Richard Desmond, owner of the UK's Daily Express newspaper, has confirmed plans to sell a majority stake in his adult television business, assumed to be a prelude to an IPO of the newspaper business. The plans for a placing of shares in Portland Television, which is responsible for pay TV channels ranging from Red Hot-branded […]

BBC One controller Peter Fincham has resigned following the publication of a report into footage that distorted the actions of the Queen. A trailer for the documentary, A Year With The Queen, appeared to show her storming out of a photo session. Fincham told the press it showed her “walking out in a huff”. But […]

Ofcom has wasted no time getting out its consultation on Sky's pay-TV on Freeview plans. Ofcom said the Sky proposal would increase choice and availability of pay-TV services on the platform, but it could block other providers of pay-TV from operating on Freeview, which has limited capacity, while strengthening Sky's dominance of the pay-TV market […]

Google 'could do a better job' at preventing illegally copied video from appearing on its YouTube site, Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corp, told the FT. The comments come ahead of News Corp's launch this month of Hulu, a site for professionally produced video with NBC Universal. Chernin said there was […]

Echoing comments from News Corp and Viacom, the chief executive of NBC Universal said piracy of copyright movies, music and other goods is “getting worse, not better” and urged the Justice Department to step up enforcement. “We need … to move intellectual property enforcement up the agenda of the federal government,” Jeff Zucker said in […]

From Branislav Pekic in Rome In order to boost the transition to digital terrestrial, Italy's Communications Ministry passed a new decree linked to the 2008 Budget. It establishes that the last analogue TV set in Italy will be sold in June 2009, although manufacturers will have to stop supplying analogue TV sets to distributers by […]

BSkyB could take legal action if it is forced into a loss-making sale of its 17.9 per cent stake in ITV after the Competition Commission said the shareholding was anti-competitive. Although it will be up to the business and regulatory reform minister to decide on what remedy to prescribe when he receives the final report, […]

From David del Valle in Madrid The Spanish football TV war is intensifying with regional TV channel TV3 suing Sogecable for having prevented it from broadcasting free to air a recent match between the teams Real Madrid and Betis. TV3 is a shareholder of Audiovisual Sport, the company controlled by Sogecable that manages and operates […]

Sony Pictures Television International (SPTI) says Damian Newton has joined the company as vice president of digital initiatives. In his new role, Newton, who joins SPTI from Disney ABC International Television, is responsible for leading SPTI's digital strategy for Europe; building on existing product lines across video on demand (VOD), subscription VOD (sVOD) and electronic […]

The Digital TV Group, the industry association for digital television in the UK, has appointed Keith Wilkinson as Commercial Director and Chief Operating Officer. Keith joins the Group from the BBC where he held the position of Project Director.