There are tipping points in all things. Not very long ago, it seems to me, technology companies, including CA vendors, were going to their pay-TV operator customers and trying to persuade them that the fantastic new functionality they had invented should be deployed. The response was often lukewarm; when your current business model produces profits […]
America’s leading media stocks have seen massive falls in the value as the Dow Jones index continues to suffer a major fall as anxiety increrases over deficits and growth. Most of the USA’s cable stocks fell back on September 22nd. Time-Warner was the exception (up 1 per cent) but its stable-mates all suffered: Comcast […]
YahLive, the satellite broadcasting portion of Abu Dhabi-based YahSat that is managed by SES, is close to signing up its first all-HDTV capacity bookings. While commercial terms have not been revealed, it is understood that the first transponder rentals will go to channels from Abu Dhabi TV. SES admits it is an ambitious “even […]
US pay-radio broadcaster Sirius-XM is in great shape and in formal guidance is predicting a double-digit revenue increase for 2012. CEO Mel Karmazin told a Bank of America conference last week that he’d like to use Sirius’s growing cash pile to help fund a suitable acquisition – but there wasn’t much about! Instead, his Board […]
It wasn’t so very long ago that Iridium, the global/mobile satellite phone and data service, was languishing in Bankruptcy Court. Now, having restructured, it is declaring more than 500,000 subscribers around the world, with some 10 percent made up of US governmental (AKA military) users. “Our consistent double-digit growth in subscribers – more than 25 […]
Satellite operator SES used IBC to unveil its new logo, and told press and conference delegates that it was now carrying 5,905 channels and radio networks and that more than 2400 were being transmitted over Europe. SES is claiming the world’s top spot for HDTV channels, with 1,071 now on air around the globe. (although […]
The normally quiet summer has been anything but this year. It has been full of Events. As a British Prime Minister from what we used to call ‘the ruling class’, replied when asked what caused him most trouble when in office: “Events, dear boy, events”. On that basis it has also been a bad summer […]
SES has struck up another of its special relationship agreements. This time it is Russia’s Gazprom and its Gazprom Space Systems division. SES now has a “strategic partnership” with the giant Russian company to provide new satellite capacity to serve the fast-growing Russian market. The deal was announced at the Euroconsult Paris satellite conference. […]
Last week’s Vivendi results were close to the market’s expectations, although there was subsequently some changes to guidance during the post-results analysts’ calls. For example, Vivendi’s Activision-Blizzard games division saw its guidance raised substantially, with the potential of even further progress. Vivendi is a much diversified business, especially in the telecoms sector, and while the […]
On Friday evening (Aug 26) Google boss Eric Schmidt delivered the annual MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival. He confirmed that Google TV would launch in Europe early next year with the UK “among the top priorities”. One cautionary comment came from Stewart Purvis, a former CEO at ITN and now professor of […]