Patricia Hodgson is stepping down from the BBC Trust to join Ofcom, months after missing out on the chairman and vice-chairman roles at the corporation’s governing body. The Department for Culture Media and Sport has named Hodgson as a non-executive director of Ofcom. Hodgson will join the board on July 1st for a three-and-a-half year […]
Motorola Mobility has confirmed that ESPN will use Motorola’s video distribution solution to transition all programming for ESPN and ESPN-2 networks to an MPEG-4 HD format, freeing up precious bandwidth to increase the number of HD services offered. Motorola’s solution also positions ESPN to offer both 1080p60 HD and 3D TV programming when service providers […]
Kabel Deutschland, Germany’s largest cable operator, reported full-year revenue at the low end of its forecast and announced a lower dividend than anticipated; the shares fell over 5 per cent in early trading. The company said that Chief Financial Officer Paul Thomason won’t renew his contract when it expires in March next year. The full-year […]
According to the FT the UK government wants commercial television companies to come up with tens of millions of pounds to support Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s local TV stations project. ITV was asked for a cash contribution running into tens of millions of pounds a year and Channel 4 had also been asked to give […]
Helped by positive market sentiment for its new Ka-band broadband-by-satellite craft, Eutelsat’s share price soared some 2.2 per cent on June 7th. Investment banker Goldman Sachs upgraded Eutelsat’s stock from ’neutral’ to ‘conviction buy’ in another positive move for the satellite operator. The move helped Eutelsat reach a 52-week high (on the Paris bourse) in […]
Virgin Media is celebrating an £81.5 million (€91.4m) VAT refund from HM Revenue & Customs. The refund covers an eight-year period between 2003 and 2011 on an undisclosed part of the Virgin business. It has also agreed to pay a lower-than-expected £23.6 million in VAT as a result of a separate settlement with HMRC, ending […]
The Walt Disney company is cutting 200 jobs from its film studio in response to the worldwide slowing of DVD sales, in a move that is likely to be followed by other studios across Hollywood. Paramount is also examining the cost structure of its home entertainment division. Philippe Dauman, chief executive of Viacom, which owns […]
Per Borgklint has been appointed Senior Vice President and head of Business Unit Multimedia at Ericsson effective immediately. Borgklint was previously CEO of the Swedish operator Net1. Established in 2007, Ericsson Business Unit Multimedia develops and delivers software-based solutions to support customer delivering high quality rich consumer services. With OSS/BSS, TV and enabling applications solutions, […]
Amidst growing political calls from senior UK government figures for all UK-employed interns to be paid a minimum wage it has emerged that the BBC has ‘employed’ more than 6,000 unpaid interns since 2007. The BBC terms them as “volunteers” and admits that they have zero rights, and that there is no available budget to […]
A UN expert has suggested that provisions of the UK’s Digital Economy Act and similar legislation in France that could see music and film pirates cut off from the Internet are disproportionate. The comments came in a report produced for the UN Human Rights Council on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom […]