included in the EchoStar transaction. Earlier this week, Cablevision had announced that it and Voom HD could not reach agreement on the sale and said it would close down Voom by the end of the month. Voom HD responded with a press release of its own saying it was still pursuing the Rainbow DBS operations.

For a complete wrap-up of the Voom situation so far, please see the March 7 issue of Satellite News. For more information about subscribing to Access Intelligence’s satellite industry news and information services, please visit us on the Web at https://www.satellitetoday.com.