Advanced Television

Broadcast

BBC Store confirms closure

The BBC has confirmed it will close its digital download service, BBC Store, after just 18 months. The service, which offered people the chance to buy and download digital copies of major BBC series or single episodes once they left iPlayer, failed to compete with streaming services offered by the likes of Netflix and Amazon. […]

May 25, 2017

BBC global audience rises to 372m

The BBC is reaching a record weekly audience of 372 million around the world, a rise of 7 per cent year on year, new audience figures reveal. These figures – the Global Audience Measure (GAM) – show how many individuals the BBC reached weekly with its news and entertainment content in the year 2016/17. The […]

May 25, 2017

SpaceX employee starts court action

Jason Blasdell is taking rocket company SpaceX to court alleging that management ignored safety test protocols and that test results were falsified. SpaceX strongly deny the allegations and are defending the action which started this week in a Los Angeles court. SpaceX says that the former employee’s role in the company was terminated for being […]

May 25, 2017By Chris Forrester

Netflix cancels Baz Luhrmann show

Netflix show The Get Down, a musical drama exploring the birth of hip-hop and directed by Baz Luhrmann, has been axed after just one season. The show had a production cost of $120 million – the largest ever for Netflix – but metrics from Variety suggest that it was only attracting around one-fifth of the audience […]

May 25, 2017By Nik Roseveare

Kazakhstan shakes up TV rules

Kazakhstan’s Information & Communications Minister, Dauren Abeyev says that the state’s public broadcasting channels – terrestrial and satellite – are not competitors to each other. BBC Monitoring has reported that the country has recently modernised the portfolio of channels. “We have modernised state media assets and launched a first Kazakh Yel Arna cinema channel, which […]

May 25, 2017By Chris Forrester

EU sets 30% content quota for European SVoD

The European Council has signed off the proposal for a revised directive on audiovisual media services (AVMS). At the heart is a 30 per cent content quota for European SVoD services. The Council says aim of the proposal is to respond to the unprecedented technological and market changes of digital shift and to boost the […]

May 24, 2017

Analysts: Amazon Channels not a threat to pay-TV

According to Jonathan Broughton, Senior Analyst at research firm IHS Markit, and Tim Westcott, Senior Principal Analyst, the launch by Amazon of Amazon Channels, an offering of subscription channels and apps available to Amazon Prime customers, in the UK and Germany, should not be seen as offering an alternative to the Sky packages available in […]

May 24, 2017By Colin Mann

Research: Pay-TV customer satisfaction fades

Customer satisfaction with subscription television is down 1.5 per cent to 64, tied with Internet Service providers for last place among 43 industries tracked by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). New ACSI results show that wireless service is the only telecom industry to improve. Internet service providers, fixed-line telephone and cell phones are unchanged, […]

May 24, 2017

Malta: Melita, Vodafone quad-play merger

In a move that creates a new, fully-integrated communications provider in Malta, Apax Partners Midmarket, Fortino Capital and Vodafone Group are to combine cable, broadband and pay-TV provider Melita and Vodafone Malta. The transaction combines Vodafone Malta, the country’s leading mobile operator with a 4G mobile network covering 99 per cent of the Maltese population, […]

May 24, 2017By Colin Mann

Spain: Pay-TV revenues up 24% in Q4

In the fourth quarter of 2016, the Spanish pay-TV industry saw revenues hit €506 million, up 24 per cent from Q4 2015. A report published by the CNMC reveals that Telefónica took the lion’s share with €420.66 million (against €343.75 million the same period last year) followed by Vodafone with €49.08 million (against €42.86 million […]

May 24, 2017From David Del Valle in Madrid