Sky Atlantic, the US-focused pay TV channel, has hired Elaine Pyke as channel director and has commissioned a raft of new series. Pyke was previously head of drama at Sky, where she has worked for the last seven years.
The International Olympics Committee is meeting in June to decide on who should hold the broadcasting rights for the 2014 Winter Games and 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games. 2014’s Winter Games are to be held in Sochi, Russia. Sports Business Daily says the IOC is to meet on June 6-7 at their Lausanne headquarters […]
Brazil’s National Telecoms Agency says the nation’s Q1 pay-TV numbers grew by a net 650,000, of which 243,000 signed up in March. Most of these new pay-TV viewers were captured by DTH satellite (548,000 for DTH, 121,000 for cable). There was a loss of some 19,000 from MMDS systems. Satellite now has a 48.2 per […]
Discovery Networks International (DNI) has announced the appointment of Julian Bellamy to the newly created role Creative Director and Head of Production and Development for DNI, reporting to Luis Silberwasser, EVP and Chief Content Officer of the division. Overseeing the executive production and development of all local and international commissions across DNI’s portfolio of over […]
ANT, a provider of software and services for the delivery of digital TV, has announced that Good Mind Industries (GMI) has selected the ANT Galio HbbTV Platform for its new range of STBs. Working closely with German distributor COMAG, the product line is to be targeted at the HbbTV (Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV) retail market […]
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings fears that getting too large will start “an Armageddon” with cable networks. Hastings talked about Netflix’s “niche” philosophy of staying “not too big, not too small” — in a discussion at the Wired Business Conference in New York City. “We’ve consistently said getting into current season TV or newer movies would […]
Formula 1 owners CVC Capital confirmed a ‘friendly approach’ from News Corp (reported on ATV on April 20th) was joined by Italian investment company EXOR, controlled by the Agnelli family – once main owners of Fiat – and where the CEO is John Elkann, chairman of Fiat. Fiat owns Ferrari, F1’s most successful team. It […]
Warner Bros Home Entertainment Group is to acquire Flixster, a movie discovery application company with over 25 million worldwide users per month. The acquisition also includes Rotten Tomatoes, a website devoted to film reviews, information and news. Under the terms of the deal, Flixster will continue to operate independently and will expand its services beyond […]
The Ministry of Industry is to devote €800 million to finance DTT retuning following the re-allocation of DTT multiplexes’ frequencies as a result of the so-called digital dividend. That amount will be allocated from the public tenders to allocate the digital dividend with which the Government plans to collect between €1.5 billion to €2 billion. […]
Comcast lost 39,000 cable television subscribers in the first quarter as its video subscriber count slipped to 22.76 million, similar to that of Netflix which recently achieved 22.8 million US customers. The three per cent dip in overall video subscribers was less than analysts expected and marked the company’s narrowest loss in years. It came […]