Advanced Television

M&A

DISH Network makes Blockbuster purchase

DISH Network Corporation has been selected as the winning bidder in the bankruptcy court auction for substantially all of the assets of movie rental store Blockbuster, Inc. DISH Network’s winning bid was valued at approximately $320 million. After certain adjustments are made at closing of the transaction, including adjustments for available cash and inventory, DISH […]

April 6, 2011By Colin Mann

Music Choice Europe sold

Music Choice Europe (MCE) is being bought by Montreal-based Stingray Digital. MCE currently has some 10 million subscribers listening to more than 70 commercial free audio services.  Stingray Digital is a privately-held business, established in 2007 by Eric Bioyko and Alexandre Taillefer.  In August last year it bought Concert TV, an interactive VOD service.  Terms […]

April 5, 2011From Chris Forrester @ MIP

Liberty targets Ziggo

A few weeks ago when pressed on whether Liberty Global would bid for Kabel BW, Shane O’Neill, chief strategy officer, deflected the question by stating Ziggo was a more prized target as ‘it is a much better fit.’ Two weeks ago Liberty beat out the competition to buy Kabel BW and now seems set to […]

April 4, 2011

Bell Media emerges from CTV buy

Bell has completed its $3.2 billion acquisition of CTV and launched Bell Media, a new business unit encompassing all CTV and other Bell content assets. Bell Media has announced a package of top news, sports and entertainment content for Canada’s mobile providers. Bell fulfilled all regulatory, legal and other requirements to close the transaction, approximately […]

April 4, 2011

EchoStar to buy Telesat?

Denver-based satellite operator EchoStar is one of the final bidders in the race to acquire Canada-based Telesat, which operates the Anik and Nimiq satellites. Charlie Ergen’s EchoStar Corporation spun off its Dish Network division in December 2007. EchoStar already supplies its set-top boxes to pay-TV broadcaster Bell TV in Canada. A decision could be announced […]

April 1, 2011By Chris Forrester

Verimatrix acquires Comvenient

Verimatrix, a specialist in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-screen digital TV services, is strengthening its DVB Conditional Access (CA) capability significantly by integrating the highly respected team and technology from German company Comvenient within Verimatrix. The pair have been long-term partners in the development of the Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS) for DVB […]

March 31, 2011By Colin Mann

Collective buys WebTV ad network

Display ad specialist Collective has bought video ad network WebTV Enterprise. The deal will give Collective, which partnered with Adobe and Omniture earlier this month to bolster its web analytics offering, access to WebTV’s 25 million-strong premium network, with revenues coming primarily from broadcast. Joe Apprendi, CEO of Collective, said, “Unlike most video networks, WebTV’s […]

March 29, 2011

MySpace considers Vevo merger

News Corp has held talks over giving up control of Myspace to Vevo, the music video site owned by several of the world’s biggest music labels. After kicking off a strategic review looking to sell or spin-off the declining social networking website last month, News Corp initially approached Vevo about acquiring Myspace, according to reports. […]

March 29, 2011

Motorola scoops Dreampark

Motorola Mobility has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Swedish IPTV software provider Dreampark. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2011. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Dreampark’s software portfolio maximises operator flexibility and performance by taking advantage of the powers of open standards, such as HTML and scalable […]

March 23, 2011By Colin Mann

Liberty wins KBW

Liberty Global has entered into an agreement to acquire Kabel BW Erste Beteiligungs (KBW), the third largest cable TV operator in Germany controlled by EQT private equity. As of December 31st, 2010, KBW’s broadband communications network passed 3.7 million homes and served 2.4 million customers who subscribed to 3.9 million basic cable, pay TV, telephony […]

March 22, 2011