Netflix has announced that Chief Marketing Officer Kelly Bennett has decided to step down from the company after seven years in the role. Bennett joined Netflix in 2012 and has led the company’s marketing efforts as it grew from 26 million to more than 139 million paid members around the world today. Bennett will stay […]
London-based satellite operator Inmarsat is beginning to reap the rewards from air travellers and their wish to stay connected while in the air. As reported on March 7th, last year’s revenue increased by 5.3 per cent to $1.46 billion in 2018, however, profit after tax was down 32.3 per cent to $125 million. Earnings were […]
Brie Larson, star of Marvel’s latest cinematic blockbuster Captain Marvel, has taken a lead role in a new Apple original series. Apple has given a full season order for a CIA drama based on the life of a real intelligence officer. The forthcoming memoir Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA penned by Amaryllis Fox […]
As investors are advised every time, ‘shares can go down as well as up’. The past 48 hours have not been good for SES and Intelsat. Both satellite operators have been hurt badly by uncertainties that the proposed reallocation of C-band frequencies over the US might not go their way (but see separate story on […]
Investors who have given SES and Intelsat a hard time should have paid attention to comments made on Monday (March 4) by four of the FCC’s Commissioners. The Commissioners, two Democratic appointees, Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks, as well as two Republicans, Michael O’Rielly and Brendan Carr, made it clear that any ‘nationalisation’ by the […]
Inmarsat, the British satellite telecommunications company, has reported annual profits dropped sharply as a rise in satellite revenues were brought down by a jump in costs. For the 12 months to December 31st, pretax profit fell 28 per cent to $167.9 million and revenue increased by 5.3 per cent to $1.47 billion, with satellite services […]
Japanese transmission rules forbid public broadcaster NHK from simultaneous streaming of its programmes online. However, on March 5th, Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe approved a new law which will now allow NHK to stream its content. The rules were designed to protect Japan’s private TV networks and cable systems. The only exceptions were natural disasters […]
French Minister for the Economy and Finances, Bruno Le Maire, has presented his proposal to tax tech giants in the Council of Ministers. It would introduce a 3 per cent tax on digital services and will be retroactive to January 2019. The French tax will be applied to all tech companies whose worldwide revenues exceed […]
BritBox, the SVoD joint venture beteen the BBC and ITV, is unlikely to be profitable before 2024, unlikely to contribute to ITV’s bottom line until 2023, and could cannibalise ITV’s existing free-to-air business, according to Berenberg. The bank says: “the question of positioning the service in relation to the core, or traditional, linear free-to-air business…may […]
Unofficially SES is trying to calm investor expectations on the extremely important prospects for some C-band restructuring over the US. The logic is sensible given that a negative Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decision will probably not do its share price a lot of good. On March 5th, SES shares tumbled a worrying 9.16 per cent […]