Premiere has won the pay-TV rights to Bundesliga football in Germany, Austria and Switzerland through to the end of the 2012 season. The exclusive deal covers live and highlights rights for cable, satellite and the internet at a cost of E225 million for in 2009/10 rising to E275 million in 2012/13. Premiere CEO Mark Williams […]
Disney is fighting a piracy war over its recent film Wall-E against a company that its venture capital arm invested in. The infringing company, 56.com, a Chinese video sharing site that’s similar to YouTube, hosted several full-length bootlegs of Wall-E that were freely available on the company’s site. The bootlegs were added by users of […]
Hollywood studio Warner Brothers will end its home video and DVD business in South Korea at the end of the year due to rampant piracy. The US producer of film and television entertainment will instead focus on its digital distribution ‘pre-DVD’ business. It is the last remaining Hollywood company to withdraw its home entertainment business […]
Representatives from UEFA and four pay broadcasters have stood side by side in the English High Court to push for the chance to have their say in the European test case on foreign satellite football. The Football Association, Setanta, BSkyB, Canal + and the Motion Picture Association have applied for a late intervention into the […]
YouTube will show full-length television shows and films from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s archives in its latest step to boost advertising revenue by adding professional programing. The new partnerships put YouTube in more direct competition with Hulu, the online video site owned by News Corp and NBC Universal. YouTube in October forged a similar partnership with CBS to […]
Latens has confrmed the 4.0 release of Latens ECOsystem IPTV middleware. ECO 4.0 has enhanced user features and a widened scope, offering many advantages for both operator and subscriber. ECO 4.0 is IPTV middleware secured with Latens software conditional access. Built on open standards, ECO is highly customisable, allowing telcos to adapt the platform to […]
Virgin Media is said to be considering selling off its content division – again. According to FT, the company is considering restructuring the business to become a set of communications platforms rather than producing any content of its own. As part of the Telewest / NTL merger that formed Virgin Media, Telewest tried to sell […]
Rupert Murdoch has sharply cut forecasts for News Corp, predicting lower ad revenue will see it suffer double-digit declines in operating income for this fiscal year, rather than the 4-6 per cent growth previously forecast. News Corp said it expects a low to mid-teens percentage drop in operating profit from the $5.13 billion it recorded […]
International cable operator Liberty Global has reported a 17 per cent increase in third-quarter sales. Operating cash flow, which the company considers its key operational measure, rose 27 per cent to $1.17 billion in the quarter, helped by factors including organic growth and foreign exchange movements. Revenue was $2.65 billion from $2.26 billion, and Net […]
MySpace US users can now upload MTV Networks videos without fear of having them taken down. News Corp's MySpace social network has signed a deal with Viacom's MTV Networks and online video technology company Auditude to allow the automatic identifying of online video clips uploaded by its hundreds of millions of users. Auditude's system will […]