ITV’s long-awaited Deloitte report into premium rate phone-in scandals has uncovered problems with up to 10 million calls to the broadcaster’s major entertainment shows. These involved viewers still being encouraged to call after a winner had been picked or being told there was a randomly selected winner when in fact there was a pre-selected short […]

The head of the Federal Communications Commission has revealed a plan to relax the media ownership rules, including repealing a rule that forbids a company to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city. Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the commission, wants to repeal the rule in the next […]

The UK regulator’s chief executive Ed Richards said he was not persuaded that TV should be allowed to use the “digital dividend” for high-definition programming. Instead, he spoke of the “golden opportunity” of using more efficient MPEG4 compression and the DVBT2 broadcast standard to squeeze HD channels into the existing Freeview band. Ofcom is consulting […]

Spain’s competition watchdog has launched a probe of the country’s three largest mobile-phone operators for possible collusion, Spain’s Consumer and Users Organisation said. The National Competition Commission is investigating whether Telefonica’s Movistar, Vodafone and France Telecom’s Orange co-ordinated a rise in their tariffs in March. All three raised tariffs to compensate for the banning of […]

The Competition Commission has extended the timetable for completing its inquiry into BSkyB’s £940 million (E1.3bn) purchase of a 17.9 per cent stake in ITV until next year. It had intended to hand over the results of its inquiry to John Hutton, the secretary of state for business enterprise and regulatory reform, by November 7. […]

Industry body the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) has applauded a call by regional political leaders for Governments to “effectively address” the issue of satellite and cable TV signal theft. “The new priority given by the APEC ministers to this problem is great news,” said Marcel Fenez, the Chairman of CASBAA. “With […]

A dispute has broken out between UK television networks and their and Ofcom over the public service remit of channels such as ITV1 and Channel 4. Ed Richards, chief executive of the media and communications regulator, signalled renewed pressure to finalise the remit of channels such as ITV1 and Channel 4, saying that the public […]

From David Del Valle in Madrid The Spanish police has disbanded a network of pay-TV hackers by arresting 27 people across the country who would have defrauded the pay-TV companies of E10 million. Amonsgt the detainees there are 10 distributors of keys and codes through the Internet, nine sellers of manipulated set-top-boxes and eight responsible […]

France Telecom has threatened to lodge a complaint against Vivendi’s Canal+ over its requirement that the operator distributes its CanalSat channels together, while cable operators are able to distribute them individually. “If (the situation) does not change, we will have no choice but to lodge a complaint to seek equitable access to CanalSat channels,” said […]

The head of Ofcom’s independent consumer panel has sent letters to the bosses of the UK’s top six broadband providers asking why customers often fail to get the connection speeds they are promised. The enquiry to BT, Tiscali and TalkTalk “follows increasing consumer concern about broadband speeds”. Broadband providers often say they offer speeds “up […]