SES secures multiple PBS renewals
February 22, 2021
By Chris Forrester
SES has confirmed the signing of multi-year capacity agreements totalling over €66 million in backlog with multiple public broadcasters in Europe throughout 2020, whch it says will “enable millions of satellite TV households across Europe to continue watching SD and HD content delivered with world-class reliability”.
The public broadcasters who have signed contracts directly with SES include ARD and ZDF in Germany, BBC in the UK, BVN in the Netherlands, as well as TV5Monde and France 24 from France via its partner Globecast.
“With almost the entire global population being impacted by some form of Covid-19 containment measures throughout 2020, public broadcasters have seen a surge in viewers across all age groups relying on linear television programmes to get the latest, official and well-researched news about the pandemic. The increase in linear content in 2020 also reinforces satellite as the most reliable way to broadcast to the widest possible audience and in the best quality desired by the viewer,” adds SES.
The latest agreements signed between public broadcasters and SES illustrate how European broadcasters are leveraging SES’s satellites at the prime orbital slots of 19.2 degrees East and 28.2 degrees East to reach more than 89 million satellite TV homes, surpassing other satellite or terrestrial operators.
“Delivering TV programmes with reliable information and quality entertainment is important, especially in times of crisis. We are very pleased to help ARD, ZDF, BBC, TV5Monde, France 24 and BVN — some of the biggest names in European broadcasting — reach as many people as possible with their public service offering,” said Steve Collar, CEO at SES. “Satellite is an invaluable distribution resource today and it will remain so in the future, providing broadcasters with the largest reach, unmatched reliability, bandwidth efficiency and the ability to deliver superior content quality to millions of TV households in Europe.”
Separately, SES has also announced that its Government Solutions division has been awarded a capacity ‘loopback’ access contract with “a key US government customer” covering Southwest Asia. “The awarded task order is against the single-award Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with the US Department of Defense (DoD) for Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) low-latency High Throughput Satellite (HTS) services.”