Warner Bros Home Entertainment Group is to acquire Flixster, a movie discovery application company with over 25 million worldwide users per month. The acquisition also includes Rotten Tomatoes, a website devoted to film reviews, information and news. Under the terms of the deal, Flixster will continue to operate independently and will expand its services beyond […]
Optical transport solutions provider Aurora Networks has acquired digital headend solutions specilaist GoBackTV, as part of a planned expansion of its offering for cable operators. “GoBackTV fills expertise in evolving areas that represent timely opportunities for Aurora Networks to expand its technology in line with the needs of cable operators,” said Guy Sucharczuk, chairman, president […]
Incumbent Dutch telco Royal KPN NV (KPN) is to acquire Dutch cable MSO Caiway from its current shareholders, Rabo Bouwfonds’ Communication Infrastructure Fund (CIF) and Caiway’s management, for an undisclosed sum. Caiway provides television, broadband and telephony services in several municipalities in the Netherlands through the cable and fibre infrastructures of CIF and a number […]
On-demand TV solutions specialist Espial Group has revealed that its Board of Directors has initiated a process to review a range of potential strategic alternatives available to Espial for enhancing shareholder value. A Special Committee has been established to lead this process and has retained Morgan Keegan as its financial advisor to provide independent advice. […]
Viacom announced revenue was up 20 per cent to $3.27 billion, for the second quarter and net earnings reached $376 million, up from $245 million in the comparable period a year ago. Viacom’s TV networks did especially well as advertisers flocked to destination shows and the company was able to charge cable operators more for […]
The founders of YouTube have bought bookmarking service Delicious from Yahoo. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen will use Delicious as a key part of their next net venture, Avos A startup thought to be based around tools that help people navigate the vast amount of information generated by web sites and services. Delicious describes itself […]
The UK media market saw a healthy start to the year as Mergers and Acquisitions activity surged in the first quarter, according to leading financial and business advisors Grant Thornton UK LLP. The firm’s M&A tracker reveals that the number of announced deals across the media sector in Q1 doubled compared to the same time […]
Five or more bids to buy all or part of the MySpace social networking pioneer are expected, valuing the company at more than $100 million says the Wall Street Journal (a News Corp company). Among the names expected to bid are private equity firm THL Partners, Redscout Ventures and Criterion Capital, which owns social networking […]
French telco Vivendi has not reopened talks to buy rival Lagardère’s 20 per cent stake in pay-TV unit Canal Plus, Vivendi chief Jean-Bernard Levy has told French newspaper Le Figaro. Vivendi, which owns 80 per cent of Canal Plus, failed in a previous attempt to buy the stake from Lagardère, which opted instead for a […]
In a move designed to position it for the next stage in the Internet-driven revolution in home entertainment, supermarket chain Tesco has acquired a majority stake in video-on-demand pioneer blinkbox. blinkbox is the UK’s leading movie streaming service, offering thousands of titles streamed on the internet to 2m users each month. Their catalogue of more […]