Advanced Television

Business

Virgin arrests churn, Sky back?

UK's Virgin Media added 4,900 net new customers for its services in the first quarter and said better customer retention and stabilising revenue per customer left it positioned for growth. “Our first-quarter results represent another solid operational performance. In particular, churn continued to decline, reflecting the emphasis that we have placed on this area,” commented […]

May 6, 2008

ITV fumes over Airey

ITV has reportedly threatened to take legal action against departing executive Dawn Airey, who quit her job as managing director of global content to rejoin Channel Five. However, with wider business interests at stake – such as the relationship between ITV and Five’s owner, RTL Group, and the key programmes the latter produces for the […]

May 5, 2008

Comcast profit, but getting tougher

Comcast has reported quarterly profits of $588 million excluding one-time gains, compared with $537 million last year. Last year, Comcast posted a $300 million gain from the dissolution of a cable partnership with Time Warner Cable. Revenue was up 14 per cent to $8.39 billion in the latest quarter. Revenue rose as people spent more […]

May 5, 2008

Nativ launches Mio

Nativ, the video distribution specialist, has launched Mio Workflow, what the company claims is the media industry's first fully managed service to enable broadcasters, brand owners and advertisers to distribute content across any platform. Mio Workflow provides the tools necessary to ingest, re-purpose, protect and distribute raw video assets across the entire range of distribution […]

May 2, 2008

NDS revenue up 20%

NDS announced operating results for the quarter ended March 31, with revenue for Q3 up 20 per cent to $213.3 million; whilst operating income rose 21 per cent to $43.3 million. The company also revealed it now has distributed 86.9 million active digital TV smart cards and has 83.1 million cumulative middleware clients deployed. Commenting […]

May 2, 2008

Airey quits ITV for Five

Britain’s biggest commercial broadcaster ITV has revealed the shock news that its managing director of global content, Dawn Airey, had resigned with immediate effect, less than a year after she joined the company. She will be taking an extended period of gardening leave prior to joining pan-European broadcaster RTL Group in a senior position, including […]

May 1, 2008

SARFT plans overseas promotion of CMMB

The China Academy of Broadcasting Science has held a meeting to promote overseas partnerships on the CMMB standard, with senior officials from SARFT’s Science and Technology Department, the Academy itself, the S2M Group and Loral Space and Communications. Deputy director of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) Zhang Haitao said he hopes […]

May 1, 2008

TW spins out cable, income slides

Announcing Q1 results Time Warner's CEO Jeff Bewkes finally confirmed the company's intention to spin off TE's 84 per cent stake in Time Warner Cable, the country's second-largest operator. But no details were immediately given on how the Time Warner Cable stock would be separated. “We've decided that a complete structural separation of Time Warner […]

May 1, 2008

BBC and ITV try to stop Tvguide.co.uk

The BBC and ITV have sought legal advice to determine whether the deep-linking that online TV listings site TVguide.co.uk does to their online video streaming is legal or not. TVguide.co.uk, which has some 1 million unique visitors a month doing some 8 million page impressions, offers its users direct access to unbranded content from the […]

March 31, 2008

Macquarie, MBK seal C&M deal

Australia’s Macquarie Group and private equity house MBK Partners have completed a $2 billion joint acquisition of South Korea’s number 2 cable TV operator C&M. The deal made the unlisted company the first Korean cable TV operator owned by private equity funds. The country’s adoption of digital and broadband TV services raise hopes for further […]

March 31, 2008