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NEWS Monday January 10th to Friday January 14th 2005
Scroll down page or click below for news - latest first
| Tuesday | |||||
State-owned RTVE
has asked the Government for a leading role in the development of DTT, similar
to the BBC with Freeview in UK.
"RTVE knows, can and wants to lead the new television", said the
General Director of the Group, Carmen Caffarel, who also demanded a leading
role in the re-allocation of Quiero's frequencies scheduled for next summer.
RTVE undertook to launch eight digital channels and be the driving force behind
the DTT market. "We are willing to be the driving force because we are
ready, thanks to our current production, to use from the beginning the two
multiplexes", added Caffarel.
RTVE currently operates terrestrial channels La Primera and La 2 and five
satellite thematic channels, Teledeporte, Canal Clasico, Grandes Documentales,
Canal 24 Horas and Canal Nostalgia. The group is also working on a new children's
channel be distributed on the free-to-air DTT platform.
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At News Corp content remains king, says President and CEO Peter Chernin. Speaking at Citigroup Smith Barney's media conference he said there's "clearly more interest" at the company in gaining more content, whether it's investing in a programming start-up or acquiring additional channels or producers.
He also highlighted plans to launch new channels: Fox Reality Channel will launch in the spring and will debut among more than 20 million viewers, most of which could be with DirecTV.
News Corp. and Fox also are working on a business channel that could launch during the second half of the year, Chernin said. He added that the company has given some thought to working on a national sports channel, but stressed that the plans are only preliminary and could fall through once the company is done studying the proposed channel's potential.
Also Chernin
stated News Corp is a big fan of DVRs, especially given their impact on the
DirecTV business. He said the company could become "the largest supplier
of DVRs in the country through DirecTV." DVRÅfs can compete effectively
with video-on-demand offerings from cable and are being used already for differentiated
programming, such as NFL highlights sent to DVRs used by DirecTV customers.
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A report in the Irish Times says Goldman Sachs, which is handling the possible sale of NTL Ireland, is in talks with two candidates, a private consortium and UGC.
The report says
NTL is looking to achieve E150-200m for the sale; in contrast to the E680m
it paid in 1999. NTL Ireland has 340,000 CATV subscribers but has fialed to
make much headway with other services. UGC bought its smaller Irish rival,
Chorus, for E41m in December last year.
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Virgin Radio will become the first station to offer pictures as well as sound when it launches a new "visual radio" service in the spring on Nokia phones.
Developed by Nokia, visual radio works by sending images to mobile phones which are synchronised with the station's play list. Listeners using their phones to tune into Virgin will be able to vote for play lists, rank particular songs, take part in competitions or buy ringtones and tracks by clicking on the various images, rather than sending texts. Virgin will create the visual content using special software created by Nokia and HP, which is then broadcast to mobiles.
More than 2.5
million people already use their mobile phones to listen to the radio, an
increase of over 40% since last year, according to radio advertising body
the RAB.
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Lord Hollick will move into private equity as managing director of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts after retiring from United Business Media. The Labour peer will join KKR in April after 31 years as chief executive of UBM and its predecessor companies.
"I am delighted to be joining one of the most successful and respected private equity firms, with a strong position in the United States and Europe. I am looking forward to working with the KKR team to invest in and build market-leading businesses," he said. KKR runs a $6bn (£3.2bn) investment fund in the US, with $3bn allocated for Europe. It recently emerged as a 25% shareholder in Kingston Communications after selling its Omnetica business to the Hull-based telecoms operator.
The appointment
has already lead to speculation KKR will make a bid for ITV. Meantime ITV
is reported to have expressed an interest in taking over the UKTV Flextech/BBC
JV in order to rapidly expand its digital presence.
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Boxing promoter Don King has filed a $2.5 billion lawsuit against sports channel ESPN over a biography of him he said was defamatory.
The suit was filed in a Florida state court against Walt Disney Co. parent company of the cable sports network, ABC Cable Networks, ESPN, Inc., and Advocate Communications, Inc., the cable outlet that aired the "SportsCentury" profile of King in south Florida.
The claim says
the May 14, 2004, showing of ESPN's biography segment on King defamed the
boxing promoter and strung together false statements that "intentionally
and recklessly portrayed Don King in a false light. No figure was listed in
the court papers, but King issued a press release saying he was seeking $2.5
billion in damages.
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The BBC is responding to criticism of its commercial empire with the appointment of a non-executive board to oversee the businesses including programme sales and the corporation's merchandising subsidiary, BBC Worldwide.
Michael Grade, the BBC's chairman, said that commercial activities would be run by a "proper commercial board with a non-executive chairman and non-executive directors," and have a more comprehensive annual report, to bring it into line with corporate governance practices in the private sector.
Commercial activities are being streamlined as part of the review by Mark Thompson, the director general, of the corporation's scale and scope ahead of charter renewal.
Meanwhile, The
House of Lords is to set up its own select committee to consider the future
of the BBC.
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Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel company, announced it has signed a strategic agreement with Microsoft. Teaming with Microsoft's Real-Time Collaboration Group, Genesys plans to offer an integrated solution that enables users of Microsoft's next generation communications client, "Istanbul," to access contact information and make telephone calls through their computer.
"Partnerships between companies that understand telephony and those that focus on desktop applications present interesting visions for future business communications and collaboration. They will allow the integration of common desktop applications with well known existing PBXs and IP-PBXs," said Gartner vice president Bern Elliot. "Combining telephone functionality with instant messaging opens the door to a new suite of applications for business phones."
Meantime, Frost
& Sullivan is presenting Alcatel with the 2005 Enterprise Communications
Applications Product of the Year Award for the Alcatel OmniTouch Unified Communication
software suite.
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Steve Case is not ashamed of taking the rap for the merger of AOL and Time Warner, probably the greatest failed deal in media corporate history.
Close to the fifth anniversary of the deal Case provided a candid perspective into the factors that prompted the merger and some of the general reasons why it failed. You can blame it on the billions of dollars in market value evaporating during the bust, or management's stubbornness in promising more than it could deliver, or doing all the wrong things at the wrong time.
"In retrospect, I probably wasn't the right guy to be the chairman of a company with 90,000 employees," Case said during an event at the Computer History Museum. "In retrospect, none of us were the right guys."
Case added that
much of the merger's failed vision stemmed from a failure in "timing
and execution." When the stock market began to collapse in 2000, the
ripple effect did not reach AOL Time Warner until late 2001. "For some
reason--some was cultural, some was the stock going down--people got mad,"
he said. "The merger was my idea. If you wanted to be mad at somebody,
I was the one to be mad at."
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Network equipment maker Cisco Systems is reportedly acquiring privately held Airespace for $450 million in stock to expand its offerings in wireless data transmission systems.
Airespace makes equipment for WiFi, Jim Brady, a spokesman for Cisco, declined to comment. The expanding WiFi market, which is dominated by Cisco, has become increasingly complex as corporate customers require more sophisticated systems and services to help them install multiple access points with varying levels of security.
Airespace in September won a key partnership with IBM to offer WiFi systems to some of Big Blue's corporate customers.
Meantime in the
UK is beginning the policy process for Ultra Wideband (UWB) devices in the
UK. These are controversial because of interference issues and, some belief,
their health implications. The regulator seeks views on whether such devices
should be allowed, and “which technical restrictions would mitigate the
risk of interference to other wireless services”.
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Infineon Technologies AG, Europe's second-largest semiconductor company, follwed the trend et by ST Microsystems, saying first-quarter profit and sales missed forecasts after inventories rose and the falling U.S. currency hit csales.
EBITDA the quarter
ended last month were E211m on sales of about E1.82 billion, the Munich-based
company said. ``Results were influenced by reduced volumes due to inventory
corrections at customers and lower-than-expected manufacturing utilization,''
the company said in the statement. In addition, ``all logistics segments were
negatively affected by the sharp decline of the U.S. dollar.''
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Reuters says its three-year drop in revenue will slow in the first quarter and insisted it was on track to return to growth.The group said that underlying revenues in the first quarter of 2005 were expected to be down about 1.5 per cent, compared to a decline of 8.4 per cent in the same quarter last year. The sales decline is the slowest since 2002.
Reuters said
that subscriber sales and cancellations, the group's key lead indicators of
recurring revenue performance, were encouraging. While subscriber cancellations
exceeded new sales in the fourth quarter, it said net cancellations had improved
as Reuters focused on upgrading its products and service. Tom Glocer, chief
executive, said: “I am pleased that our steady progress toward positive
revenues remains on track.”
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TiVo is looking
for a new CEO to replace Mike Ramsay, who has been chief executive since the
company's launch. Ramsay will retain his role as Chairman and will continue
as CEO until a successor is
identified.
Ramsay, who co-founded the company in 1997, has led TiVo to a premiere brand position, acquiring more than 2.3 million customers. However, many analysts have said recently that the company's growth could be dramatically reduced in the next year because marketing partner DIRECTV will launch its own DVR. In addition, Ramsay has been criticized for his failure to land a cable licensing deal.
Founding TiVo with Jim Barton and growing the company into a major consumer brand has been the thrill of a lifetime," Ramsay said in a statement. "We have achieved a tremendous amount since we started the company. We have had a fundamental impact on television viewing and believe strongly that the company has huge upside potential, in a massive market, going forward. I believe it is a natural evolution of any company to have a transition of leadership as the company grows and matures. The time is right for me, personally and professionally, to bring in an outstanding Chief Executive Officer to lead the company so that I can focus on future strategy. I feel this is a great opportunity for the right person to run one of the industry's most exciting companies, and I look forward to recruiting a new CEO who will help the company realize its full potential."
Speaking on behalf of TiVo's Board of Directors, Geoff Yang, a founding investor
in TiVo, said: "Mike Ramsay has led TiVo to an exceptional level of technology
innovation, business performance and consumer satisfaction. As co-founder
of TiVo, he has helped create a truly big idea and executed on its delivery
into the marketplace with great skill. We plan to hire another exceptional
leader in the months ahead."
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British Sky Broadcasting has spent Åí127m (E184m) on a 22.8m share buy-back plan, representing a little more than 1 per cent of the stock. The company obtained shareholder approval to buy back up to five per cent of its shares at its annual meeting in November. The proposal was controversial, with 18 per cent of those voting rejecting it.
Some institutional investors were concerned it could allow News Corporation to take "creeping control" of the company. After the buy-back is completed News Corp's stake will rise from 35 to 37 per cent.
The group has now put the buy-back on hold because it is in a close period ahead of its interim results on February 2. The results will include keenly-anticipated data for trading during the Christmas quarter. Analyst estimates for BSkyB's net subscriber additions in the quarter to December 31 are about 140,000. However, the range is wide, with some analysts forecasting more than 200,000, with other down at 105,000.
Sky is targeting
8m subscribers by the end of this year and has launched a major marketing
effort to help it reach that target. The initial phase is to reintroduce the
Sky brand. More direct and loyalty marketing is now expected more following
the hiring of Dunnhumby, the company that designed the Tesco clubcard scheme.
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The announcement refers to the premium channel TPS Star, which would make it the first channel in the world to be broadcast on DTT in MPEG-4. TPS has said that it is calling on French manufacturers like Thomson, Sagem and ST Microelectronics, and to make the STBs and added they will be compatible with MPEG-2 as used by the free to air channels, as required by the law.
TPS says the MPEG-4 broadcasts will be only in standard definition this year and it will begin technical tests very shortly. The move is seen as a way to steal a march on Canal Plus's base of terrestrial subscription TV. Last December, Canal Plus told the Prime Minister's office there are two conditions for the success of DTT: a guarantee that the standard will be long lasting, and a significant delay in the launch of pay channels after the free channels. It said time is needed to develop reliable, secure, low cost decoders. Canal Plus says the best solution, and the one that will be best understood by consumers, is to launch DTT in three phases: free in spring 2005, pay TV in autumn 2006 in MPEG-4, and finally HDTV in 2007.
Interviewed by
Reuters, Canal Plus executive Olivier Courson said that TPS request implied
that the CSA is discriminating between operators, and that it is one more
manoeuvre to try to destabilise the launch of FTA DTT.
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Amid gloom from
other retailers, Europe's leading specialist electrical retail Dixons Stores
Group announced interim results for the 28 weeks ended November 13 2004. From
operations in 13 countries, group sales were up 9% to £3.4bn (E4.9bn)
(2003/04 £3.1bn). Underlying operating profit was up 2% to £112.3m
(2003/04: £110.4m).
Dixons also announced a positive trading update for the eight weeks ending
January 8, saying January sales have begun well. The group's international
business saw Elkjop (Nordic), Electro World (Hungary & Czech Republic)
and PC City (Spain, France, Italy, Sweden) all performing well, but sales
in UniEuro (Italy) were “disappointing.”
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BSkyB is planning to reconstruct the forthcoming trial of pop star Michael Jackson on a daily basis in an attempt to circumvent an order banning cameras from the US courtroom.
BSkyB will partner with US network E! Entertainment Television, employing official transcripts to reconstruct the previous day's courtroom events. Jackson, 46, was charged on nine felony counts by US prosecutors in December 2003. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The half-hour
programme will be screened on both Sky News and Sky One every weekday. The
technique, which has been used to cover closed judicial enquiries in the UK,
was pioneered by former Sky exec Kelvin MacKenzie when at Live TV; he had
two lumbering amateur pugilists reconstruct a Tyson fight – being shown
exclusively on Sky – as the fight went on.
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SES ASTRA and Vodatel d.o.o., a company based in Zagreb, Croatia, announced the conclusion of an agreement for satellite Internet services via ASTRA 23.5Åã East and new interactive entertainment services for Croatian households under the brand name eTV.
eTV provides a variety of multimedia services comprising Video On-Demand with a choice of one hundred movies every month. Users will also have access to more than 100 international and local TV channels. The services are available via the eTV Media Center box connected to a TV set and a satellite dish pointed at ASTRA 23.5Åã East.
In addition,
Vodatel will introduce the Sat ADSL service for the Croatian residential market
offering broadband access via satellite to the Internet with speeds of up
to 1,024 Kbps.
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Viacom, the third-largest U.S. media company, may borrow more and accept a lower credit rating so it can buy back shares or make acquisitions, veteran Chairman and Chief Executive Sumner Redstone has stated.
``We are now scrutinizing our A- rating,'' Redstone, 81, told investors and analysts at the Citigroup Smith Barney media and telecommunications conference. ``By lowering our rating, we can return more to our stockholders.''
Viacom may use the additional funds to repurchase more stock or expand its cable networks unit, whose sales increased 17 percent in the first nine months of 2004, Redstone said. Viacom shares declined 18 percent last year as sales at the company's Infinity radio business declined and Paramount Pictures fell to seventh among major film studios.
Viacom, which
owns the CBS broadcast network as well as cable channels MTV, VH1, Comedy
Central and Nickelodeon, has an A- rating from S&P, four levels above
non-investment grade bonds. The ratings is higher than other media companies,
Redstone said. Allowing Viacom's debt to drop two levels to a BBB rating may
add ``billions'' of dollars for repurchases or acquisitions. Viacom, which
said in October that it would buy back $8 billion of its shares, has so far
bought back more than $2 billion in stock, Redstone said.
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Shares of STMicroelectronics NV, Europe's largest maker of semiconductors, had the biggest decline in four months after the company said fourth-quarter profitability missed forecasts.
Gross margin, was about 36.6 percent, below the 38 percent to 39 percent it forecast previously, the Geneva-based company said in a statement. The company blamed the stronger euro, falling prices and lower-than-expected factory use.
STMicroelectronics had made its forecasts for sales and profit on the assumption the euro would be worth $1.23 on average, the statement said. The actual exchange rate averaged $1.27, it said. Chipmakers including National Semiconductor Corp. have reduced forecasts and output, citing a glut of unsold chips.
Preliminary fourth-quarter
sales rose 4.3 percent to $2.33 billion from the preceding three months and
within the company's forecast of 0 to 5 percent growth. They grew 10 percent
from a year earlier, the smallest gain in five quarters.
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Fraser Park has
taken up the position of Chief Financial Officer with Tandberg. A member of
the Institute of Chartered Accountants and a former strategy consultant at
McKinsey & Co, Park has spent over fifteen years in senior financial management
positions in technology and manufacturing organisations and for NASDAQ and
LSE listed companies.
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Nordic Satellite (NSAB) has awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin to design and manufacture the SIRIUS 4 satellite. NSAB is 75%-owned by SES ASTRA.
SIRIUS 4 will be a multi-mission Ku/Ka-band satellite to be built on Lockheed
Martin's A2100AX platform with a minimum service life of 15 years. The spacecraft
will be designed to be compatible with all flight-proven commercial launch
vehicles and NSAB intends to select the respective launch service provider
later on in the year. The satellite will be deployed at NSAB's orbital position
of 5° East in the second quarter of 2007.
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Sogecable
has football revenue cut
from David del Valle in Madrid
Sogecable, owner of digital DTH platform, Digital Plus, and terrestrial pay-TV
channel Canal Plus, has suffered a new financial setback as the Spanish Telecommunications
Market Commission (CMT) has decided to cut into its football pay-TV revenues.
The watchdog has taken a binding decision whereby the leading pay-TV group
will have to significantly reduce the price charged to cable operators for
the Spanish football League, substantially reducing Sogecable’s football
pay-TV revenues.
The regulator decided that the current contracts with cable operators are
not fair and proportional to revenues, breaking one of the conditions imposed
by the Government to approve the merger between Canal Satelite Digital and
Via Digital to create Digital Plus.
AOC, the cable Association, has welcomed the decision and has urged Sogecable
to re-negotiate the football contracts.
This a new financial setback to Sogecable, in September it declared a loss
of E109 million and that it lost more than 300,000 clients in the year (September
03-September 04).
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Last year German
digital pay TV platform Premiere gained 339,281 new subscribers to total of
3,247,172 beating its own forecast by about 50,000. It was the strongest growth
in the company’s history, an increase of 11.7 percent.
CEO Georg Koflersaid : "In 2004 we probably were the fastest growing
pay TV platform in Europe." The main reason for the good performance,
Kofler states, was that for the first time Premiere could concentrate on marketing
and sales after fighting the danger of insolvency in the past three years.
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Liberate
acquired by US cable giants
Digital cable software specialist Liberate Technologies is to sell the bulk
of its North American business to Double C Technologies, a joint venture majority
owned and controlled by Comcast Corporation with a minority investment by
Cox Communications, Inc.
Under the terms of the agreement, the joint venture will get the assets, including patents and other intellectual property, and will assume certain limited liabilities related to Liberate's North American business. Liberate will receive cash consideration of approximately $82 million (E63 million). The parties will cross-license technology and intellectual property to one another following the closing.
"Comcast believes strongly in the future of interactive television and the need for customers to have TV on their terms. This acquisition, along with our earlier investment in Guideworks and our innovative video on demand platform, will enable Comcast to move faster toward creating a more interactive television experience, " claimed Steve Silva, Comcast Executive Vice President, New Business Development.
The agreement will not become effective until the dismissal of Liberate's
bankruptcy appeal, which Liberate has agreed to actively pursue. To that end,
Liberate has filed a motion in the US District Court for Northern California
to dismiss the appeal of its bankruptcy case dismissal.
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Reality talent search show The X Factor is claiming success as the most successful interactive TV show of 2004 in the UK. With viewer participation managed by service provider specialist, Harvest Media Group, 22 million votes were cast during the series.
Viewers voted via premium rate phone calls, supplied by BT agilemedia on the BT RIDE platform, SMS, provided by mobile operator O2 and via the red button on digital satellite, with some 8.5 million votes cast during the two-hour live grand finale. The 157,000 calls during a single minute of the penultimate episode set a new record for the highest number of calls generated by a single televote. O2 also recorded the highest number of SMS votes ever for a TV entertainment series on ITV.
In addition, an agreement with mobile operator ‘3’ allowed fans to watch out-takes exclusively created for their video mobiles, the first service of its kind. Fans who subscribed to RealOne SuperPass from RealNetworks were also able to stream behind-the-scenes and ‘never before seen’ footage as well as the best performances from the show, while close to 6,500 viewers placed bets on who would take The X Factor crown via the Blue Square-created fixed odds online betting service.
Claire Tavernier,
Senior Vice President, Interactive, FremantleMedia Licensing Worldwide (FLW),
part of FremantleMedia, confirmed that a second series had already been commissioned
by ITV. “We are looking forward to developing even more innovative and
exciting ways and platforms for viewers to participate in the show.”
According to Jane Marshall, Interactive Controller, ITV, The X Factor gave
viewers “the power to choose their favourite artists and the chance to
demonstrate that loyalty through voting each week. The viewer participation
and interactive elements are integral to the show’s success both as a
format and as a means of heightening viewers’ enjoyment and involvement.”
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CEO Chase Carey, speaking at Citigroup Smith Barney's media conference in Phoenix Monday, said DirecTV continues work on becoming a "full-fledged provider of local and national high-def television" with the planned launch of Ka-Band SpaceWay satellites later this year.
DirecTV is also
pushing ahead with plans for next-generation DVRs and a set-top box (to be
launched in the second quarter) that will work as a media server with multimedia
capabilities. DirecTV also will focus on a number of opportunities to grow
its business.
Carey said DirecTV will expand its niche/foreign/ethnic programming options,
including those targeted towards Hispanic audiences. And the CEO said the
company will continue to strengthen its presence in rural areas, a task made
easier last summer after DirecTV settled litigation and gained direct access
to customers once served by Pegasus and the National Rural Telecommunications
Cooperative.
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Oplayo, the video
ASP backed by Nokia and Siemens, announced it passed the one million monthly
paid video transactions via its Oplayo Managed Media Services (OMMS).
The service was launched with three operators in mid November 2004 and by
mid-December, surpassed the one million paid video downloads and streams mark.
Philip Bourchier O'Ferrall, MD, Oplayo UK comments: "Oplayo has demonstrated
its competence in the mobile video market by generating the most monthly paid
video transactions in Europe."
O'Ferrall continues: "Oplayo expects the monthly paid transactions to
far exceed the million mark now that we are able to complement the OMMS system
with our Affiliate Scheme. The Affiliate Scheme empowers affiliate managers
or Webmasters with a simple way to start offering mobile video - offering
truly global sales promotion."
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Eircom announced
it has chosen Cisco and NetCentrex, to deploy Voice over Internet protocol
(VoIP) services in Ireland as part of a development programme worth EUR10
million over 5 years.
The chosen solutions will see Cisco's network technology facilitate the integration
of voice calls into the existing Public Telephony Network. NetCentrex will
supply the applications software and hardware, which together will provide
the core intelligence for eircom's VoIP Platform.
"Our initial Voice over IP service will target corporate and government
customers and will be launched in the first half of 2005. This will allow
our corporate customers to take advantage of the flexibility and productivity
gains that Voice over IP delivers," said Cathal Magee, Managing Director
eircom Retail.
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ITV has announced
a 10-year deal with Teletext to launch and operate text services across all
the ITV digital channels.
The new service, which will be branded ‘Teletext on ITV’, will be
accessible on all digital platforms giving viewers in mulitchannel homes direct
access via the text button on their remote control. The ‘Teletext on
ITV’ service will first launch on digital satellite and digital terrestrial
during early summer 2005. The service will include news, sport, weather, travel,
lottery results plus entertainment features including content relating to
ITV programmes.
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Digital set-top box specialist Advanced Digital Broadcast is making available in retail its i-CAN 2000T MHP receiver bundled with pre-paid PPV Smart Cards. This solution will enable the end user to purchase a fully featured set-top ready to receive pay-per-view (PPV) services offered by Mediaset and Telecom Italia-owned LA7.
The two major Italian broadcasters are set to launch their Digital Terrestrial PPV live football services covering the Italian National League Championship this month. This service will be available at an average cost of E2 to E3 per match.
Over-the-air
upgrades are being downloaded to all existing ADB’s OEM and i-CAN branded
receivers currently in use in thousands of Italian homes. This upgrade will
be free for all consumers. The viewer will now gain access to the given PPV
service at home, simply by using a pre-paid smart card made available by the
broadcasters.
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Five
for kids digital
UK’s Five is to launch a children's digital channel called Milkshake,
designed to build on its successful programme block broadcast each morning
between 6am and 9am.
The proposed channel is one of several options being examined by Jane Lighting,
the chief executive of Five, the channel confirmed today, though no final
decision has been made.
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New 3G licences will net only one tenth of the £22.5 billion (E32 billion) secured in the first auction, the Government's own advisers have predicted.
Quotient Associates, which advised ministers on the 3G licence sell-off at the height of the dot-com boom, believes the Treasury will reap at most £2.5 billion in a second auction proposed for 2007.
The forecast confirms that careful restriction of the original number of licences forced the operators in 1999 to pay well over the odds for the right to use the technology. During frenzied bidding Vodafone, Orange, mmO2, T-Mobile and 3 paid a total of £22.5 billion for licences to operate third-generation services. Their fear now will be that a new licence is offered at a knockdown price enabling a new operator to set up in competition far more cheaply.
This week, Ofcom
will release a consultation paper detailing plans for the sought-after piece
of spectrum, known as the 3G expansion band, and how it will be allocated
and regulated.
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The company has
also developed, in collaboration with Sky Racing and TAB Ltd, its own proprietary
interactive racing application that will potentially allow punters at home
to place bets with a licensed State Totalisator. It has four years to set
up businesses – in Macau, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh,
Burma, Brunei, Nepal, Bhutan, The Maldives, Mongolia, East Timor, Sri Lanka
and Papua New Guinea.
“We have now cemented our place in these important Asian and Pacific
regions and can now proceed with our plans to develop in these markets. Even
in those territories where digital television is at an early stage, the populations
are so large that we see significant opportunities for using other technologies
such as mobile phones to engage interactive television,” Two Way TV managing
director Jim McKay said.
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The SVP Alliance announced that twelve new companies have joined the content protection organisation, illustrating the endorsement of SVP technology from across a broad array of industries.
New members include: Broadcom Corporation, a provider of integrated semiconductor solutions enabling broadband communications; Humax, a leading digital satellite set-top box manufacturers; LG Electronics; Samsung Electronics, and Twentieth Century Fox, one of the world's leading movie studios.
The SVP Alliance is also joined by seven new associate members including: ADB, BSkyB, Caton Overseas, DIRECTV, Macrovision, Pace Micro Technology and Widevine Technologies. These new members join founding members NDS, STMicroelectronics and Thomson, and existing associate members NEC and Conexant.
SVP technology is designed to work seamlessly with other content protection technologies, providing maximum flexibility to content owners and consumers alike. Based upon the proven Conditional Access technology used to protect pay-TV, SVP extends this content protection horizontally across the consumer electronics market.
"It is a
recognized issue that high quality premium content is at risk from illegal
use, distribution and redistribution," said Dr Beth Erez, SVP Alliance
Chairperson. "We believe that the SVP specification is an effective solution
that protects the valuable assets of rights holders, while enabling consumers
to enjoy greater flexibility in their use of content. With the announcement
of these industry leaders joining us today, we are encouraged that we will
soon see the broad adoption of SVP, benefiting all those involved in the creation,
delivery and use of valuable content."
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Pace the UK maker of STBs for pay TV and Freeview, has seen sales jump 36 per cent to £150.5m (E217m) in the six months ending 4th December.
The company benefited from increasing exports, which now make up 61 per cent of total revenues. Pace sold 2.1 million set-top boxes in the six months, up from one million in the same period a year earlier. Sales to satellite television firm BSkyB grew as its Sky+ and Sky Italia services expanded, the company said.
"Pace's results for the first half are significantly ahead of last year within what has been a highly competitive market," said Sir Michael Bett, chairman of Pace Micro.
He said he was
confident the " recovery trend will continue" but added that, as
the company said on 16 December, "this recovery may take longer than
was initially anticipated". Prices for set-top boxes fell during the
half year, lowering gross margins to 16.8 per cent from 19.1 per cent in the
same period last year.
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France's Canal+ Group has agreed a long-term deal with NBC Universal which will allow the channel to offer its subscribers first screening of the US studio's future output. The agreement also covers a second window on the group's thematic cinema channels as well as pay-per-view rights on the Kiosque service.
“Canal+ is always a partner of choice for NBC Universal,” claimed Jean-Briac Perette, Senior Vice-President, New Media, NBC Universal Cable, who added that the PPV platform offered viewers a greater choice, and that the extension to the deal would allow Kiosque subscribers access to the best films from the Universal catalogue.
NBC and Canal+
parent company Vivendi Universal Entertainment (VUE) created NBC Universal
in a $3.65 billion deal in May 2004 with General Electric's (GE) media group
NBC. As a result, GE owns 80 per cent of NBC Universal and Vivendi Universal
controls the remaining 20 per cent.
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News Corp is
poised to buy full control of Fox Entertainment in a deal estimated to be
worth about $7 billion. The company, which already owns 82 per cent of Fox,
is expected to announce a buy-out of the remaining minority shareholders according
to US press reports.Industry analysts expect an all-stock or equity funded
buy-out as the most likely option. A buy-out valued at about $7 billion would
represent a premium of close to 20 per cent for minority shareholders.
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One of London's most deprived areas, the London Borough of Hackney, has been chosen for a £20 million (E29m) scheme called Wired Network that aims to create the largest broadband community in Britain.
Online educational courses, video on demand and free local telephone calls are all part of a unique package that will be available to 20,000 people in Shoreditch, East London.
IBM will hand out 20,000 television set-top boxes to residents. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is providing funds for the scheme, which is being seen as a model for “wiring up” Britain.
At the moment, broadband signals degrade over a distance of more than three miles from an exchange, but BT is developing technology to raise this to ten miles and next-generation wireless technology called WiMax can reach 30 miles from a single distribution point, which will help to bring broadband to remote rural areas.
Residents in Hackney will be able to access a five megabit per second broadband service — ten times faster than most existing connections. Services will include access to online CCTV cameras so that vulnerable people can see if it is safe to go out. It will be possible to make doctors' appointments online and welfare-to-work participants will have access to online NVQ and English-language classes. The Wired Network also houses estate chatrooms and entertainment services, with computer games, a community music library and options for digital multichannel television. Residents will take part in online referendums on important local issues.
The scheme is
modelled on the example set by Milan, the world's most densely fibre optic-cabled
city. One Milan project connected 40,000 buildings through more than 200,000km
(124,275 miles) of fibre optic cable.
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America Online says it will rename its fledgling cable music video channel and offer more content in an effort to steer viewers to an AOL website. The channel, originally called "My Music Channel," will now be named "AOL Music On Demand."
AOL is aiming to promote its AOL Music videos and original programming on the channel carried by sister company Time Warner Cable, hoping to entice viewers to find more material on its free website AOLMusic.com.
Launched eight months ago, the cable channel lets viewers use their remote controls to order up videos and AOL programming, once available only to paying subscribers to its high-speed Internet service, for free.
AOL is hoping
that giving away more free material will help it boost online advertising
dollars amid an ongoing subscriber defection. AOL has lost millions of members
this year, but Time Warner said it expects the unit to post growth in full-year
2004 profit before items in the low to mid-teens percentage range.
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Launching its new HomePhone residential service the Post Office, which until the 1980s ran the phone system, said call costs would be almost 20 per cent cheaper than BT's. The Post Office said it aimed to sign up one million customers - five per cent of BT's current residential business - by 2008.
It is one of the first groups to make use of new laws allowing users to pay line rental to firms other than BT. "With the launch of Post Office HomePhone, we intend to win a significant slice of the residential telephony market," chief executive David Mills said.
The group added that its service was the most transparent on the market as a result of its simple tariff and charging structure - as well as the lure of a single bill for both calls and line rental. Under the new Wholesale Line Rental legislation, customers no longer have to pay a separate bill to BT for their home phone line.
ESPN Classic Sport is set to launch in Belgium from following a carriage deal secured with leading Belgian cable operator Telenet. It will offer ESPN Classic Sport, seven days a week, with Dutch subtitles available on the programming between 7:00 a.m. and midday, and an English language feed available from 1.00am until 7.00am.
To boost brand
awareness amongst viewers in Flanders, ESPN Classic Sport has designed a customised
Belgian website (www.espnclassicsport.be), which will include information
about forthcoming shows and events, as well as great competitions and prizes.
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At CES, together
with Broadcom, Tandberg has staged the first live demos of an end-to-end advanced
encoding solution supporting high definition (HD) MPEG-4 part 10
(H.264/AVC).
The two companies
showcased interoperability between Broadcom's set-top box decoder reference
platform and Tandberg Television's EN5990 video encoder, both the world's
first real-time, decoding and encoding platforms for MPEG-4 part 10. Support
for MPEG-4 part 10 allows broadcasters to offer high definition services,
which in turn, provides significant cost and business advantages.
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Ofcom has launched
its first investigation into BSkyB after ITV complained to the media regulator
about the charges to be part of its platform.
Negotiations between the two over the amount ITV pays to have its channels
encrypted and included on Sky's EPG have broken down and Ofcom has confirmed
that it had launched a formal investigation.
ITV pays BSkyB £17m (E24.4m) a year for CA and EPG services, which enable
viewers in each region to receive the correct local news and other regional
programmes. ITV is alleging this amounts to overcharging.
ITV CEO Charles Allen had been personally negotiating with his opposite number
James Murdoch. Sky is obliged to provide access on "fair, reasonable
and non-discriminatory terms" and previous investigations by regulators
have always found in Sky's favour.
A similar dispute in 2003 between the BBC and BSkyB, ended in a last-ditch
compromise, the BBC still had to pay to have its channels listed on the EPG
and regionalised but viewers with a satellite dish no longer need a Sky viewing
card to see BBC digital channels. ITV will point to the £4m a year the
BBC is believed to pay to ensure BBC1 and BBC2 are regionalised as a benchmark
for the amount it should pay for a similar service for ITV1.
"In ITV's view, BSkyB's proposed charge for this service - which would
ensure that the right regional variants of ITV1 were available at button 103
of BSkyB's programme guide - are unfair, unreasonable and unduly discriminatory,
and therefore in breach of BSkyB's obligations under EU and UK law,"
said ITV.
Mr Allen is thought to be trying to reduce the amount paid by ITV to less
than £10m a year while BSkyB says the charge should remain closer to
£17m.
"Sky provides conditional access and EPG services on fair, reasonable
and non-discriminatory terms and has done so since the launch of the digital
satellite platform in 1998. We look forward to demonstrating to Ofcom that
the charges we proposed for ITV1 are consistent with our regulatory obligations,"
said BSkyB.
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DirecTV is begin
providing PVRs with technology from another News Corp. company, NDS raising
more questions about the strength of its relationship with digital video recording
pioneer TiVo.
"We'll support our existing TiVo customers," a spokesman for DirecTV,
the largest U.S. satellite TV operator said. "But our core initiatives
and new customer acquisition will focus on our new DVR."
Last June, DirecTV divested its stake in TiVo and stepped down from TiVo's
board, fuelling speculation that News Corp. would eventually drop TiVo. DirecTV
represents TiVo's single largest pay television customer.
TiVo Chief Executive Mike Ramsay told Reuters in Las Vegas that the company
will continue to offer TiVo recorders to DirecTV customers and is currently
developing new products for the service.
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EchoStar’s
digital video recording showpiece is the 625 with 100 hours of recording space
for users and have 100 hours of space for video-on-demand content which will
debut by March.
Meanwhile Charlie Ergen, chief executive of EchoStar revealed plans to expand
its HD lineup once it moves to MPEG4, which offers better data compression
than the current MPEG2 standard. "The big mass push in HD for us will
be this fall as we introduce MPEG4," he said.
The company will also introduce a line of portable video players that can
connect to the DVRs and download recorded content for playback on the road.
EchoStar will use devices made by consumer electronics company Archos for
the service.
Ergen also said EchoStar would move back into the market for two-way broadband
Internet access via satellite this year. Both EchoStar and DirecTV have had
limited success at best with such services.
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Bell South takes Microsoft IPTV
BellSouth said
it has begun trialing Microsoft's IPTV software for possible use in it's future
video service.
The local phone giant said it will initially test Microsoft's software in
set-top boxes in the lab, and then target some homes for field trials. While
only a test, the trials add another influential telecom firm as a potential
client for Microsoft. SBC Communications agreed in November to pay Microsoft
$400 million to use IPTV edition to power its Internet-based TV service, due
late this year. IPTV will provide a channel guide, digital video recording
and other features in SBC's video set-top boxes.
SBC introduced its upcoming IP video service as "U-verse," which
will be sold with high-definition video, high-speed Internet access and voice
calling.
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Telewest has announced new commercial terms with Channel 4, Eurosport, TV Travel Shop, The Community Channel and Teachers TV.
The cable company confirmed it will carry Channel 4's new venture More 4 when it becomes available, plus Teachers TV, a new channel from the Department for Education and Skills, which launches in February.
Terms have also been renewed with Channel 4 for the continued carriage of E4 and FilmFour, in addition to new agreements with Eurosport for British Eurosport and new channel Eurosport 2 (formerly Eurosport News), launching on 10 January.
Finally, new terms for TV Travel Shop and The Community Channel have been agreed, meaning they will continue to be available to all of the company's one million digital TV customers.
Telewest has
recently failed to reach agreement with a number of channels that are no longer
carried on the network.
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Modern Times
Group, announced that it has sold its entire remaining 15% holding in TV4
to Proventus Industrier AB. Following this transaction, MTG has no shares
in TV4 AB. The shares are sold at a price of SEK 170 per share, which represents
a premium to the closing price of the TV4 shares on the Stockholm stock exchange.
The TV4 shares were held on the MTG balance sheet with a book value of SEK
124.5 million.
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Jasper Smith,
a media entrepreneur, and David Brook, the former strategy director at Channel
4, will emerge with stakes together worth more than £6m (E8.7m) from
the flotation of their Optimistic Entertainment television programming business
on AIM.
The company is reversing into a private shell company set up by the shell
specialist Michael Edelson. Optimistic will be valued at £27m. Shareholders
in the shell, called Willow Partners, include the television presenters Angus
Deayton and David Baddiel. It will acquire Optimistic, before floating later
this month.
Optimistic, which was established a year ago, co-producedFlipside TV, the
Channel 4 series. As well as a production arm, the company has Nation217,
a digital channel available to Sky subscribers and broadband Internet users,
which specialises in interactive shows.
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Former-Sky Networks
executive Mark Sharman has been unveiled as the replacement for ITV’s
controller of sport, Brian Barwick. The appointment follows Barwick’s
decision to take up the chief executive reins of the Football Association
at the end of January.
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