A new president appointed at Japan’s public broadcaster NHK. Masayuki Matsumoto succeeded Shigeo Fukuchi, whose three-year term has now ended. Matsumoto referred to the impending digital switch-over, scheduled for July, in his opening address, saying: “As an organisation supported by viewers receiving fee, we must always stand firmly by the principle of public broadcaster and […]
BBC Monitoring is reporting that the government of Azerbaijan is to ban satellite dishes in this country. “A lot of channels broadcast in Azerbaijan via satellite will be banned and after a switch to digital broadcasting satellite dishes will be dismantled by force,” Information and Technologies Minister Ali Abbasov said. Transition to digital broadcasting is […]
Kuwait Projects Co (KIPCO) says there will not be an IPO this year for its Middle East pay TV Orbit Showtime Network. Mr Faisal al-Ayyar, Kipco’s CEO and vice-chairman, was quoted in an interview with Kuwaiti daily newspaper al-Watan, saying KIPCO would present the issue to shareholders and seek their approval prior to considering an […]
BSkyB releases its latest set of results on January 27th and analysts are forecasting further growth of some 150,000 net new customers. Numis Securities’ Paul Richards expects the pay-TV broadcaster to have moved well beyond the 10m subscriber mark achieved last November, and with HDTV now performing strongly for the company Numis expects pre-tax profits […]
On January 19th, the UK government’s Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told the Oxford Media Convention that he would be formulating new regulations covering online programming. “I do want to look at what can be done to strengthen child protection on the internet and whether the structures we have in place are the best way to […]
Google is not alone in the search engine market, but according to a study from IHS Screen Digest but during 2010 Google further increased its lead over its rivals. Google releases its latest Q4 and 2010 tomorrow (Jan 20), but according to comments from iSupply they reckon full year search ad-revenue amounted to $25.4 […]
SES Astra has won the contract to carry Bulgaria’s Satellite BG pay TV platform, heading off stiff competition from a number of rival satellite operators. Satellite BG will transmit from Astra’s increasingly busy 23.5 degrees East position, and take three transponders effective today in readiness for the platform’s 70-channel debut on February 1. Central and […]
ViaSat-1, the giant consumer broadband satellite being built for the WildBlue Ka-Band system over North America, has been damaged at the Space Systems/Loral facility. The damage occurred as the satellite was being moved within Loral’s Palo Alto facility. It had been due to be launched this spring on an ILS/Proton rocket from Kazakhstan, and this […]
Galaxy 15, the errant Intelsat ‘zombie’ satellite that went dangerously AWOL last April, is firmly back on the fleet’s official manifest and is about to start earning revenues again, perhaps as soon as January 31st. Tobias Nassif, SVP, satellite operations and engineering at Intelsat, said January 13 ththat during all this time the satellite had […]
A new report from investment bankers Morgan Stanley says that TV advertising in Spain, which suffered badly during 2008-9, will again grow this year by about 10 per cent and achieve Europe’s strongest momentum. Elsewhere in Europe TV advertising will remain stagnant in France (around zero growth), an improving 2-5 per cent in the UK, […]