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.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company has told a powerful Senate hearing in Washington DC on May 3rd that it intends having its super-constellation of orbiting satellites operating and supplying initial high-speed broadband within two years. SpaceX is planning a massive fleet of 4425 satellites to girdle the planet. SpaceX’s VP/government affairs, Patricia Cooper, told senators […]
India’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is demanding action over alleged malpractice by the country’s Department of Space (DoS) in how transponder satellite capacity was awarded to private direct-to-home broadcasters. The PAC state that decisions going back more than 10 years need to be fully investigated. The 22-member PAC is made up of Indian parliamentarians in […]
Global satellite operator Intelsat’s planned merger with Jersey-based OneWeb has suffered its first hiccup. Intelsat’s bondholders are not signing up to the proposed financial restructuring engineered by Japan’s media giant SoftBank and Intelsat has had to extend the acceptance period from its April 20th deadline to May 10th. To date, barely 1 per cent of […]
Elon Musk is already wealthy. Forbes, in its annual ‘rich list’, puts the co-founder of PayPal and the brains behind the Tesla electric car, the Solar City scheme, and ‘rocket-to-Mars’ SpaceX project as having a net worth of some $14.8 billion. This doesn’t wholly include SpaceX, which is currently privately held. However, the rumour mill […]
The near-5 million new Netflix subscribers reported this week (and taking its overall total to 100 million this coming weekend) is another indicator that ‘conventional’ advertising supported linear TV is under extreme pressures. Add in the drift of advertising from TV to online video, digital, social media and mobile, and there are plenty of elements in […]
Rocket company SpaceX, already happy that it can recover the all-important first (or main booster) stage of its Falcon 9 rockets, is working towards recovering 100 per cent of the rocket. This includes the protective fairings (which envelop the actual satellite on top to the rocket) and also the rocket’s second stage. Each portion of the […]
The Financial Times is reporting that there may be challenges ahead for the proposed takeover by 21st Century Fox of Sky’s European assets. The risks focus on the recent problems at 21stC’s Fox news division with a slew of problems, not least recent allegations of sexual impropriety at Fox News, which – says the newspaper […]
The precise cost of launching last week’s SES-10 satellite into orbit is rumoured to have been in the $30 million-$40 million range, or about half the $60 million-$70 million normal fee. SpaceX performed a flawless launch using a ‘pre-flown’ first stage, and in a later briefing, SpaceX founder Elon Musk also said that the satellite’s […]
New, much smarter UK set-top boxes from Sky (SkyQ) and TiVo increasingly tend to use the first EPG ‘landing page’ for promotions of programmes, sports events and movies. Older boxes (Sky+, cable STBs) were obliged to give “due prominence” to the UK’s 5 national networks (BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4 and Channel 5). In a major […]
There’s been a fair amount of negative comment these past months about satellite’s future role and prospects for investors. In particular, the threat from broadcasters transferring their loyalties from DTH transmission to OTT supply via broadband is frequently seen as a negative from some DTH operators. ‘Not so,’ implies a major 15-page report to investors […]
WBD warms to Paramount offer
Eutelsat seeks €1.5bn refinancing
Survey: Sports viewing shifts to multi-format future
Research: Consumers losing hundreds to illegal streaming fraud
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
Starlink wraps Gen-1 DTC