Months of tension between Barry Diller (IAC) and his long time backer, John Malone, (Liberty) boiled over into a two-way legal battle that could determine the future control of major parts of IAC. Malone’s Liberty Media which owns a majority voting stake in IAC, has filed suit in Delaware Chancery Court accusing Mr. Diller of […]
The first day’s bidding of the Federal Communications Commission auction of 700 MHz spectrum attracted $2.8 billion in prospective bids, according to the agency. The majority of the money was committed by bidders in the first round with only $353 million being raised in the second round. The day one total was about a quarter […]
Gemstar, the News Corp controlled TV listings company, has initiated patent litigation proceedings against Virgin Media in the English High Court. Gemstar allege that the Virgin companies infringe three of Gemstar's European patents, including techniques for providing certain interactive programme guides (IPGs), and for handling recordings from IPGs. We have worked diligently to license Virgin […]
Satellite TV contributed to video customer gains for AT&T in the fourth quarter. The telco giant’s IPTV platform also gained a significant number of new subscribers during the three-month period. On satellite TV, AT&T said it was serving 2.116 million bundled dish customers at the end of December. That’s up from the 1.986 million customers […]
Thanks largely to stronger-than-expected global PC sales, Microsoft reported $6.48 billion in profit for the holiday quarter on sales of $16.37 billion, beating analyst estimates. Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell raised the company's sales and profit targets for the next two quarters — a sign that unlike Wall Street, Microsoft expects a comfortable start to […]
BBC Worldwide is in talks with international broadcasters in relation to launching local on-demand media players, similar to its Kangaroo joint venture with ITV and Channel 4. The US, Australia and Germany are likely targets. A BBC Worldwide spokeswoman insisted any international venture would be separate to the Kangaroo system, but added the BBC would […]
The Nielsen Company has confirmed the commercial launch of Nielsen On Demand Reporting & Analytics, (NORA), a measurement service that aggregates and anonymously reports on video-on-demand (VOD) usage based on real time transactions collected at the set-top box level. At launch, Comcast will be providing VOD data for the NORA service, covering January 1, 2007 […]
Latens and TelCo Group, systems integrator in the Russian TV and telecommunications market, have signed a partnership agreement, and TelCo Group has integrated Latens CAS, with its eScentra middleware platform. The focus of this partnership will be on the sales and marketing of Latens and TelCo Group integrated solutions for Russia's IPTV, digital cable, satellite […]
A French civil court will rule on a request by pay-TV group Canal Plus to suspend a tender for the rights to broadcast France’s top flight football matches over the next four seasons. Canal Plus had already filed a first request with the Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) to suspend the auction held by France’s […]
The French government is reportedly planning to impose an additional tax on the purchase of TVs, computers and mobile phones in a bid to help state broadcasters recover some of the shortfall – up to E1 billion – caused by the ban on advertising on public TV and radio mooted last week by President Sarkovsky. […]