Advanced Television

Cable

Virgin results; mixed bag

Sales slightly down and losses increasing on Q1 to £123m (E138m) from £109m last time were the bad news while increased ARPU (£42.29 v £41.95) and a record low churn of 1.1% were the good news. Revenue for the quarter was £935.7m against £947.3m last time. But the underlying fall in broadband sign-ons – down […]

May 5, 2009

Comcast momentum

Comcast reported improving subscriber losses and nearly doubling its free cash flow for the quarter. Comcast said it lost 78,000 subscribers in the period – slightly worse than the 57,000 lost in the first quarter of 2008 but better than analyst consensus estimates of a 171,000 subscriber loss. Revenue rose 5.3% to $8.8 billion and […]

May 1, 2009

KPN subs up

Dutch telco KPN added 60,000 subscribers to its pay-TV services in the first quarter of 2009 giving them a total of 835,000. The company now has a 12 per cent share of the Dutch television market.

April 29, 2009

Canadian cable up 16%

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has released summaries for Canadian broadcasting distribution companies. Revenues in this sector of the broadcasting industry have climbed steadily over the past five years and surpassed $10 billion for the first time ever in 2008. Total revenues for cable companies rose from $7.10 billion in 2007 to $8.24 […]

April 28, 2009

Cable and IPTV resistant to recession

With US households reluctant to cancel home services despite the down economy, growth in cable and IPTV VoD services will remain strong, with revenues exceeding $11 billion by 2013, according to Parks Associates. “Currently 37 per cent of US digital cable customers use premium VoD regularly, up from 21 per cent in late 2004,” said […]

April 24, 2009

Over 1.4bn subs for TV services by 2013

Broadband households in Europe and the US consistently rank primetime anytime VOD services as the most valuable service out of all TV 2.0 offerings, according to the Parks Associates report 'Television Services: The Global Outlook'. The international research firm says that primetime anytime services, which allow viewers to watch a show on-demand on their TV […]

April 14, 2009

J:COM March 2009 subs

Jupiter Telecommunications (J:COM), the largest multiple system operator in Japan based on the number of customers served, has announced that the total subscribing households as of March 31st, 2009 served by J:COM's 24 consolidated franchises reached 3.18 million, up 466,500, or 17.2 per cent since March 31st, 2008. Combined revenue generating units (RGUs) for cable […]

April 14, 2009

Ziggo on demand

Holland’s largest cable operator, Ziggo, has launched on-demand services across its entire network. Viewers will require a new set-top box to access the service, with Samsung and Cisco currently offering devices. Ziggo, currently connected to 3.2 million homes, has signed a number of on-demand deals, including ones with Disney and Warner Bros. Ziggo will offer […]

April 7, 2009

Disney: “TV everywhere difficult to embrace”

Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger has told NCTA that cable must find an online model that works for both programmers and distributors, appearing to dismiss a subscription model proposal, TV Everywhere, made earlier this year by Time Warner. "Cable television is vitally important to our company. It provides us with a crucial connection with […]

April 6, 2009

TW announces HBO Go

Ignoring Bob Iger's dismissal of the online subscription model, Time Warner chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes unveiled HBO Go, a broadband complement to the premium network only for subscribers to the linear service. “We’re all being too slow,” Bewkes said. “We should put up all our networks on the Internet, out on broadband right now. […]

April 6, 2009