8 ex-AOL Time Warner executives charged and Walt Disney CFO exercises options

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City of Industry, CA --(www.USEquityNews.com)-- 05/20/2008 - Media entertainment industry alert provided by U.S. Equity News. Federal regulators recently said eight former Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) executives fraudulently inflated the company's online advertising revenues by more than $1 billion between 2000 and 2002. Four of the executives have agreed to settle the civil charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission by paying a total of roughly $8 million in fines and returning allegedly ill-gotten gains. They are David Colburn, Eric Keller, Jay Rappaport and James MacGuidwin. MacGuidwin was controller of the media company; the other three were in its business affairs unit.


Rentrak Corporation (NASDAQ: RENT) recently announced it has entered into a multi-year measurement deal with Cox Communications, the third-largest cable television company in the United States. Marking a significant milestone for Rentrak, the agreement with Cox enables Rentrak to provide aggregated census level on demand television data and unparalleled insight for all major multiple systems operators (MSOs) in the cable industry space. Rentrak's proven ability to quickly process and report on more than 36 billion transactions annually from thousands of different sources in near-real time provides Cox with business intelligence to help the company continue their leadership role as a top provider of communications solutions.

The senior executive vice president and chief financial officer of media and entertainment company Walt Disney Co. exercised options for 50,000 shares of common stock under a prearranged trading plan, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday. In a Form 4 filed with the SEC, Thomas O. Staggs reported he exercised options for the shares on Friday for $26.81 apiece and then sold them all the same day for $35 apiece. The stock sale was conducted under a prearranged 10b5-1 trading plan which allows a company insider to set up a program in advance for such transactions and proceed with them even if he or she comes into possession of material non-public information.

EPIC Corporation (OTC: EPIO) (the "Company"), a multi-media communications and broadcasting company, announced that two shareholders have returned 15 Million shares of EPIC's common stock to the Company and the shares have been cancelled and returned to authorized but unissued shares. The issued and outstanding shares of the Company is now 11,262,023 shares. The Company, in exchange for the cancellation of the shares, agreed to issue the shareholders shares in the newly formed EPIC Communications Corp., a majority owned subsidiary of the Company, which is to become the multi-media communications and broadcasting operating company.

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