The Japanese government has estimated 69.5 per cent of Japanese families had acquired TVs or tuners to receive terrestrial digital broadcasting signals as of the end of September, up 8.8 points from March. The increase came as the government offered Eco-points for purchasing new TVs under an economic stimulus package that allows consumers to convert […]

Guardian Media Group has has appointed Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett as a non-executive director. Berkett has been VMED CEO since 2008 and was appointed COO of the company's precursor NTL in 2005. GMG will hope his experience can help steer its Guardian News & Media division, which houses The Guardian and Guardian.co.uk, back towards […]

US broadcaster CBS has said it is managing to charge advertisers double the rates of a year ago for short-notice bookings, adding that it was cancelling promotions for its own shows to squeeze more ads on to the US broadcast network behind CSI and David Letterman. Advertisers were "knocking down the door", Les Moonves, CBS […]

STV, Scotland’s ITV licensee, has launched a £35m (E39m) legal action against ITV plc that includes claims of abuses in TV ad sales and video-on-demand rights. Also, the company said that the failure to secure a recommission of Taggart across the ITV network meant that the company will take a £2m hit in earnings and […]

DirecTV Group was one of the few pay-TV companies to gain subscribers in the third quarter, though earnings stayed steady because of the higher costs it incurred attracting and serving those new customers. DirecTV said that a marketing partnership with AT&T accounted for most of the increase in US subscribers. DirecTV said that net income […]

Nearly two-thirds of Netflix subscribers have tried out the company’s 'Watch Instantly' streaming service, and more than half use it at least once a month, according to a survey released by research firm One Touch Intelligence. The survey findings suggest that usage of the streaming service has moved beyond the early adopter stage and into […]

Ofcom has confirmed that Lord Burns will be the next chairman of Channel 4, and will join the broadcaster’s board immediately for a handover period before Luke Johnson’s departure in January. He will join Channel 4 immediately as chairman-designate, working with Johnson to find a new chief executive to replace Andy Duncan. Duncan is expected […]

Signs of an improvement in Britain's television advertising market emerged after ITV forecast that it would end the year with the best rate of advertising growth since 2007, and reported the early repayment of £75 million (E83.5m) in debt. The group said there had been an unexpected improvement in advertising since it last updated the […]

Eutelsat has reported that it's Q3 profits grew 11.6 per cent to E226.7 million. Video Applications registered sustained increases in revenue (+8.5 per cent) to E180.8 million. TV channels broadcast by Eutelsat’s fleet grew by 4.7 per cent), as Eutelsat further consolidated the commercial strength of its nine video neighbourhoods. In total, the number of […]

The BBC has confirmed that it will start beta testing its popular iPlayer service on Freesat from the end of this month. BBC's iPlayer debuted on Virgin Media's cable service last year, but this will be the first subscription-free platform to get the fully-fledged version of iPlayer. ….