From Branislav Pekic in Rome Italian DTH operator Sky Italia will have to reimburse thousands of former subscribers, for applying cancellation costs judged as too high by a Rome Court. The decision is the result of a court case initiated in February 2009 by consumers association Movimento Consumatori, in which it accused of violating the […]

Sky has reportedly tabled a £160m (E183m) bid to buy Virgin Media’s seven digital TV channels – this is said to be 60% more than any offer made by rival bidders including Channel 4, RTL, Time Warner and NBC Universal. The seven channels are Living, Living Two, Bravo, Bravo Two, Challenge, Challenge Jackpot and Virgin1. […]

Research from Informa says that digital TV will make significant progress in Latin America over the next five years. Digital TV households will more than treble in that time – from 12.2 million at present to 37.1 million by 2014. Brazil and Mexico now combine to account for half of the region's digital subscribers, but […]

Sky Deutschland has confirmed it will launch its new digital bouquets in Germany and Austria on July 4th. The number of HD channels available will triple from two to six. Sky Welt will be the new basic package, offering 20 channels including Sky Krimi, Fox, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Jetix Disney Channel, and TNT Serie […]

British broadcasters will not be allowed to increase the amount of advertising carried on television but the situation will be reviewed again in 2010, the media regulator Ofcom has confirmed. Ofcom said it had decided against making any changes to the rules on the amount of advertising on TV but would assess the issue again […]

From David Del Valle in Madrid Approval last week of new legislation that allows TV cross-ownership has paved the way for a planned merger between the Spanish commercial channels Sogecable-controlled Cuatro and La Sexta. Both companies have been negotiating over the last weeks to set up a holding group that would encompass the two channels […]

On-net behavioural ad targeter Phorm has hired SK Communications' search and portal VP Daniel Park to be its Korea CEO. Phorm now says it will demonstrate "an innovative new consumer proposition" on June 3. This, CEO Kent Ertugrul says, will be "the revolutionary centerpiece of our consumer proposition". It's not known whether this will be […]

Schutzgemeinschaft der Kapitalanleger (SdK), a German shareholders interest group has taken the former CEOs of German pay-TV platform Premiere to court over allegations of investment fraud and insider trading. SdK has brought a case against former CEOs Georg Kofler and Michael Börnicke in a Munich court, claiming the pair falsified subscriber numbers on two occasions. […]

From David Del Valle in Madrid The Ministry of Industry has decided to postpone the digital transition of 700 towns out of the 1,200 municipalities that planned to implement it by June 30, within the first phase of the analogue switch-off in the country, for lack of enough digital coverage. As a result, only 3 […]

From David Del Valle in Madrid Spain's Telefonica has seen a 25 per cent increase in the number of its pay-TV clients around the world reaching a total of 2.3 million by the end of the first quarter of the year. Out of them 604,819 are in Spain to its IPTV service Imagenio, up 9.2 […]