From David Del Valle in Madrid Prisa's takeover of Sogecable, owner of Digital Plus and Canal Plus, has lead to reports of four candidates in play to buy the DTH platform Digital Plus, which has two million subs. The likely buyers are seen as Telefonica, News Corp, Vivendi and the Mexican TV mogul Carlos Slim. […]
Vodafone has emerged as a surprise frontrunner to acquire Tiscali after submitting a £1.1 billion (E1.37bn) bid for the group. A possible deal would give Vodafone a fixed-line broadband presence in the UK, and allow it to merge Tiscali’s Italian operation with its Tele 2 business there. BSkyB, BT, Swisscom-owned Fastweb, and Italian mobiles group […]
Vilma Marciuleviciute has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Viasat Baltics, and will be responsible for the digital satellite TV platform in the region. She is returning to the Baltics after three years in Moscow as CEO of the free-TV channel DTV. Vilma has worked within Modern Times Group MTG AB for more than […]
The European Commission has taken the next step in proceedings against Spain for not complying with television advertising restrictions. The infringement procedure, started in July 2007, is based on a monitoring report that found that the main TV channels in Spain, both publicly funded and commercial, failed regularly and by some margin to restrict advertising […]
Pan European broadcaster RTL, owner of Channel Five, has admitted that the TV advertising market in the UK has been tough in the first quarter of 2008, as it reported an overall drop in underlying revenue of 2.9 per cent to E1.323billion. RTL said that its German broadcasting business had performed well, while the UK […]
Viacom's quarterly net profit rose 33 per cent, beating Wall Street forecasts, on strong sales of the 'Rock Band' video game and higher advertising revenue at MTV Networks. The company said it has seen no slowdown yet in US advertising, temporarily addressing concerns that the credit crisis will lead to an advertising recession. First-quarter profit […]
The DVB Project has reported that the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL), a body of the Organisation of American States (OAS), has decided to include the standards for digital terrestrial television DVB-T (fixed reception) and DVB-H (mobile TV) as official standards within the CITEL implementation guidelines. The CITEL Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting Implementation Guide‚ is intended to […]
ROK Entertainment has acquired 100 per cent of the issued and to be issued share capital of Jalipo for total consideration of 600,000 ordinary shares. Jalipo Media Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jalipo Ltd and the only operating function therein, is a UK Registered IPTV company which offers live streaming of TV content over […]
Cablevision is close to an agreement to buy the Sundance Channel, jointly owned by NBC Universal, CBS, and actor Robert Redford, in a cash and stock deal valued at close to $500 million. A purchase of Sundance will strengthen Cablevision’s position in the independent-film programming arena as the cable operator already owns another film channel, […]
Pressure from low priced DTH and IPTV services in its Central European markets dragged on Liberty's UPC cable net results for Q1 with the loss of 57,000 video subscribers. Nonetheless other measures were strong with total RGU bas up 7 per cent or 1.6m since March last year, 348,000 RGUs were added in the quarter, […]