Central European Media Enterprises (CME) is in the final stage of acquiring News Corp’s Bulgarian broadcaster bTV for about E500 million, according to reports. The deal is expected to be completed towards the end of February.

Responding to civil liberties concerns, the European Commission has said it will “closely monitor” a planned UK trial of deep packet inspection technology by Virgin Media. In November Virgin announced plans to look at the traffic of 40 per cent, or 1.6 million, of its subscribers, to gauge the level of illegal file-sharing on its […]

The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the acquisition of the German cable network operator Unitymedia by Liberty Global. The Commission concluded that the concentration would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it.

Verizon’s FiOS ended 2009 with a comparatively sluggish quarter, adding 153,000 subscribers for both TV and Internet services. Verizon had 2.9 million FiOS TV customers as of the end of 2009, and 3.4 million FiOS Internet customers. Year to year, Verizon boosted FiOS TV subs by 49 per cent (with a 24.5 per cent penetration […]

The German state media office will decide by mid-March if mobile TV via the DVB-H standard gets a second chance. An important requirement for a possible re-tender of a 10-year licence is that interested parties confirm their interest in deploying DVB-H to the approval and oversight commission of the media offices (ZAK) before the end […]

BSkyB has been ordered to reduce its stake in commercial broadcasting rival ITV by the UK Court of Appeal. In the fourth ruling since BSkyB acquired the shareholding in November 2006, the UK courts decreed that Sky must sell the stake down to less than 7.5 per cent, in line with the Competition Commission ruling. […]

The Federal Communications Commission has voted to stop cable operators from withholding local sports channels from rivals in the US, potentially giving consumers more choice of pay-TV providers. Federal law requires cable operators to offer access to channels they partially or wholly own to rivals at reasonable rates. But the law includes a loophole that […]

Microsoft is suing TiVo alleging infringement of patents for a system that displays programme information and a secure method for buying and delivering video programmes. TiVo, which has 2.7 million direct DVR subscribers, is using portions of the two Microsoft patents in its products or components, including set-top box products, subscription services and software, without […]

The Indian government has suspended permission for the launch of new television channels in the country, citing scarcity of spectrum. The ministry of information and broadcasting has suspended fresh permissions for new television channels, affecting the roll out plans of up to 170 channels, applications for which are pending with the ministry. In a communication […]

Sirius XM the now sole satellite radio player in the US, added 257,000 net new subscribers for the fourth quarter 2009 and reported $100 million free cash flow for the full year. Mel Karmazin (CEO) noted that 2009 is the first year ever for Sirius XM to report positive free cash flow for an entire […]