TopTV, a digital broadcasting rival to South Africa’s Multichoice, is in financial trouble. Up until now the front-runner to buy the troubled company was StarTimes, a China-backed operation with an existing portfolio of African-based pay-TV investments. A new potential buyer (‘Dynamic TV Consortium’) has now emerged in the shape of local South African entrepreneurs, but […]
Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network, never far from controversy, has been criticised by a Federal court judge for being “evasive” and “obstructive” during pre-trial discovery of documentation in a case alleging that Dish placed millions of unwanted telephone calls to consumers and violated telemarketing sales rules. The suit was started by the USA’s Federal Trade Commission […]
It doesn’t seem that long since owning networks was the very unfashionable, potentially less profitable and, frankly, dead boring end of the business. Commoditisation of bandwidth provision and the obligations of neutrality both put pressure on pipe owners and many looked enviously at their content cousins. Some pipes bought content – Comcast and NBCU – […]
ODM, the Johannesburg-based pay-TV broadcaster which trades as TopTV, is suffering financial problems. Luxembourg-based SES owns 20 per cent of the business. A rescue plan is being mounted by China’s StarTimes Group, itself backed by serious cash investments from China’s Africa Development Fund (ADF) and the China Development Bank. Up until late 2012 the Chinese […]
When the books were closed at the end of April 17, it was revealed that Intelsat’s Initial Public Offering was very poorly supported. Even though the price range set by the company was for shares to be bought in the $21-$25 range, the actual price achieved was a disappointing $18. Intelsat sold just 19.3 million […]
Modern Times Group (MTG) unveils its results on April 18th, and market sentiment suggests the numbers may not be good. A report to clients from investment bankers Morgan Stanley states that while pay-TV in the Nordic region – where MTG mainly operates – is “well anchored”, and helped by MTG’s margin guidance of a 10-12 […]
Time Warner is reportedly the front runner to buy Turkey’s ATV broadcasting unit from Calik Holdings. A final decision could emerge towards the end of this month. ATV is a nationwide network and has been owned by Calik since 2007, headquartered in Istanbul. It was launched in 1993 by the giant Sabah conglomerate. […]
What is social media’s relationship to TV news? That’s the question we pose in the latest issue of Euromedia, which you can read here as a digital magazine. Is it an opportunity of a threat? The answer is that it is both. Contributors to our piece take a pretty optimistic view. That’s not surprising as […]
Service isn’t due to start until October, but last week the press had its first chance to get up close and personal to the first batch of O3b (serving the ‘Other 3 billion’) satellites at the Thales Alenia satellite facility near Rome. The first four satellites are scheduled to be launched in June, with another […]
The past few months have been tough for International Launch Services (ILS) and its Russian –built Proton rocket. A launch failure, plus numerous delays and the CEO’s departure have not helped the system’s reputation. Last night that gloom was lifted when a Proton rocket successfully orbited Mexico’s Satmex 8 craft in a flawless launch. The […]