Chris Forrester is one of the most experienced and highly regarded journalists in the field. His insight and analysis, particularly in the satellite and pay-TV arena, is highly prized. He has written for all the major business journals in the sector as well as several national newspapers.
Last week’s investment of $480 million (€428m) by pay-radio operator SiriusXM into music streaming service Pandora leaves far more questions unanswered than answered. The deal has yet to proceed through various hurdles, but assuming the deal wraps, then SiriusXM will have an 18 per cent stake in Pandora, and with Pandora saying it will use […]
Last week’s ending of diplomatic relations between Qatar and almost all of the other Gulf States, not least Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – and which provoked a series of ‘cyber-threats’ to be carried out on Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera – but it is now clear that there is now far more […]
What happens if you are an innocent viewer based in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and trying to watch a football game carried by beIN Sports, or trying to catch a news report from Al Jazeera? The recent diplomatic row between Saudi Arabia and arch-rival Qatar is placing extreme strains on broadcasting […]
Last Thursday’s launch of two giant satellites by an Arianespace rocket was a success in more ways than one. The launch saw a flawless deployment of two important satellites, including Eutelsat 172B and the massive ViaSat-2 craft for broadband-by-satellite operator ViaSat of Carlsberg, California, and the heaviest-ever satellite (at 6,418 kgs) built by Boeing. The […]
International Launch Services (ILS), the commercial arm of Russia’s Proton rocket system, is to launch the much-delayed EchoStar XXI satellite next week on June 8th (at 06.45 Moscow time) from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Echostar XXI has been waiting for the best part of a year for launch, and was needed on station – […]
Investors and bond-holders in Intelsat have less than two days left, until midnight (New York-time) May 31st, to decide whether to accept the revised terms on offer from Japanese media conglomerate SoftBank in its proposed merger between Jersey-based OneWeb and Intelsat. The deadline was established back on May 17th, and was the fourth time that […]
The spaceport at French Guiana is extremely busy catching up on the ‘lost’ 40 days of the May strike throughout the region with preparation for an important dual payload of satellites due for launch next month. An Ariane 5, dubbed Flight VA238, is taking shape for a scheduled June 28th lift-off with a dual-satellite payload: […]
Technicians at Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France, have now sent into space 79 metal parts inside satellites for the likes of Telkom 3S and the recent launch of Koreasat-7. The parts have been made by the ‘additive manufacturing’ 3D-based printing technique. Additionally, Thales has made some 350 polymer tube supports used in satellites. They […]
The proposed merger between satellite giant Intelsat and Jersey-based OneWeb is “close to being scrapped” reports Bloomberg, with Intelsat’s bond-holders holding out for a higher price than that on offer from Japan’s SoftBank, which was looking to facilitate the scheme. Intelsat said May 11th that it had extended the deadline for bond-holders to accept the […]
John Malone-backed media conglomerate Liberty Global announced its Q1 revenues of $3.52 billion (€3.21bn), down 17.8 per cent (y-o-y). Its European-based Operating Income was also down 18 per cent (to $431 million). The results were blamed on a “soft start” to the year by CEO Mike Fries. “While most markets reported results consistent with our […]
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WBD warms to Paramount offer
Eutelsat seeks €1.5bn refinancing
Survey: Sports viewing shifts to multi-format future
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Kantar Media rebrands as Fifty5Blue
AudioUK appoints Baughen as CEO
Gracenote metadata to power Samsung content search
Report: Copper switch-off progresses unevenly across Europe
How to hedge streaming stocks with hard assets