From Davie Del Valle in Madrid Spanish competition watchdog the CNC has launched an inquiry into media group Mediapro and its pay-TV football channel Gol TV over possible anti-trust practices. The CNC argues that Mediapro may be breaking the competition legislation, damaging the pay-TV market by not reselling its football TV rights to the Spanish […]
ITV has offered the job of chief executive to Tony Ball but has so far been unable to agree terms with the former head of British Sky Broadcasting, according to reports. ITV and Ball were said to be holding talks over the structure and conditions of a turnaround incentive award for Ball akin to a […]
The Open IPTV Forum (OIPF) has published the Architecture Specification for IPTV infrastructure elements and services to be included in Release 2 of the OIPF Specifications. The Architecture Specification is freely available for download from the Publications section of the Forum website www.oipf.tv. Release 1 of the OIPF technical specifications was published early in 2009, […]
YouTube will spend approximately $300 million on bandwidth in 2009 — meaning it won’t be profitable, according to an analysis by Credit Suisse. According to the report' authors that means YouTube still would not be profitable at the gross level this year, given their original 2009 revenue estimate of $240 million (a top-line increase of […]
Wall St is speculating General Electric is paving the way for a possible change of the ownership structure at media company NBC Universal as Vivendi's annual option to sell its 20% comes around again in November. The WSJ quoted a source: "Talk to people in the media banking community; there is a book out on […]
BBC Worldwide's head of sales and business development of digital media, Peter Mercier, has left the company to join Microsoft. He becomes Microsoft's senior director of content acquisitions and strategy and will develop partnerships for its entertainment and devices division building relationships across Xbox, Windows Media Centre and mobile platforms. Mercier was head of mobile […]
UK Intellectual property minister David Lammy has defended the government's revised plans to disconnect the most persistent illegal file-sharers against growing criticism from ISPs, consumer groups and now some content representatives. Speaking to the Motion Picture Association of America in Washington he said the new proposals "send a clear message: when it comes to piracy […]
The European Commission is to investigate Spain's new funding model for state-owned broadcaster RTVE. The new model will see Spain compensating falling advertising revenues with taxes paid by private broadcasters and telecom companies. Private broadcasters will have to allocate 3% of their revenues to public broadcasters, a figure that will be reduced to 1.5% for […]
The chairman of BBC Worldwide, Etienne de Villiers, is to step down at the end of the month after almost three years in the role. De Villiers, who served on ITV’s board as a non-executive director from 2004 to 2007, was appointed as chairman of the BBC’s commercial holdings board in September 2005 with a […]
The UK government's revised, tougher plans to tackle online piracy have been dismissed as "grossly unfair" and "misconceived" by the leaders of ISPs who warn against creating an "extrajudicial kangaroo court" to cut off persistent P2P offenders. The CEOs of BT, and TalkTalk and Orange UK, wrote to The Times calling for a re-think on […]