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Sky v Discovery: Russian Roulette

It’s like the 70s all over again, suddenly the world is all about brinkmanship. President Trump seems keen to confront all except President Putin, his only serious rival for biggest ego on the planet. But they’ll fall out and the planets will collide; hopefully in a hissy twitter spat rather than a shooting war. Talking […]

January 27, 2017 Nick Snow

An Echo of the future….

There was a kind of funny story all over the press here last week. Amazon Echoes in California (where else) started ordering doll’s houses for their owners. In a true case of echoes within echoes, a local TV show in San Diego was reporting how a young girl had told Alexa – the Echo’s operating […]

January 10, 2017 Nick Snow

Murdoch: Back in the room

How often can a whole intricate takeover saga, ranging over months, be brought to mind by the phrase ‘the custard pie incident.’ The incident, of course, was patriarch Rupert taking one for the team when he made his mea culpa appearance before the Commons media committee in 2011 as he sought to limit the ever-spreading […]

December 13, 2016 Nick Snow

Openreach: An open and shut case

Frustrated by the ‘don’t worry we know best’ negotiating stance of the UK’s incumbent telco BT, regulator Ofcom has finally made the first move to legally split the broadband provider from the rest of the company – specifically notification of the European Commission of the beginning of the separation process. Of course, this in itself […]

November 29, 2016 Nick Snow

AT&T/Time Warner: Too big to fail. Or succeed?

The mega-media- merger to end all mega… etc. That is until the next one comes along. Except – if it goes ahead – this really might be the last of this kind of deal. This takeover will be sold hard as a ‘traditional’ vertical integration play – a content owner and a pipes owner come […]

October 24, 2016 Nick Snow

UHD over promised and under-delivered?

If I had to choose an industry not to be in as the digital world looms larger than ever, I might well choose printing (which reminds me: read the Sep/Oct issue of Euromedia here). In 2016, it is a savagely tough way to make a living. But not all that far behind on your list […]

September 29, 2016 Nick Snow

Is VR 3D all over again?

It’s the question that pops up among the never ending stream of news releases, press briefings, blogs and articles about the latest consumer technology. Is this new tech the next big thing or the next colossal bust? Inevitably, comparisons to the spectacular rise and fall of 3D TV are made, but are they valid? Have […]

September 8, 2016 Mark Ringwald

CPE and the obesity debate

In the July/August issue of Euromedia is our Annual Survey of the CPE sector; providers and vendors views on where we are and where we are going – in the age of the cloud and the virtualised world, what kind of set top will subscribers homes need? The debate has a first world problem feel […]

September 1, 2016 Nick Snow

UK takes a bullet for BT

A number of headlines today advise that BT has dodged a bullet as Ofcom has not forced it to sell Openreach. The market agrees, and BT shares picked up 3 per cent on the news. Meanwhile, shares in UK plc sunk further than ever as the bullet BT dodged further wounded the country’s already bleeding […]

July 26, 2016 Nick Snow

VR: Virtually a Reality?

Virtual Reality is becoming part of the furniture of all media business conversations in the way that 4K did three or four years ago and 3D did seven or eight years ago. Which one will VR go on to resemble – the one that is becoming a standard for TV and marks the beginning of […]

June 30, 2016 Nick Snow