As widely trailed, UK regulator Ofcom has recommended to government that Channel 4 should be underwritten as a PSB broadcaster via a merger or partnership with either BBC World Wide, the commercial exploitation part of the BBC, or Five. It says Channel 4 should receive £130 million (E140m) a year from the BBC Licence Fee […]

Leading Italian broadcasters Rai and Mediaset, together with Telecom Italia Media, are to launch a free-to-air satellite platform in June. The venture is expected to employ Eutelsat’s Hot Bird satellite – already widely used by Italian DTH broadcasters. Unveiling the service, Mediaset chairman Fedele Confalonieri said the joint venture would boost competition with Sky Italia.

CHANNEL 4 held merger talks with telecoms group BT after it launched its IPTV service, it has emerged. The broadcaster's chairman, Luke Johnson, met Ian Livingston, chief executive of BT, on more than one occasion last year to discuss a tie-up. "They have obviously got a pipe into every home in the country, they have […]

Wall-to-wall coverage of the US presidential election in helped CNN shatter ratings records last year. CNN's election night coverage attracted more than 13 million viewers, beating broadcast networks and cable rivals, and courting younger viewers with gimmicks such as holograms of its correspondents. In spite of this, the network ended the year as it has […]

Virgin Media is bringing sport on demand to its 3.5 million TV customers. The immediate launch of Setanta Replay on Virgin Media offers a range of football content, including Barclays Premier League games, FA Cup matches, England home friendlies and World Cup qualifiers. Setanta Replay on Virgin Media will offer top sporting fixtures on demand […]

The BBC director-general BBC has called on the UK government to help his commercial rivals survive the economic slowdown, so that "their content might help inspire the population to adopt high-speed broadband technologies." Writing for the FT, Mark Thompson has supported a merger of Channel 4 and Five, a course thought to be favoured by […]

US broadcaster CBS has raised the stakes in the online video market with a revamp of its video site. CBS has added content from partners including Sony, Endemol, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor and PBS, to TV.com, the site it acquired in the $1.8 billion takeover last year of CNET Networks, the technology web site operator. The partners will […]

Postponing the Feb. 17 date for broadcasters to turn off their analogue signals will create more problems than it solves, said FCC Chairman Kevin Martin at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Martin said the shortage in funding for digital converter boxes was a problem that needed to be fixed quickly, and said he […]

Babelgum has called for the scrapping of the BBC/C4/ITV JV Kangaroo declaring any other option would breach Competition Commission rules. In its written response to the Commission's suggested remedies to keep the JV legal, Babelgum says only one of the proposed options – banning the project – is realistic. Last month Kangaroo made its compromise […]

Blockbuster, the largest U.S. movie rental chain, is open to collaboration with telecom companies such as Verizon and AT&T as it expands into the video-on-demand business, chief executive officer Jim Keyes said. “As we move toward video-on-demand and pay-per-view, Blockbuster is well positioned not only to compete on our own, but also to partner with […]