Rupert Murdoch said in evidence to the Leveson Inquiry that an unhinged Gordon Brown phoned him and said he would make war on News Corp. Brown, in evidence, claimed the call never took place. Whose relationship with the truth is closer? My guess is both have only had a nodding acquaintance with veracity for some […]
The joke in the industry – totally unfairly – is that Greece’s national telco OTE started looking for a buyer of HellasSat just before the foundation stones were laid on the Athens Acropolis. However, OTE is now beginning to get some traction from sales efforts on other parts of its non-local portfolio of assets. Globul, […]
Last week BT committed to pay £738 million for a total of 114 English Premier League (EPL) football matches, to be screened over a 3 year period. Now the back-room number-crunchers have looked closely at the deal, and one investment banker says BT is most unlikely to make money from the deal. Bankers at Espirito […]
Measat says it is on schedule to launch three new satellites over the next two years. Measat’s SVP/space systems development Ali R Ebadi said its Africasat-1a craft was scheduled for launch in February next year, followed by Measat-3b at the end-2013 and Measat3C in 2014. “We continuously invest in satellite capacity to support the rapidly […]
Ofcom has come out in favour of ‘plurality checks’ of the UK news media every four or five years. And it believes the reviews should include the BBC and online news. So far, so interesting. But Ofcom doesn’t regulate the BBC – it would like to as this policy suggestion indicates – and certainly someone […]
A very long-running squabble between Eutelsat and Iran, which also involves Arabsat and the state of Qatar, is getting ever-more complex and has no sign of being resolved. At stake is a brand-new satellite now being built for Eutelsat and Qatar, and worth around $300 million and due for launch next year. The problem is […]
The verdicts are in, the stock market pundits have exercised their confidence – or otherwise – and the sports pages have had their say on whether BSkyB did the right thing by spending a spectacular £200 million a year more on primetime English Premier League action for the three upcoming soccer season from 2013. Also […]
The rise of international markets and the global reach of the Internet and broadband connectivity are forcing US content creators and distributors to confront several difficult challenges. The BBC World Service radio broadcasts have a knack for making almost any issue appear to take on great gravitas, no matter how arcane. I recently caught […]
Is it a Mad World? It seems so. Four examples from the last couple of weeks: One. BT has joined in the mad house of Premier League rights. Fair enough, this means BSkyB has to pay more than otherwise and it satisfies the politician’s need for Sky not to have a monopoly. I don’t want […]
Baseball star Yogi Berra summed up the situation perfectly, saying it’s déjà vu all over again, at least as far as BSkyB, and the other finalists are concerned in the English Premier League football bidding war. First, BSkyB has paid £100 million more, per season, than the highest-expected estimates. But Sky knows what it’s doing. […]