Music service Spotify has acquired MightyTV, a specialist in the use of machine learning for personalised TV recommendations. MightyTV founder and CEO Brian Adams will join Spotify as vice-president of technology, using his knowledge of programmatic advertising and personalised recommendations to help develop the platform’s ad products. “The content recommendation system MightyTV has built is […]
Reports in the French press suggest that the upcoming presidential elections will see the French State boost broadband infrastructure, and one way of funding the investment is by selling down its holdings in many French businesses. Equity investment analysts at Exane/BNP-Paribas says the agenda of the main reformist candidates Emmanuel Macron proposes to partly finance […]
French media group Vivendi has filed a civil petition demanding damages from Italian broadcaster Mediaset and Berlusconi family holding company Fininvest. Vivendi is arguing that it was the victim of a defamatory media campaign over its aborted agreement to take over pay-TV unit Mediaset Premium, legal sources told Italian media. The amount of the requested […]
Multinational telco Altice has entered into an agreement to acquire Teads, the online video advertising marketplace with an audience of more than 1.2 billion unique visitors including 720 million via mobile. Teads’ native video advertising solutions encompass a series of formats inserted deep into media content, like the inRead playing inside articles. Teads revenue grew […]
MTG has signed an agreement to sell its free-TV, pay-TV, digital and radio businesses in the Baltic region to Providence Equity Partners, a premier global asset management firm that is the owner of Bite, the Lithuanian and Latvian mobile operator. The transaction values 100 per cent of the business at an enterprise value of €115 […]
Karen Bradley, the UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, is to refer 21st Century Fox’s bid to acquire the 61 per cent of pay-TV operator Sky it does not already own to Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority. In a formal Intervention Notice, Bradley said that she had grounds for suspecting that, […]
More consolidation is taking place in the Spanish cable market. The Basque Country-based Euskaltel is reportedly close to acquiring the regional cable network Telecable, based in Asturias, north of Spain, in a deal valued at €750 million. Euskaltel is in advanced negotiations with the British group Zegona, owner of Telecable, to carry out the acquisition […]
The European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation the $85.4 billion (€78.5bn) acquisition of Time Warner by AT&T. Time Warner provides global media entertainment services, including the production and distribution of television and video programming, home entertainment, feature film and videogame. AT&T is active in global telecommunications and digital entertainment services, but in […]
21st Century Fox has described officials at the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as being “simplistic” in their analysis of the potential impact of Fox’s bid to take over the 61 per cent of Sky that it does not already own, suggesting the basis for some of their initial findings was “seriously flawed”. […]
Digital media tools and workflow solutions provider Telestream is to acquire video quality monitoring and analytics solutions specialist IneoQuest. The terms of the deal were not disclosed as both companies are privately held. Founded in 2001, IneoQuest is headquartered in Mansfield, Massachusetts, with sales operations in North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. With this […]