Kiss and Magic owner Bauer Media has bought digital radio station Planet Rock in a deal worth over £1 million (€1.23m). The loss-making digital radio station was put up for sale by its owner, millionaire entrepreneur Malcolm Bluemel, last year. Bauer, which has also held talks to buy another loss-making national music station, Absolute Radio, […]
Virgin Media has confirmed advanced takeover talks with John Malone’s Liberty Global as its London-listed shares surged 15 per cent. Virgin Media has an enterprise value of some $20 billion (although a market cap of $10.4 billion), the bid is thought to be worth around £12 billion. The company’s main listing is on the Nasdaq […]
Three days ago Sea Launch suffered an embarrassment when $300 million-worth of satellite failed just 40 seconds after lift-off. Now, to add to the injury, former partner Boeing is suing Sea Launch for $350 million which follows on from Sea Launch’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in 2009. The action was started in a Los […]
According to global information company,The NPD Group, while traditional pay TV operators and broadcast networks still dominate the consumer television landscape, new options are emerging, from subscription video on demand (SVoD), to electronic sell-through (EST), to free TV streaming. According to the firm, while SVoD drives the most online TV streams by far, the incidence […]
SES’s HD+ venture is making considerable progress in Germany. SES says that during 2012 it more than doubled its paying subscriber base from 404,123 to 944,993. That number has continued to grow through January and has now passed the 1 million mark. SES says that its total number of active subscribers (paying, or in a […]
India’s DTH market continues to impress observers with its subscriber gains. The latest operator to unveil its numbers is telco giant Bharti, where its Airtel DTH division saw net subscriber numbers rise 439,000 during the most recent quarter-year (to December 31st), which is well ahead of last year’s 55,000. All its other key metrics were […]
Sony Pictures Television (SPT) Networks is launching a German version of its channel, Sony Entertainment Television, for the first time. The new channel will broadcast in Germany from Spring 2013 following a carriage deal brokered between SPT Networks Germany and Deutsche Telekom. Sony Entertainment Television will be part of Deutsche Telekom’s IPTV Service, Entertain. Sony […]
No wonder John Malone wanted total control of pay-radio operator Sirius-XM. Its numbers continue to impress, with Q4 and full year results. Subscribers stand at 23.9 million, subscription revenues for the year grew 13 per cent to $3.4 billion and free cashflow is up 71 percent to $709 million. For the pre-holiday period Sirius-XM activated […]
Baltimore Ravens’ win over the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl is on course to become the most-watched programme in US television history despite its black out. Early viewing figures for the game, which lasted more than four hours, suggested a 48.1 rating – i.e. an average of 48.1 per cent of US TV […]
A Belgian court has convicted two men charged with running an illegal l piracy operation aimed at Pay TV. The men, from Belgium and the Netherlands, have been sentenced by the Court of Tongeren to 12 months imprisonment, of which 6 months are suspended. The pirates were also ordered to pay a fine of €5,500 […]