The economic downturn has led an influential working group to advise Portugal’s government that the number of publicly financed TV and radio channels should be dramatically cut back. The suggestion is that RTP (Portugal’s public broadcaster) should transmit just one general interest channel and no longer carry advertising. Its “international” channel should be managed by […]
Loral Space & Communications says it may be buying back up to 800,000 of its own NASDAQ shares for cancellation. There’s no set timetable for the purchase, and the buy-back will depend on the market price and availability of stock. Loral has 21.2 million voting common shares outstanding and 9.5 million non-voting shares outstanding as […]
It was darned nice of the BSkyB board to back its chairman James Murdoch as he, once again, testified to Parliament over the lamentable and illegal events at News International. The praise they heaped on him was particularly fulsome given that – no matter how good and personable he is day-to-day – he must have […]
Jersey-based O3b is a would-be satellite operator looking to serve the ‘other 3 billion’, that is the millions who live either side of the Equator and are unserved by broadband availability. O3b’s largest investor is SES, but other investors include Google, Liberty Global, HSBC and others O3b has now raised another $137 million to pay […]
Carphone Warehouse is giving up on its Best Buy chain of electrical goods megastores in the UK. The chain was a joint venture with the US parent – America’s biggest seller of consumer electronics – and came about as part of the deal where Best Buy US paid £1.1 billion to take a 50 per […]
A dispute over satellite frequencies between Eutelsat and Arabsat over Iranian–claimed broadcasting rights has not been settled by the ITU, and is now to be presented to the global ITU conference of telecom authorities in January. The argument also concerns the wealthy Gulf state of Qatar. The argument concerns the so-called Zohreh-2 ‘satellite’ which never […]
Sony Corp is likely to lose a staggering $1 billion this year, which will maintain a terrible four-year record of losses under CEO Sir Howard Stringer. A Tokyo press conference outlined how the giant electronics-to-movies plans to trim some 125 billion Yen ($1.6bn) from annual costs over the next few years. This further bad news […]
On October 24, UK media regulator Ofcom cancelled the licences of three channels (Babeworld, House of Fun and The Other Side). These channels are perhaps not the most important UK broadcasters, but now Ofcom is looking at the licensing of channels that do have a somewhat higher profile. Ofcom’s concerns revolve around who actually controls […]
Japan’s public broadcaster NHK is cutting its annual licence fee by 120 Yen (about $1.60) a month. This is the first such cut since 1968 when the nation’s radio licence was terminated. The monthly fee is currently 1345 Yen (about $17.74). Viewers who want the additional free-to-air satellite services pay an extra 945 Yen ($12.40). […]
Giant Norwegian telco has unveiled its Q3 results, and most of its various broadcasting-related divisions reported fairly flat revenues. For example, Canal Digital, Telenor’s pay-TV arm, saw overall revenues drop by NOK12 million (1 per cent), to NOK1,047 million (from NOK 1,059m) although total EBITDA improved by 9 per cent. Canal Digital’s DTH subs numbers […]