Obligations on smart TVs, firesticks and set-top boxes to ensure public service broadcasters (PSBs) are prominent on their platforms should be strengthened, according to the UK House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee. In its report on the draft Media Bill, the Committee also wants to see current obligations on PSBs to provide programming […]

Rupert Murdoch, 92, has announced is stepping down as chairman of the board of both Fox Corp and News Corp. He will be appointed chairman emeritus of each company. Lachlan Murdoch, 52, one of his sons, will become sole chairman of News Corp and will continue as Fox Corp’s executive chair and CEO. “Our companies […]

You could be forgiven for assuming that Keith Rupert Murdoch answers to no one but himself. And there’s plenty in that – though his companies have been public for years, they have, in effect, been fiefdoms following the iron will of their leader. And that will has led his companies to participate in several groundbreaking, […]

Anti-piracy coalition the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has shut down Uptobox and Uptostream, two of the digital piracy world’s most notorious illegal video hosts. The action, conducted in France and the United Arab Emirates, puts an end to a piracy operation that was well known for a decade among distributors of infringing content. […]

Studio Ghibli, the celebrated Japanese animation studio founded by Hayao Miyazaki, is to become a subsidiary of Nippon Television Network. The boards of both companies have agreed that the Japanese commercial broadcast network will become Studio Ghibli’s top shareholder, with a 42.3 per cent stake. Financial details were not disclosed. Nippon TV’s Senior Operating Officer […]

Eutelsat’s board of directors, just days away from the company’s merger with OneWeb (on September 28th), has approved the repurchase of some of its shares. Eutelsat can spend up to €381,804 on 58,739 shares representing less than 5 per cent of Eutelsat’s share capital. The purchase takes advantage of the current ultra-low value of Eutelsat’s […]

Satellite manufacturer Maxar Technologies, headquartered Colorado, is to divide itself into two separate businesses. The two companies are Maxar Space Infrastructure and Maxar Intelligence. Maxar announced that there would also be a small number of job cuts although did not specify the numbers of staff affected. The division comes just four months after Maxar, then […]

Viewers of free-to-air terrestrial TV should not be “left behind” amid shifting viewing habits towards streaming services, the UK Culture Secretary will say in a major speech on the future of TV. Lucy Frazer will deliver a keynote speech at the Royal Television Society Cambridge Conference where she will outline her plan to maximise the […]

A group of novelists, including John Grisham and Jonathan Franzen, are joining the suit filed by the US Authors Guild against OpenAI over its chatbot technology. They accuse the company, backed Microsoft, of infringing on their copyrights by using their books to train its popular ChatGPT chatbot. They say that OpenAI’s chatbots can now produce […]

Once upon a time there were many would-be alternative cellular carriers expecting to tap into the world’s seemingly insatiable demand for bandwidth. Names such as WorldCom, Global Crossing and Teledesic each raised billions, and flew too close to the sun during the so-called Tech Boom, and each ended in bankruptcy. The problem is that the […]