The China Academy of Broadcasting Science has held a meeting to promote overseas partnerships on the CMMB standard, with senior officials from SARFT’s Science and Technology Department, the Academy itself, the S2M Group and Loral Space and Communications. Deputy director of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) Zhang Haitao said he hopes […]

The BBC and ITV have sought legal advice to determine whether the deep-linking that online TV listings site TVguide.co.uk does to their online video streaming is legal or not. TVguide.co.uk, which has some 1 million unique visitors a month doing some 8 million page impressions, offers its users direct access to unbranded content from the […]

Australia’s Macquarie Group and private equity house MBK Partners have completed a $2 billion joint acquisition of South Korea’s number 2 cable TV operator C&M. The deal made the unlisted company the first Korean cable TV operator owned by private equity funds. The country’s adoption of digital and broadband TV services raise hopes for further […]

Satellite companies gained a victory when the Federal Communications Commission voted to allow them to phase in a requirement that they carry all HD signals in any market where they carry any after the February 2009 switch to digital TV by all full-power TV stations. The commission also ruled that DirecTV's and Dish Network’s requirement […]

BBC commissioning editor Ben Gale has been confirmed as Five’s new director of programmes. Gale will replace Jay Hunt when she takes on the role of BBC One controller.

The US Justice Department has approved the merger of satellite-radio companies Sirius and XM Satellite Radio leaving one more major regulatory hurdle — the Federal Communications Commission — before a deal that was given little chance of success can be completed. The companies proposed their merger in February 2007 as a way to bolster satellite […]

From David Del Valle in Madrid Spain's largest cable company ONO is financially performing well. The operator ended the year with an EBITDA of E642 million, up 14.9 per cent against 2006. The company has made a drastic cut in non-profitable divisions and has increased its ARPU with a rise of 6.8 per cent (E1,176 […]

BT has appointed a former BBC policy adviser as its first head of media and convergence policy as it moves further into the media sector. The appointment of Simon Milner comes as BT is pulled into regulatory arguments about so-called converged services, which pull together online and broadcast offerings. Take-up of BT Vision has been […]

France’s competition council has launched an investigation into exclusive broadcasting contracts between pay-TV operator Canal+ and certain specialist channels. The inquiry stems from a complaint lodged last year from French group AB claiming Canal+ has blocked its channels from being broadcast on certain broadband Internet services. Canal+ a unit of Vivendi, has exclusive contracts with […]

Intelsat has reported record annual revenues of $2.183.1 billion for 2007. But the satellite operator still recorded a net loss of $192 million. In Q4 it posted record revenues of $575.5 million with a loss of $2.6 million. CEO Dave McGlade said: “In 2007, Intelsat demonstrated the ability to deliver revenue growth, improved operating profit […]