Viasat Broadcasting has concluded a comprehensive new agreement with Formula One Management (FOM) for the media rights to the FIA Formula One World Championship for Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The agreement provides Viasat with free- and pay-TV rights for the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Championships. Viasat already holds the exclusive rights for Sweden and Norway […]
BT's new ads for its BT Vision service poke fun at subscription-heavy pay-TV rivals seeing a man flicking through a friend's fictional pay TV service and joking with him about the number of channels he pays for but never watches. The new ads, part of a £11 million (E14m) TV campaign, focus on how BT […]
Virgin Media Television (VMtv) has confirmed two senior appointments to strengthen and develop its commercial strategy for the multi-screen digital future. David Cuff joins VMtv as its new Commercial Director, responsible for commercial strategy across the full range of VMtv's business. Cuff has previously held positions with Flextech Television and Initiative Media, and runs his […]
From Colin Mann in Cologne Operators need to go beyond the triple play of voice, video and data, according to Bob McIntyre, CTO of Cisco's Service Provider Group. “Triple play is not enough,” he warned delegates attending the Broadband Summit at the ANGA Cable Congress.”The competitive edge will come with an integrated solution,” he suggested, […]
German pay-TV broadcaster Premiere's shares fell 60% as it announced losses, a subscriber number re-statement and revealed it is trying to restructure bank debt.Premiere said its chief financial officer, Alexander Teschner, had stepped down as it restated its customer numbers to be in line with other pay-TV companies, resulting in a 940,000 drop in the […]
An official from China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has indicated that the overall direction for issuing 3G licences once the telecom industry restructuring is complete has been settled. China Mobile is operating a TD-SCDMA network, the new China Telecom is building a CDMA2000 network on the basis of its acquired CDMA business, […]
According to a TVTelco Latam's report, Latin America will have 21.3 million mobile digital TV handsets in use in 2013, mostly on phones, but also on portable MP4 players, cars and buses, and USB for notebooks. With its ISDB system, Brazil will lead the Latin American free-to-air mobile TV market, with 12.5 million viewers by […]
From David Del Valle in MadridThe sale of Sogecable pay-TV division, Digital Plus, is also attracting interest from several private equity firms, such as Permira and Apax, with suggestions that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, Mexican media mogul Carlos Slim and even Telefónica are potential bidders. Prisa has hired HSBC to handle the sale process. The […]
News Corp is pushing for an end to conditions placed on the media giant after its acquisition of a controlling stake in DIRECTV, asking the Federal Communications Commission to move on its petition on the matter.News Corp. acquired the DIRECTV stake in 2003, but sold its ownership in the DBS platform to Liberty Media in […]
As at the end of March, the services of subscription television which use cable and satellite technologies registered around 2 million users in Portugal, representing around 18.8 subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Of these two million users, 75 per cent were customers of the cable distribution service – almost 1.5 million customers – while Direct To […]