The BBC has appointed Matt Grest to be the corporation’s new Director of Platform. Grest will join from Sky where he was most recently Sky’s director of digital platforms, with responsibility for web and mobile across Sports, News, Sky.com and Intranet. He has also led on the creation and expansion of Sky’s new Digital Hub […]
Pan-European broadcaster RTL Group has decided not to exercise the call option for the remaining 49 per cent shareholding in Multi Channel Network BroadbandTV and will explore, jointly with the minority shareholders of BroadbandTV, all strategic alternatives for the company. The parties plan to mandate telecoms and media-focused advisory firm Liontree to lead this process. […]
Openreach – the infrastructure arm of BT – has appointed Sir Brendan Barber and Edward Astle as independent members of a newly formed Board to oversee strategy, investment and service delivery at the UK’s leading digital infrastructure company. BT is currently under pressure from regulator Ofcom to divest the unit completely. Barber, former General Secretary […]
French pay-TV broadcaster AB Groupe has been bought by Mediawan. Mediawan is the media investment consortium set up by production producer Pierre-Antoine Capton, Iliad Telecom founder Xavier Niel and Lazard France head Matthieu Pigasse. Mediawan is paying €270 million for AB Groupe, which is owned by Claude Berda and French commercial network TF1 (33.5 per […]
Sky and Discovery are said to be close to agreeing a last-gasp deal to keep the likes of Eurosport and Animal Planet on Sky’s pay-TV platform and NOW TV OTT service – following their well-publicised spat. Both companies are said to have agreed to halt publicly confrontational messages, and there is renewed hope a deal […]
Swedish cable TV firm Com Hem has reported Q4 revenues of SEK 1,780 million (€188.4m), up 40 per cent. Operating profits were at SEK 228 million, up 20 per cent. Com Hem reported strong volume growth in broadband, up 13,000 to 702,000 RGUs.cDigital-TV RGU’s totalled 644,000, with a continued growth of 6,000 TiVo customers (penetration […]
Satellite operator Telesat of Canada has paid out about $400 million (€373.4m) by way of a special dividend to shareholders. Telesat has a complicated ownership structure split between Loral Space & Communications (62.7 per cent of equity but only 32.7 per cent of voting rights) and the Public Pension Investment Board of Canada (PSP Investments […]
Research from Snell Advanced Media (SAM) shows the majority of businesses across Europe (64 per cent) and North America (56 per cent) are looking to start IP production projects in the next 9 months; driven by wanting more flexibility and reduced costs through adopting open standards (47 per cent). However, 71 per cent of European […]
Struggling speciality satellite operator Avanti Communications is appointing three new directors. Peter Reed, Craig Chobor and Michael Leitner have joined board of Avanti as non-executive directors with effect from January 27th. Richard Vos, Michael Walker and Charmaine Eggberry have resigned as non-executive directors of the company with immediate effect. Avanti also says that CFO Nigel […]
Sky has hit back in its carriage dispute with Discovery, which threatens to see the removal of 12 of the programmer’s channels from its pay-TV and NOW TV services, accusing it of “misleading claims and aggressive actions”. In a Statement posted on its website, Sky says it has worked “really hard” for more than a […]