In its second management upheaval in two years, Time Warner has lured Tim Armstrong, the president of Google's North American sales team, to be chief executive of AOL.

ITN has appointed John Hardie, a senior executive at Disney and former ITV commercial director, as its chief executive. Hardie, who succeeds Mark Wood who left ITN in February after six years, takes up the role in June. Hardie, 47, executive vice-president and managing director of Walt Disney Television across Europe, Middle East and Africa, […]

Oxford Economics institute in UK says online piracy cost the industry £235 million (E253m) in 2008 – that's nearly half of the £531 million the group says was lost to piracy of all kinds. But the annual online loss could be reduced to £83.2 million if downloaders received an ISP warning and if detection technologies […]

Gerhard Zeiler CEO of RTL Group said it would allow the government to retain a majority stake in any merger with Channel 4, as he wrote down the value of the UK channel by E337m slashing its value by half. Zeiler stressed he is committed to the UK and said a merger between Five and […]

From David Del Valle in Madrid Spain’s largest cable company ONO has reduced by 87 per cent its losses in 2008 to E26 million and now hopes to end the current year breaking even. ONO’s EBITDA was E703 million, up 10.6 per cent. Total revenues were 0.8 per cent down to E1.603 billion, with residential […]

France’s culture minister has defended a new bill clamping down on Internet piracy that is backed by music artists but opposed by consumer groups. The proposed “creation and Internet law” has stirred controversy over a provision allowing a state agency to cut off Internet access for up to a year to those caught illegally downloading […]

From David Del Valle in Madrid Spain’s broadcasting agency Abertis Telecom, shareholder in satellites Hispasat and Eutelsat, has rejected SES Astra’s charges of favouritism in the Spanish DTT market before the European Union. In a letter to the European Competition and to the Spanish Ministry of Industry, the company has defended the Spain’s DTT model […]

Talking before a UK Parliamentary committee Comms Minister Lord Carter continued to hint net neutrality would not be a foundation of his Digital Britain report. Having already assured BT its investment in NGN would be recognised and protected, he said "Our emerging view is that it is not unreasonable for a network provider to be […]

The Shenzhen Bureau of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine revealed that the European Union’s new environmental regulations for simple set-top boxes (STBs) will directly affect China’s STB export business, which is valued at nearly RMB 10 billion (E1.14bn). A spokesperson for the bureau said that China currently produces more than 50 million STBs every year […]

Belgium's dominant telco Belgacom TV has reported growth in 2008 exceeded that of the previous year, with the company adding 201,000 new subscribers. Growth peaked in the fourth quarter of the year, with the company adding 63,000 IPTV subscribers in the three-month period. By the end of 2008, the company had a 30 per cent […]