The decision to axe the Al Jazeera America will cause significant losses at the channel, expensively launched on the back of the $500 million purchase of Current TV – a purchase that is still subject to an ongoing series of lawsuits between former vice-president Al Gore and his partners, and Al Jazeera itself. Al Jazeera […]
Consumers can already access broadband and media via smartphones whether they’re sat in a car, on a train and increasingly in the air. However, a new link between Toyota and Kymeta Corp has come up with a satellite antenna that’s capable of handling very high-speed data to cars at domestic-type broadband rates. The technology was […]
Last week equity analysts Exane BNP-Paribas rated Eutelsat as one of their ‘top picks’ in terms of media shares, and their recommendation to “avoid Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES. However, another bank report places a very different perspective on SES and its prospects. Analysts at investment bank Jefferies dig very deep into SES and in particular […]
Last week Intelsat again suffered a bad time in terms of its share price. A Christmas holiday rally (from December 17th to December 24th its ordinary share price rose dramatically from $3.69 to $4.47) but that buoyancy was lost last week when it plummeted from $4.20 on January 4th to just $3.53 by close of […]
Equity analysts at Exane BNP-Paribas in their ‘start of the year’ 61-page overview of what can be expected this year for investors in media stocks. As far as the satellite sector is concerned they have Eutelsat as a “top pick”, although recommend investors “avoid” SES (and Vivendi and Publicis). The bank’s advice is to stay […]
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) opens this week in Las Vegas, and the received wisdom is that the show will be dominated by larger Ultra-HD TV screen sizes from the major display manufacturers, but different to CES 2015 in that they will all be capable of handling 10-bit depth pixels and thus – at last […]
By Larry Gerbrandt Digital has been a decidedly mixed blessing for the television industry. Digital compression has led to the creation of hundreds of new channels, HDTV, IPTV, streaming media (from YouTube to Netflix), video-on-demand and digital video recorders. It has also made television viewing measurement a nightmare. While much of the recent growth in […]
There has been recent speculation that Britain’s largest commercial broadcaster, ITV, is not only up for sale but that US cable giant Comcast might well be a buyer. This is not the first time that American names have been cited as potential buyers. A month or so ago it was Liberty Global (which already owns […]
Echostar and Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen has “donated” nine million shares he owned in Echostar to a family trust. Each share is currently valued at some $36 so the donation is worth about $324 million today. The transfer, according to a Securities & Exchange Commission filing made earlier in December, is for “estate planning […]
Back in July 2013 satellite operator SES confirmed an earlier agreement with Space Systems International Monaco for access to some of its SSI-Monaco satellite’s transponders. The satellite was launched earlier this year on April 27th, and is orbiting at 52 deg East and is now officially called TurkmenAlemMonacoSat which might not be the snappiest name […]