Advanced Television

Business

Apple hires ex-Disney, Quibi exec

Apple has hired Tim Connolly to work on its Apple TV+ service. According to The Telegraph, Connolly has joined Apple in an unspecified role within the company’s video services, but will likely be working on increasing the number of Apple TV channels, as well as creating more bundled deals. Connolly previously worked at Disney where […]

September 7, 2020

Discovery acquires MediaWorks TV operations

New Zealand’s MediaWorks has confirmed it is selling its TV operations to Discovery. The deal includes TV channels Three and Bravo, streaming service ThreeNow, and multi-platform news and current affairs service Newshub, as well as the further channels Three+1, Bravo+1, The Edge TV and The Breeze TV. The company says the sale is subject to […]

September 7, 2020

ICASA delays spectrum access until 2021

South Africa’s much-delayed spectrum auction will see some progress by the end of September when regulator ICASA will issue two invitations to apply for interested parties. ICASA says the spectrum will then be issued at the end of the regulator’s financial year (March 2021) which is a further 3 months later than the promised December […]

September 7, 2020By Chris Forrester

ChinaSat profits tumble

ChinaSat has reported a 3.9 per cent decline in revenues and 8 per cent  decline in net profits for H1/2020 compared to H1/2019. Revenues for the half-year slid from RMB 1.31 billion (€162.2m) to RMB 1.26 billion, with profit dropping from RMB 208 million to RMB 191 million. The company says its highlights for the […]

September 7, 2020

New DG ‘BBC has no inalienable right to exist’

Tim Davie, the BBC’s new director general, has said he doesn’t support any switch from the licence fee to a subscription model. In his first speech since taking over, Davie said “For the avoidance of doubt, I do not want a subscription BBC that serves the few. We could make a decent business out of […]

September 4, 2020

Good luck, Tim

Many headlines rang out ‘New BBC DG against subscription model’ following Tim Davie’s first speech. If my memory of reporter school is right – it is a very long time ago – this is a classic ‘dog bites man’ headline. In other words, no news at all. The news would have been ‘New DG does […]

September 4, 2020

Analyst: Dish, DirecTV merger poses risks

A report from Standard & Poors Market Intelligence (S&P) by Sarah Barry-James suggests that the potential for some sort of ‘merger’ between AT&T’s DirecTV and Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network poses risks. Ergen is on the record as saying that a combination of the two DTH pay-TV giants is “inevitable”. But S&P reminds readers that Constantine […]

September 4, 2020By Chris Forrester

Bank: “SES could suffer much lower revenues”

Earlier this week Giles Thorne, a media & telecoms analyst at investment bank Jefferies, gave Eutelsat a set of rosy expectations and a target share price of €18. A similar examination of prospects for satellite operator SES does not deliver the same optimistic forecasts… Indeed, the bank’s summary is pretty miserable, and despite a ‘Buy’ […]

September 4, 2020

Discovery streamlines EMEA operations

Discovery has announced it is aligning several of its operating markets in EMEA to improve strategic focus and enable further investment in its D2C businesses. “We are working systematically to rationalise our operation and find synergies and efficiencies across our EMEA business. We have come a long way over the years and with this restructuring […]

September 3, 2020

UK completes 700 MHz clearance

UK Digital Infrastructure Minister Matt Warman has confirmed the milestone completion of the four-year, £350 million major infrastructure programme to clear the 700 MHz spectrum band, allowing new data capacity to be released for mobile operators. The 700MHz spectrum band had mainly been used for digital terrestrial TV broadcast as well as professional radio microphones […]

September 3, 2020By Colin Mann