TV broadcasting in Russia has had a hard time, badly hurt by the advertising recession. One benchmark broadcaster is CTC Media which has had a roller-coaster ride this past two years. That position is changing – and fast. Bankers Morgan Stanley say Russia will enjoy one of the fastest advertising growth rates on the planet. […]
Now I’ve got your attention I’ll explain. A session here at Cable Congress posed the question what should operator’s digital home strategies be? No surprise that everybody nodded enthusiastically to enabling the home network, developing the Set Top as the home gateway and delivering ‘blow me away’ user interfaces. But panellists also admitted that this […]
Nilesat did itself no favours by dropping carriage of Arabic news channel Al Jazeera on January 30 at the height of the ‘People’s Revolution’ in Tahrir Square. At the time the blame was placed firmly at the door of Egypt’s powerful information ministry, and its minister Anas Al Fiki. He was speedily sacked, but not […]
The second annual international 3D Creative Arts Awards, organised by the International 3D Society, saw BSkyB win the coveted “best 3D-TV” award, for Sky’s steamy Dance, Dance, Dance show. Dance, Dance, Dance is a specially choreographed show (by Arlene Phillips) comprising six segments filmed in and around London. The six specially commissioned dances feature Bollywood, […]
A pub landlady in England is a hero to the (non-Murdoch) press when she wins a ‘victory’ in the European courts over whether she’s entitled to buy her Premiere League soccer for public viewing from a foreign supplier. It isn’t actually a win yet (just an opinion from the official court adviser) and, of course, […]
Last week’s Egyptian protests saw Al Jazeera’s signals from Nilesat terminated. The problem meant that Al Jazeera’s viewers had to search the sky for alternate transmissions over the Middle East, not least looking to Arabsat and Eutelsat. The loss of Al Jazeera’s signal meant that subscribers to the Orbit Showtime Network also lost their news […]
In the past few days, Sky Deutschland (SD) has resolved a troubling legal dispute with former investors by settling $20 million on them, and also seen News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch say last week that his investment in the German pay-TV operator was “starting to pay off”. A week ago, SD raised €165 million via a […]
The blogosphere is full of gossip and speculation that an upcoming key date, March 7, could be instrumental in taking pay-radio outfit Sirius XM onto its next stage. Currently the situation is that John Malone’s Liberty Media is – in effect – in control of 40 per cent of Sirius XM (Liberty injected $530m in […]
UK-based broadband-by-satellite provider Avanti Communications is involved in a legal dispute with new launch provider SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies) over use of its groundbreaking Falcon-9 rocket. Nevertheless, Avanti’s CEO David Williams says the new company has sufficient spectrum available to “launch perhaps 20 satellites”. Details of the legal spat were revealed in Avanti’s annual report. […]
The past couple of years have not been good for pay-radio’s prospects in Europe. We’ve seen the Worldspace catastrophe, now well over two years into its Chapter 11 bankruptcy (WS filed in October 2008) and with legal bills still running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Worldspace’s European and other international operations […]