Chris Forrester is one of the most experienced and highly regarded journalists in the field. His insight and analysis, particularly in the satellite and pay-TV arena, is highly prized. He has written for all the major business journals in the sector as well as several national newspapers.
RTL’s Q2 results issued August 29th reported group revenues up 3.6 per cent (and 2.3 per cent for the first half-year) and which permitted the broadcasting giant to say that its first half-year revenues had grown for the “fourth year running” and despite the challenges from rival transmissions of the Winter Olympics and 2018 World […]
Usually any report on Australia-domiciled Speedcast starts off with “fast growing”, but the international communications technology company has stumbled this week on the Sydney stock exchange. The company specialises in connecting shipping (commercial and cruise), mining, government and energy markets with secure satellite broadband and IT facilities. Speedcast also confirmed it had entered into a […]
India’s Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and its commercial arm Antrix, are now the subject of allegations of money laundering. The case is based on ISRO’s Antrix and Devas Multimedia, an independent company which held certain capacity rights on ISRO satellites. The deal saw ISRO/Antrix allocate 70 MHz of S-band capacity to Devas on its GSAT-6 […]
A senior official at Russia’s Satellite Communications Company (RSCC) says that the proposed OneWeb satellite mega-constellation is unlikely to be commercially successful. Yevgeny Buidinov, deputy director general at RSCC told Russian news agency TASS that he believed that the project to place some 900 satellites into orbit was perfectly realistic from a technical point of […]
Arianespace’s current workhorse rocket, its Ariane 5 model, will be replaced by the much more flexible Ariane 6 versions with a test flight scheduled for 2020 and speedy commercialisation during 2021-2022. But it is now clear that the European Space Agency (ESA) is planning for important follow-on rocket developments to these Ariane 62 and 64 […]
A study from Paris-based Euroconsult says there is a significant expansion underway in the ‘smallsat’ market, both in terms of demand and systems’ capabilities. About 7,000 smallsats are due to be launched over the next ten years, i.e. a six-fold increase from the 1,200 units launched over the past decade. About 50 constellations, two of […]
Equity analysts at MoffettNathanson (MN) have downgraded DISH Network with a “Sell” note to investors, which caused a near-immediate 5 per cent fall in the pay-TV broadcaster’s share price. Worse, perhaps, its new target price for DISH is a miserable $29 (currently it’s $35.17 after its fall on August 10th). A year ago, they were […]
A series of Tweets and blogs from Elon Musk last week confirmed that the billionaire has no intention to merge SpaceX with his electric car manufacturing unit Tesla. While Tweets about ‘taking Tesla private’ created something of a storm with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the NASDAQ stock exchange – and led to a […]
The recent set of Q2 results from Discovery Communications did not meet with everyone’s total approval (their shares fell 6 per cent on August 7th with profits falling 42 per cent to $216 million) but equity analysts at Deutsche Bank are not just keeping the faith, but reiterating its ‘Buy’ rating, and upping Discovery’s target […]
As the nuns said so musically in The Sound of Music: ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’ The same could be true of DISH Network, and the question would be ‘How do you truly value DISH? Superficially, Charlie Ergen’s very mature DISH Network had a – sort of – reasonable Q2. Its subscriber […]
Kazakhstan: Freedom Media acquires All3Media titles
Channel 4 streaming minutes up 36% YoY
CMA confirms Google strategic market status
ACE celebrates antipiracy wins
Prime Video ads reaching 22m UK viewers monthly
Survey: 45% say TV has negatively impacted mental wellbeing
DAZN scores US college sports deal with Big Ten, Fox Sports
Netflix set to bid for Champions League rights
Thailand: 86% regularly streaming live content
Starlink targets India’s rural users