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NEWS Tuesday June 7th to Friday 11th 2004
Scroll down page or click below for news - latest first
| Tuesday | |||||
Now that the French Parliament has passed the electronic communications act, known as Paquet Telecoms, the French broadcasting regulator (the CSA) has set the launch timetable for DTT - renamed TNT for Television Numerique pour Tous.
The free-to-air channels are due to start on 1 March 2005 and the pay channels six months later. The FTA channels will have one month to launch effectively and if they do not launch they may forfeit their DTT allocation. The pay channels have six months in which to launch after the official starting date.
Seventeen transmission sites will be in operation at launch, mainly in the large cities, reaching around 35 per cent of the population. This will rise to 50 per cent by the time of the pay TV launch. The ultimate aim is to reach 85 percent (with 117 transmission sites) by 2007.
The staggered
launch of pay and free channels was requested by the pay channels themselves
for two reasons. One is to give the pay TV operators time to deploy. The second
is to avoid confusion among the general public. "Up to now," explained
Dominique Baudis, chairman of the CSA, "all the extra channels that have
launched have been part of a pay platform, whether Canal Satellite, TPS or
a cable operator. If free and pay channels were to start simultaneously on
the new platform, some members of the public might think that they have to
take out a subscription before they can receive the free channels."
The Paquet Telecoms act also gives a date for the end of analogue transmission:
five years after the launch of DTT, subject to sufficient coverage and penetration.
This means the earliest analogue switch off date would be March 2010.
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UK's Sportech, owner of Littlewoods Gaming, has announced the launch of Littlewoods Bet Direct on ITV's interactive platform, ITVi, ahead of Euro 2004.
Littlewoods Bet Direct is the only fixed odds betting service available within ITV's interactive menu. Operating 24/7, the service offers ITV viewers an extensive range of betting markets including football and horseracing.
"Euro 2004 provides an ideal customer recruitment opportunity for Littlewoods Bet Direct on ITVi. By pressing the red or text button on the remote control, ITV programming remains within a quarter screen, enabling viewers to access all the latest tournament information and to place a bet," a Sportech spokesman explained.
The service will be supported by a national press campaign, starting on 12 June 2004. ITVi is currently available to 7.3 million digital households and is available via the red and text buttons on the remote control.
Meanwhile ITV
has launched a web site showcasing its rising number of interactive television
applications. The site provides viewers with a full guide to ITV's interactive
programmes, among them a daily Lotto service shown on This Morning which is
generating up to 14 per cent of all entries received. ITV also said it would
be providing an interactive television service to accompany its coverage of
Euro 2004 with live results, match statistics and reports.
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The European Commission has left the decision to create a single television network in Germany to the local competition watchdog. According to a report in the Guardian newspaper, Brussels said that Kabel Deutschland's plans to spend E2.7 billion buying its three rivals should be decided by the federal cartel office.
The country's cable network was installed by Deutsche Telekom in the 1990s, when it was a state-owned monopoly, as part of government plans to increase competition in the television sector. The system was kept separate from Deutsche Telekom's fixed-line network, which carries voice and data traffic.
After privatisation, Deutsche Telekom decided to divide its cable operation into individual businesses and sell them off. The last part, Kabel Deutschland, was sold last year to Apax Partners, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and Providence Equity for more than E1.7 billion.
Kabel Deutschland subsequently announced plans to buy the three other cable firms: Iesy, owned by a group of investors including Pequot capital; Ish, owned by a group of banks, and KabelBW, which is owned by private equity firms including Blackstone.
Together the
four companies serve about 27 million households and the cartel office has
expressed concern that it could affect competition.
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America's largest cableco Comcast is planning to develop the first 24-hour network dedicated to pre-school kids. According to reports, the company is in advanced negotiations with the Public Broadcasting System, Sesame Street Workshop and HIT Entertainment.
The as-yet-unnamed network would carry no commercials and would have rights to Barney & Friends, Sesame Street, Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine, among others. Rights to those shows are now owned by Sesame Street Workshop, a non-profit organization, and HIT, a UK company that produces children's programming.
Comcast, PBS and the two programmers would each own stakes in the new digital network.
Launching the channel will be Comcast's latest attempt to develop content assets. When Comcast launched its abortive hostile bid for Walt Disney earlier this year, it identified news, sport and children's programming as the most important areas that it wanted to develop.
If approved,
the channel would provide programming that Comcast could make available to
subscribers through video on demand.
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A new Internet-based video ad delivery service has officially launched in Canada after months of testing with Canadian private television networks, the Television Bureau of Canada, several ad agencies and at least one production house.
The service enables TV commercials to be sent digitally over the net to TV stations across Canada and North America. It is currently offered by FastChannel Network Canada (www.fastchannelcanada.com), which obtained the rights from US firm FastChannel Network.
CTV, Alliance Atlantis, CHUM, Global, Craig and Rogers TV networks, along with Hudson's Bay Media Services, BBDO and DDB Canada ad agencies have all tested the service. Video servers are provided by FastChannel Canada.
"So far it has tested well," says James Patterson, TVB president. TVB receives 40,000 spots a year for approval for Canada's private broadcasters.
The addition
of video to FastChannel's suite of Web-based delivery services gives advertisers
a single online entry point to manage ad delivery to more than 2,300 TV broadcasters,
9,100 radio stations and 5,700 newspapers across North America.
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The UK-based site is already on Sky's interactive TV service Sky Active, but Hoberman reportedly said a fully fledged TV channel was something he would like to do "at some point".
"We're on
Sky Active. That to us is the first step in getting into the broadcast stream.
Launching a TV travel channel is something we'll be unlikely to do,"
he said. "But launching an entire lifestyle channel with reality style
formats, looking at what people do at the last minute and where they go, could
be interesting," he added.
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Singapore-based contract electronics manufacturer Flextronics is to buy a majority 55 per cent stake in Hughes Software Systems (HSS) for $226 million. The deal is reckoned to be the biggest acquisition deal in the Indian information technology sector.
Arun Kumar, President and MD of Hughes Software, said: "Flextronics, Direct TV Group and Hughes Network Systems have signed an agreement whereby Flextronics will acquire HNS' entire ownership stake of 55 per cent in HSS." Flextronics will also have to make an open offer to buy an additional 20 per cent stake from the shareholders of Hughes for $82 million.
Michael Marks, CEO of Flextronics said that the deal will enable the company to cross-sell its respective products and services to a very complementary telecom customer base. The present management of Hughes Software and its name are to be retained after the company becomes a subsidiary of Flextronics.
Hughes provides
software systems for fixed and mobile phone networks for both voice and data.
It has two development centres in India; one in Gurgaon, near New Delhi, and
another in the information technology hub of Bangalore. The company also has
a centre in Nuremberg, Germany.
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SES Americom is to lease 16 transponders during the next 10 years to increase capacity for VOOM, the high-def/standard-def satellite TV service from Rainbow DBS and Cablevision.
VOOM will lease Ku-Band transponders aboard the AMC-6 satellite to deliver more HD programming to customers. The agreement, scheduled to start October 1st, is also a boost for SES Americom's Americom2Home direct-to-home platform, having secured bandwidth commitments for four FSS and BSS satellite payloads since its inception in April 2002.
As part of the
partnership, Americom2Home has a dual feed (Ku-Band FSS and Ku-Band BSS) elliptical
dish antenna system that was adopted by VOOM for its expanded service. The
dish enables a subscriber to receive signals from two satellites even if they
are more than 10 degrees apart and operate in different bands.
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Shanghai Telecommunications has selected Juniper Networks' E-series routing platform to extend the geographical reach of broadband ADSL access in the city. The deployment is currently in the third phase in the expansion of its advanced high-speed broadband network.
The network capacity upgrade is being implemented to meet growing demand for new value-added services including the Shanghai Online 2 multimedia service, also known as ChinaVNet. Shanghai Online 2 offers video on demand, training and education content, gaming and music.
The E-series combines carrier-class routing performance with broadband subscriber management and IP services in a single platform.
Shanghai Telecom
has also used Juniper Networks M-series as the core routing platforms since
March 2001.
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Broadband access services in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan) have posted a promising 58 per cent annual growth in subscribers, reaching almost 29 million by 2003, according to IDC.
The report says that China was the driver for the growth with the number of subscribers growing 192 per cent year on year, and comprising about 73 per cent of new subscribers in 2003. IDC estimates that subscribers will grow to over 36 million in the region by the end of this year.
The broadband access market was estimated to be $6.8 billion in terms of revenues in 2003 with an annual growth of 38 per cent. The revenues are projected to touch $8.6 billion for 2004, with a year-on-year growth of 27 per cent. According to IDC, service providers throughout the region are facing stronger competition in their markets and increasing basic high-speed broadband Internet access offerings at lower tariff rates.
The largest markets in terms of revenue by 2008 will be South Korea, China and Taiwan, with revenue expected to touch $14 billion in 2008.
In 2003, DSL was the broadband access technology of choice, accounting for over 19.83 million subscribers (69 per cent) across the region. DSL will strengthen its hold in terms of access technology, reaching about 75 per cent by 2008, IDC predicted.
South Korea leads
the world in terms of broadband penetration with about 62 per cent penetration
of households at the end of 2003. In contrast, the broadband penetration of
households in China is still below 3 per cent. Other top markets in the region
in terms of broadband penetration of households include Hong Kong (50 per
cent), Taiwan (40 per cent) and Singapore (29 per cent).
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Telenor gives Norway a new EDGE
Norway's Telenor Mobile is upgrading the GSM network with EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) technology. This will enable the company to offer its mobile customers increased capacity and larger bandwidth in the existing GSM network. "With EDGE the data transfer rate will be three times the speed possible from GSM," the company said.
Nokia and Ericsson have both been awarded EDGE contracts. The agreement covers the immediate delivery of equipment and services required for the increasing GSM traffic and the activation of EDGE services providing high-speed advanced mobile services to Telenor Mobil's 2.3 million subscribers.
Finn Erik Hermansen, Managing Director, Nokia, Norway commented: "EDGE is a complementary technology to WCDMA, and it will enable Telenor to provide their customers with high speed mobile data also in the rural areas of Norway."
Telenor Satellite also announced the commercial launch of Sealink Global Access, the company's latest broadband communications package delivering high-speed global access to the maritime industry.
This new maritime
VSAT service is an off-the-shelf package that provides ships with connections
of up to 256 kbps and includes on-board telephone/fax lines, Internet and
Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) access, installation and maintenance
of the on-board antenna and equipment, and around-the-clock customer support.
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DoCoMo and Telstra launch i-mode in Australia
Japan's mobile phone giant NTT DoCoMo and Telstra, the leading telecommunications operator in Australia, have formed an exclusive strategic partnership under which Telstra will launch i-mode in Australia.
The agreement licenses Telstra to offer the i-mode service with DoCoMo providing its brand, technology and patents.
i-mode is a mobile
internet service that provides subscribers with access to rich content, e-mail,
games and other applications and services through their mobile handsets. i-mode
currently has over 43 million subscribers and 80,000 content sites in nine
different countries.
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The new service
will be available for the cost of the installation of a satellite dish and
receiver - around £150 (E227) - and will deliver the five terrestrial
channels and all the other FTA digital-only stations including ITV2, BBC3
and BBC4.
This the first strategic shift since the appointment of chief executive James
Murdoch. It comes in response to the twin threats of slowing of premium subscriber
acquisition and the success of Freeview which is now in 3.5m UK homes. BSkyB's
gambit is that "Freesat" will slow the progress of Freeview and
also act as a primer for their pay-services.
"These initiatives are another step in giving consumers a choice from Sky that suits their needs at the top and lower ends of the scale. They will help drive even greater take-up of digital TV services and enable Sky to enjoy a close relationship with even more customers," said Murdoch. He also insisted there were still 10 million potential pay-TV customers to target as the country moves towards digital switchover.
The move will be welcomed by the government and Ofcom as another step forward in plans to switch off the analogue signal by 2010. Earlier this year the regulator identified the lack of a viable free-to-air satellite service, filling in the gaps in terrestrial coverage, as one of the main barriers to digital switchover.
While customers could already buy a dish and box from Sky without subscribing, the company has fixed the drawbacks created when the BBC went FTA last year and refused to continue to pay for FTA channel smart cards that gave access to the other FTA national channels. ITV, C4 and 5 have been off the air ever since. But under the new offer, Sky will provide a card to allow viewers to watch the correct regional variant of all the existing terrestrial channels plus over 200 free-to-air channels, including the likes of CNN and QVC, and customers will receive access to all five existing terrestrial channels through the Sky electronic programme guide.
The City, which
has been made nervous by the slowing of subscriber growth, reacted well to
the news, although whether dish refusniks will be persuaded by free channels
is one question, and if they are will they upgrade to pay services is another.
Even on the free service Sky will hope to generate some income on interactive
services that are available on DTT.
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In a series of major announcements BT has set out its timetable for what it calls 21CN: the 21st Century Network. BT says 21CN will deliver on the vision of a converged multi-media world with customers accessing communication and entertainment from any device at broadband speed.
The telco says mass migration to the new network will begin in 2006 with the majority completed in 2008. 21CN will be a single multi-service network, says BT, that will save it £1bn a year (E1.5bn) in operating costs. The capex required will fall within its previously announced forecasts of £3bn a year.
The heart of
the transformation is away from PSTN (public switched telephone network) to
an IP based network and as a first stage 1,000 customers in London and East
Anglia will be switched to trial end-to-end voice and data over IP. Head of
BT Wholesale Paul Reynolds said "We want to be clear that using IP in
our network is a gulf apart from the new budget VoIP services being launched
almost daily."
The telco also set a target of 2009 for nationwide availability of dial tone
broadband so customers can switch to broadband themselves as and weh they
need it.
BT also announced
trials of fibre to premises or home (FTTH) involving up to 1,500 sites with
installations going in from October 2004 to the end of 2005. Reynolds admitted
BT didn't FTTH as a widespread part of 21CN, but said the trial was important
to aid a proper cost benefit analysis.
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The service won't start until 2006 but with the boom in home cinema, widescreen TV and DVRs like Sky Plus, Sky hopes the new service will appeal to a significant minority of its customers.
Sky hopes the
new service will encourage subscribers to pay a premium to receive channels
and one-off events, such as big football matches, in high def.
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TiVo
hit by DirecTV defection
TiVo shares fell nearly 15 percent after DirecTV sold its stake of over three
million shares in the PVR maker. Investors were clearly worried that, when
added to the recent departure of the DirecTV presence on the TiVo board, it
signalled a significant weakening of the relationship.
However, the sale does not signal a change in the companies' partnership, a DirecTV spokesman said. The stock sale was worth about $24.1 million, according to DirecTV spokesman Bob Marsocci. It was merely "consistent with our strategy to sell some of our noncore holdings," he said. "Our relationship with TiVo is strong."
TiVo added 264,000
new subscribers in the first quarter, as opposed to 79,000 in the same quarter
last year. Of those new customers, 196,000 were derived from DirecTV. More
than one million DirecTV subscribers have TiVo-equipped set-top boxes, and
DirecTV expects to add another 1 million by the end of this year.
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Charlesworth
joins from BSkyB where she was Strategic Operations Manager. In her new role,
she will be responsible for the day-to-day management of Freeview/DTV Services
Limited, which is jointly owned by the BBC, Crown Castle and BSkyB. With a
career history that spans nine years at BSkyB in marketing, operational and
product development functions, including close involvement in the launch of
Freeview, she brings extensive knowledge of the digital television industry
and a commitment to deepen and extend Freeview's relationships with manufacturers
and retailers. The appointment follows the departure earlier this year of
Freeview's former General Manager, Matthew Seaman to join DTT pay operator
Top Up TV.
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He said the two companies could sell programmes internationally along with those of C4, Five and others. Allen, giving evidence to the Commons select committee on culture, media and sport, said: "I think all of the BBC's commercial activities should be privatised to have a better divide between public service and commercial activities."
In the financial year ending March 31 last year, the BBC generated sales of £640m (E969m) and profits of £44m, a 6.8% return, from its Worldwide commercial arm.
In its submission
to the select committee, ITV also called for Ofcom, the media regulator, to
be given full regulatory responsibility for the BBC. "Passing this role
to Ofcom would make more sense than yet another half-hearted attempt at creating
an artificial distance between the governors and the BBC management,"
the company added.
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According to analyst IDC, changes in the market after a downturn at the end of 2002, when several mobile portals closed due to lack of users and services, have left the market in a period of consolidation.
"Since the launch of Vodafone Live! around Europe during 2003, it seems that the vast majority of mobile operators in western Europe have decided to give their mobile portal a makeover," said Rosie Secchi, senior research analyst with IDC's European wireless and mobile communications service.
"The current picture shows more and more consolidation within the providers' mobile portals, such as Vodafone Live! in Switzerland and France.
"Mobile operators with operations in different countries have transformed their local mobile portal into a single pan-European brand and marketing to reach a more global audience through seamless connection and services that are available to mobile users from different countries."
The analyst firm said that the trend illustrated the importance for mobile operators to own their customers so that they can generate revenue through branding, sponsorship, content and effective marketing.
"But we cannot forget that, although global branding is the right move towards offering a seamless and complete experience to mobile users no matter when they use the service, local services and content are still very important, as customers from different countries might have different preferences," added Secchi.
IDC predicted
that, in order to sustain growth not only in terms of users but in usage,
mobile operators must introduce more dynamic and interactive mobile portal
content and evolve the offering to ensure that it continues to be compelling
and personalised.
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VUE
ex CFO under investigation
The former CFO of Vivendi Universal SA has been placed under investigation
as part of a probe into alleged insider dealing and share price manipulation
at the French media and telecoms giant. Guillaume Hannezo, was formally placed
under investigation last week; one step short of being charged. Hannezo served
as Vivendi's chief financial officer under former CEO Jean-Marie Messier,
who was ousted in July 2002 as the company's finances crumbled and its debt
spiraled out of control.
Prosecutors
accuse Vivendi of arranging to buy its own shares above authorized volumes
in September and October of that year in order to boost their market price.
They have also questioned Michel Prada, head of the French market authority,
who later wrote to Messier saying the watchdog planned to take no action despite
Vivendi's repeated breaches of market rules on share buybacks.
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Television Korea 24 (tvK24), a Korean-language digital basic network, is set for introduction on Liberty Media's International Channel Networks (ICN), a destination for Asian American and other bi-lingual audiences. The channel will be launched in Los Angeles in the last quarter of this year. This is likely to be followed by delivery via fibre to Denver for uplinking to Galaxy 11 for satellite delivery as a national service. ICN will handle national ad sales, while tvK24 staffers will sell local accounts.
The channel
features news, dramas, movies, sports, business, health, music, children's,
and game shows, all in Korean, though selected shows will have English subtitles.
The network also offers MBC (Korean), CCTV-4 (Chinese), TV Asia (South Asia),
The Filipino Channel (Filipino) and TV JAPAN (Japanese) among others. ICN
is the trade name of International Cable Channels Partnership, Ltd., a company
90 per cent owned by Liberty Media Corporation and 10 per cent owned by JJS
II Communications, LLC.
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Multikabel, the
major network operator of North Holland, and Irdeto Access, have agreed Irdeto
Access will supply its large-scale conditional access solution; Irdeto PIsys,
and associated services. The deployment means that households in the area
served by Multikabel can now simply pick up a starter kit and a digital receiver
integrated with the Irdeto Access conditional access technology, from their
local store.
Nico Rijkhoff, Marketing Manager at Multikabel: "We are very pleased with
the agreement with Irdeto Access. Our customers will soon be among the first
in the Netherlands to be able to buy a digital television kit over the counter,
which they will be able to install easily and straight away. Together with
Irdeto Access we shall be making it as easy as possible for consumers to buy
digital television and use it from day one."
According to
Irdeto Access CEO Graham Kill, this new form of digital television offering
- the horizontal market model - could become the standard in a large part
of Europe: "We are confident that the co-operation with Multikabel, as a supplier
of television services in North Holland, will benefit both consumers and our
two companies. The combined digital TV package offered by Multikabel and Irdeto
Access reflects the practical and flexible approach both companies aim to
achieve. We are therefore pleased to be able to jointly provide television
viewers in North Holland with advanced television technology."
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According to reports Microsoft is expected to file an appeal this week against the European Commission's antitrust decision against it.
The FT said the company believes the move may pave the way for a settlement of the antitrust dispute. In March, the European Commission hit Microsoft with a record fine of more than $600 million and ordered sanctions designed to end what the organization described as its "near monopoly."
Microsoft is
also expected to make a separate filing in the next few weeks seeking to suspend
the ruling from taking effect immediately. Under the EC ruling, Microsoft
was given a deadline of late June to offer computer makers a separate version
of its Windows operating system that doesn't include its media player audio
and video software.
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Pace Micro Technology confirmed it has been found guilty of breaching stock market rules by the Financial Services Authority, the UK City regulator.
The FSA has found against Pace, John Dyson, the chief executive, and his predecessor Malcolm Miller. The RDC has the power to publicly censure companies and individuals and impose substantial fines. Pace, Dyson and Miller are contesting the verdict by taking the case to the Financial Services and Markets Tribunal.
Details of the
case have been kept secret under a confidentiality agreement. But the enforcement
action is understood to centre on whether Pace broke listing-authority rules
by failing to disclose information properly to the stock market. The company
shocked investors by making an astonishing five profit warnings between September
2001 and July 2002. In that 10-month period, Pace's share price plummeted
by 93 per cent to just 28p.
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DirecTV's vice Chairman has stepped down from TiVo's board of Directors. TiVo, said DirecTV Vice Chairman Eddy Hartenstein resigned to spend more time at the satellite TV company, which has gone through some management changes following its acquisition by News Corp.
Since News Corp's acquisition of DirecTV, there has been speculation surrounding the solidity of the relationship between TiVo and DirecTV. TiVo executives have acknowledged in the past that DirecTV hasn't endorsed its latest features as quickly as the DVR maker would have liked. DirecTV invested in TiVo in April 1999 with a stake that at the time was in excess of 10 percent, with it came a position on TiVo's board.
Commenting on
speculation DirectTV may look elsewhere for its DVR needs, TiVo
Said "We are aware of the speculation. This does not signify a change
in our relationship with TiVo…DirecTV TiVo subscribers are our most loyal
customers and tend to spend the most money". There are about a million
DirecTV subscribers signed up for the TiVo service.
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Time Warner Cable is offering unlimited local and long-distance telephone service via the Internet to customers who also subscribe to its cable and high-speed Internet. The new service costs $39.95 a month.
The company plans to outline its service rollout in the Cincinnati area, where local provider Cincinnati Bell has about 1 million lines. Last week, the digital phone service was introduced in Dayton, where SBC Communications is the local provider.
Cincinnati Bell
prepared for the competition with a marketing campaign earlier this year that
advertised its own bundles of local, long-distance, wireless and Internet
service.
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Eight years after it went on air, Malaysia’s direct to home satellite TV service, Astro, is set to face competition once more. Tycoon Vincent Tan announced that he will launch a pay TV service in December with 50 interactive channels, including email, interactivity and games on demand. The service, called MiTV, will be a mixture of IPTV and DTT.
Astro, owned by Malaysia’s wealthiest man, Ananda Kirshnan, has 1.4 subscribers and reported a profit last year for the first time since it began transmissions in 1996. It carries 48 channels and has aimed its programming at Malaysia’s Chinese and Indian minorities who are generally bypassed by the terrestrials which are aimed at the ethnic Malaysian majority.
There are questions
about whether Malaysia’s 22 million population can support two pay TV
providers. Mega TV, a cable TV service launched in 1995 for viewers in and
around the capital Kuala Lumpur, Mega TV, went out of business six years later.
But Tan insists that with 5.5 million TV homes there is a lot of un met demand.
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Broadband take-up experienced its lowest growth rate during the last quarter of 2003 compared with the rest of the year, the latest Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) broadband report claims.
According to the results of the most recent Snapshot of Broadband Deployment report, adoption of broadband services across the country grew by 14.4 per cent (86,900 users) in the last quarter of 2003. The total number of users reached 698,700.
The ACCC report
said it was the third consecutive month in which broadband take-up had recorded
a falling growth rate.
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ITV faces a shortfall of £100m (E151m) advertising revenue if its television audience continues declining. Under Contracts Rights Renewal (CRR), a code introduced to prevent a newly merged ITV from exploiting its dominance over the commercial television advertising market, advertisers can negotiate lower rates based on how much the broadcaster's audience share shrinks.
Figures from the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (Barb) show that ITV's share of commercial impacts (one impact equals one person seeing an ad once) for most of its viewing groups is down. If the decline is maintained over the year, advertisers will be able to negotiate a lower price for next year. Some trade estimates say it could lead to a decline of around three per cent in advertising revenues for 2005.
Total annual advertising spend on commercial television is around £3.3bn. With 51 per cent of the advertising market last year, ITV earned £1.7bn, but if its share fell by 3 per cent, this would knock off around £100m in revenue.
Andy Roberts,
the trading director at buying agency Starcom Motive, said: With Euro 2004
and programmes such as 'I'm a Celebrity ...' coming up later this year, ITV
hopes its audience share will pick up."
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Nair said his
agency was also negotiating with Singapore to send a satellite into space
as India seeks to become a player in the lucrative global launch market.
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Canal-J, now part of the Lagardere group, is to launch its third children's channel in France on 1 September. Provisionally named "Chado", the channel will be targeted at girls aged 11 to 18. The name "Loola" has been speculated in the French press.
Canal J is one of the oldest cable channels in France, launched almost 15 years ago. Five years ago it launched Tiji, a channel for pre-school children. Claude-Yves Robin, head of Canal J, declined to reveal the budget of the new channel, "because of the highly competitive nature of the market for children's channels".
This will bring
the number of children's channels in France to 15. Robin did disclose that
the launch of the new channel will increase the combined budget (Canal-j +
Tiji) by 20 per cent, but many of the costs are spread over the three channels.
The majority of the programming (75 per cent) will be live-action series,
mainly based on schoolgirl life, not previously broadcast in France, as well
as musical events (10 per cent), cartoons (five per cent) and a daily live
magazine. He added that the channel would be an immediate success, because
it will have a reach of 2.6 million homes from the outset, more than double
that of Tiji at launch. It will be carried on the basic package of Canal Satellite,
as well as the cable operators Noos, NC Numericable, France Telecom Cable
and Est Videocom.
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The Spanish TV industry will have to pay out a lot of money for developing digital terrestrial television over the next years. It is estimated that an investment of E10 billion will be needed to develop the market up to the end of 2011, when analogue switchover is scheduled.
So far, according to the industry, E 250 million have been wasted in a market that is at standstill since the collapse of pay-TV platform Quiero in 2002. Even worse, digital transmissions of present broadcasters RTVE, Antena 3 TV, Tele 5, Net TV and Veo TV serve an "invisible" audience as they cannot be received due to the lack of set-top-boxes available in the market. This digital broadcasts cost around E3.6 million year.
To try and unblock
the situation and boost the DTT market, AETIC, an electronic and telecommunications
association, recommends the new Government re-allocates Quiero's three and
half multiplexes (14 channels) amongst existing broadcasters to allow them
more capacity for added-value services. In a second phase, says AETIC, operators
and broadcasters should undertake to offer and invest in new content and added-value
services, with RTVE leading the DTT development.
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NTL is to invest E100 million to upgrade its cable network in Ireland so that its customers can hook up to broadband. By the end of the year NTL Ireland will be able to deliver broadband to more than 100,000 homes with the rest of the network coming on-stream by the end of 2006.
The cableco decided to invest in its network following improved financial and operational performance of NTL Ireland over the past year. NTL Ireland MD Graham Sutherland said: "This is an ambitious step forward for NTL and I believe it will boost broadband take up in Ireland. By creating real platform competition in Ireland through network investment, increasing broadband speeds and reducing subscription prices, NTL Ireland will further stimulate the uptake of broadband in this country."
NTL Ireland also
announced a series of price changes for its existing broadband products. From
August, its 300k service will cost E25 (£16.65) a month, while its 750k
service will set you back E35 (£23.30) a month.
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The tie-up marks an outbreak of peace between the two companies. Last October,
'3,' in conjunction with Vodafone, defeated Sky in a battle to buy Premier
League mobile phone rights.
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Greece's Cosmote has announced the commercial launch of 3G services and the introduction of video streaming for the first time in the Greek mobile market. Cosmote says that it aims to provide video content through collaborations with providers such as Antenna TV and Databank.
Cosmote's 3G
network currently covers 30 per cent of the population, mostly the metropolitan
areas of Athens and Thessaloniki. Cosmote is the Grand National Sponsor of
the Athens 2004 summer Olympic Games, and has deployed its 3G network in areas
that cover key Olympic venues located in the cities of Athens, Thessaloniki,
Patra, Volos and Heraklion in Crete.
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Britain's commercial
broadcaster ITV has been accused of bullyboy tactics by advertisers for forcing
them to buy airtime on the little watched ITV2 in lieu of discounts due to
them under a complex agreement imposed by the government when Carlton and
Granada merged earlier this year, the Guardian newspaper reported.
The allegations have been raised on an informal basis by "several parties"
although they have not yet resulted in a formal complaint, according to David
Connolly, the official adjudicator appointed by the media regulator Ofcom
to police the new agreement.
The report said that the introduction of the new scheme, which advertisers had warned could be unworkable during the consultation period leading up to the merger, had been fairly smooth. Connolly said he had only received three complaints from media agencies, all of which had been found in their favour, out of the hundreds of contracts agreed as part of the annual round of deals earlier this year.
But according
to the report several agencies have raised concerns that ITV is bundling airtime
on its other channels, including ITV2 and Granada Sky Broadcasting channels
such Men and Motors and Granada Plus, into renegotiations of rates.
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Lawmakers backing the bill say it could ensure that satellite customers get local stations where they are available. The bill passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee and must now be combined with a similar bill that would raise the royalty rates the two carriers pay to broadcast networks before it can be taken up for a vote in the House.
Industry officials said the proposal could slow deployment of local channels in new markets and could mean that some customers would get fewer channels.
EchoStar, requires customers in 38 markets to have two dishes, citing capacity constraints. Local channels are split between the two dishes and broadcasters have complained that less popular channels are shunted to the second dish that some customers forgo. DirecTV, which is controlled by News Corp, is also expected to use two dishes in some local markets when it rolls out service in more cities later this year.
The two-dish
measure is part of a broader measure that would extend a law authorizing satellite
television companies to offer local broadcasts. The current law expires at
the end of the year.
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SMG appoints new non-exec Chairman
Scottish television group SMG has appointed Chris Masters as non-executive Chairman to succeed Don Cruickshank, whose departure was announced six months ago.
Masters was executive
chairman of the power generator rentals business Aggreko before standing down
two years ago. He is a non-executive director at four other firms. SMG, which
also owns the Virgin radio network and the Pearl & Dean cinema advertising
business, reported a 25 per cent fall in annual profit earlier this year due
to an advertising slump and the sale of its publishing business.
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US satellite services provider GIobeCast has launched a new satellite distribution platform for new digital cable television networks in North America on Galaxy 10R from the company's Los Angeles broadcast centre.
GlobeCast's service
uses C-Band transponder capacity on PanAmSat's Galaxy 10R satellite, part
of the Galaxy cable neighbourhood of satellites. The Galaxy 10R satellite
offers access to most cable head-ends in the US, allowing cable operators
to receive GlobeCast platform channels via existing downlink antennas.
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