Satellite News

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SES Astra is threatening to exit the Spanish market because it claims the government is favouring Hispasat in the DTT signal distribution. Astra claims Hispasat is taking advantage of its privileged relationship with Spain's government to develop its terrestrial business.


Spain's main audiovisual signal distributor telco Abertis Telecom is Hispasat's main shareholder.

Astra also claims this situation goes against more efficient services in the last parts of the DTT coverage such as satellite. At the same time the satellite operator criticises the government for preventing other competitors in the DTT satellite distribution market such as the case of DTT over satellite to cover those areas without terrestrial coverage.

Finally, Astra critizices the financial support for terrestrial technology by the different regional governments by saying this goes against the principle of technological neutrality.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Mexico’s main broadcaster Televisa saw its profit grow 2% in 2008 in spite of the general advertising downturn in the media world, to 7,803 million pesos (more than €400 million).


The positive figures continued in Q4 last year when the company saw its revenues rise 18.8% compared with the same period in 2007.

Among the company's divisions responsible for these positive results were Televisa's cable business, its telecommunications business, its free-to-air television and finally its satellite TV division.

Televisa's debt amounted to some €2,000 million last year.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Police in the town of Natanz in Esfahan Province, Iraq, have confiscated satellite dishes and equipment.


BBC Monitoring, in a report sourced from Iranian TV, said some 200 dishes and reception equipment were seized by police from Barzud Base in the town of Natanz. The BBC reports that video shown on state-run TV showed “hundreds of dishes” scattered on a pavement.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Bravia TV sets to take e-cash payments


RFID readers embedded in remote control handsets



The new Bravias can suck e-money off a mobile phone


Using a TV for surfing the web has always been pretty much a bust, but the imminent rise of downloads direct to TV sets looks a sure bet for online media success in the living room.

The only problem might be how to pay for movies rented through that channel. Typing credit card numbers in through a remote just isn't going to appeal to folk, while subscription packages won't suit everyone.

RFID the key

Over in Japan, Sony already has a possible answer in the shape of a range of new Bravia TV sets with remote controllers that can process e-cash payments.

The KDL-series Bravias will go on sale in Japan in April complete with RFID FeliCa chip readers embedded in the remotes. Thanks to the popularity of RFID cash in Japan – whether in phones or in standalone cards – the Bravia models could prove tempting.

Next steps

So far, Sony has managed to get two e-cash providers onboard, but the rest are sure to follow.

Once that happens, selling and paying for just about anything through the TV will become as natural as flipping channels.

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RTR-Planeta expected to resume broadcasting in Tajikistan soon


The administration of the All-Russia State Television and Radio Company (VGTRK), which owns the RTR-Planeta Channel, has agreed to a 50 percent increase in the fee paid to Tajikistan’s open joint-stock company Teleradiocom for technical services, the Teleradiocom director general Suhrob Aliyev said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
According to him, they have received a letter from the VGTRK administration, in which they say that thy have considered Teleradiocom’s request for increasing the technical service fees by 50 percent and are ready to sign a broadcasting contract for 2009. “Today, we are sending a letter to them, asking to send the signed contract as soon as possible in order to resume broadcasting,” Aliyev said.
Teleradiocom terminated RTR-Planeta broadcasting in the country on 2 March because of lack of a broadcasting contract for this year. RTR-Planeta is an international 24-hour general channel in Russian available throughout the world via cable and satellite.

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Swedish media company Modern Times Group will merge its broadcasting assets in Bulgaria into a single entity. In a press release, the company said it has reached agreement with Apace Media Plc to merge part-owned Balkan Media Group Limited into Modern Times Group subsidiary Nova Televizia. The Swedish company has owned 50% of Balkan Media, with Apace holding the remainder, since March 2007 and completed the 100% acquisition of Nova Televizia in October 2008.

“This change will substantially simplify the ownership structure of our operations in Bulgaria and is in line with our overall media house strategy,” Modern Times chief executive Hans-Holger Albrecht said.

Following the non-cash transaction, Modern Times will own 95% of the enlarged Nova Televizia group and will continue to fully consolidate the results of the combined operations, the company said, while Apace will own 5% of the merged entity.
The assets being transferred from Balkan Media include Diema, Diema Family, Diema 2 and MM channels in Bulgaria, as well as Albanian language channel ERA TV in Macedonia. Nova Televizia operates the Nova TV channel, which is Bulgaria’s second most watched television station.

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Text of press release by Paris-based satellite network provider
GlobeCast has announced that its African DTH [direct-to-home] platform has successfully started transmissions on SES Astra’s Astra 4A (Sirius 4) satellite. African broadcaster VoxAfrica is one of the first channels to sign up for the new platform which provides sub-Saharan Africa’s widest and most powerful coverage.



VoxAfrica called on GlobeCast to provide capacity and distribution its programming to Africa. The new platform on Astra 4A, located at 5 East is the first Ku-band DTH platform with coverage over sub-Saharan Africa, providing broadcasters with the opportunity to reach households across the continent.
GlobeCast has contracted one transponder on the satellite that facilitates uplink from Europe and is compliant to distribute services to IPTV or terrestrial network head-ends.

The new platform, which is an alternative to the pay TV bouquets in sub-Saharan Africa, responds to a strong demand for free-to-air Ku-band coverage of this crucial region. Several African broadcasters are already in contact with GlobeCast to secure positions in this coveted space and extend their audience to 56 African countries.

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The Malaysian government has said it may be able to subsidise the bulk of the cost of switching to digital broadcasting, the New Straits Times reports.
Information Ministry Secretary-General Kamaruddin Siaraf said yesterday that viewers in Malaysia would not face the burden of paying more for digital transmissions if the government assumed responsibility for the system. “If the ministry is allowed to take the lead, we may subsidise the bulk of it, which would be the cost of replacing the transmitters.”


He was commenting on a statement by Abdul Rahman Ahmad, CEO of Malaysia’s biggest media company, Media Prima Berhad, that the industry cost of converting from analogue to digital could exceed US$270 million. Although Media Prima welcomed the proposal to switch to digital broadcasting, it expressed concern about the extra cost to the people and the industry.
Consumers are required only to purchase a set-up box to be fitted to television sets to receive digital signals once the digital system is in place in 2012. “We estimate that the set-up box will cost between RM300 (US$80) and RM500 (US$135) and that it would be a one-off purchase with no monthly charges,” Mr Kamaruddin said.

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UPC Broadband has announced a major reorganisation and streamlining of its operations in Central and Eastern Europe.
It will see the regional management group overseeing six operating businesses in Hungary, Romania, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic closed down on March 31.
From then, the businesses in question will report directly to Gene Musselman, president and CEO of UPC Broadband.
Musselman has also been appointed the interim MD of UPC Hungary.

http://www.broadbandtvnews.com

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UPC goes for Fashion



By Chris Dziadul | March 9, 2009

Fashion TV has been added to the digital cable offers of UPC in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

It is being made available in the basic packages in both countries.

Fashion TV made its debut in the Czech Republic and Slovakia last week, initially to a combined total of just over 1 million homes.

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Next generation of Freeview unveiled



Monday, March 9 2009,



Specifications for the next generation of Freeview have been published by the Digital TV Group, the UK's industry association for digital TV.

The new book of specifications takes into account plans to launch HD services as part of a development plan that uses the new DVB-T2 transmission standard and MPEG-4 compression to increase the digital terrestrial platform's capacity. It specifies HD standards for subtitles and interactive services, adds an automatic rescan function so that consumers do not have to manually retune boxes to receive new services, and also introduces a broadband return path to enable two-way interactivity.

"The launch of HD services on Freeview is a landmark in UK broadcasting and I am intensely proud of the role the DTG and its membership are playing," said Richard Lindsay-Davies, director general of the DTG. "The DTG was established by the industry over a decade ago to protect consumers and safeguard the reputations of distribution platforms and receiver manufacturers.

“This has been achieved by defining the detailed interoperability specification for UK DTT, and by the development and implementation of test specifications and test regimes to measure product conformance against brand requirements. I am delighted that the expertise we have gained creating the robust open standards that have helped Freeview reach 65% of UK homes can now be applied to DVB-T2 services, which will offer four channels of free-to-air HD programming and firmly establishing the UK as a world leader in DTT services. "

Lindsay-Davies added that the new specification would "ensure that Freeview HD receivers will meet levels of compliance achieved previously only on vertical or lower volume proprietary tandard platforms".

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Sky proposes to develop C4 pay channels


Monday, March 9 2009,


Sky has issued a stinging rebuke to Channel 4's claims that its funding model is fundamentally broken and said it is disappointed that the Government has not considered the multichannel sector's contributions to public service broadcasting.

In a submission responding to communications minister Lord Carter's suggestion that a second public service broadcaster be formed around the core of Channel 4, Sky said that the channel's model is not broken because despite the advertising downturn, "Channel 4 has a strong balance sheet and has accumulated sufficient financial reserves to see it through the current recession".

Sky criticised Channel 4's decision to invest in "unprofitable non-core commercial activities", of which it said "most... have been poor any any reasonable standard, and would not have been allowed to proceed in an organisation with a more disciplined financial ethos". It said Channel 4 had accumulated losses of £270m over the last ten years from these investments, which include the now-axed plans to launch digital radio services.

It called on Channel 4 to come up with its own proposals for "self-help" and suggested that it spend some of its cash reserves, eliminate loss-making commercial ventures and rebalance its programme spend away from US imports and redirect the funds to UK production.

Sky also said that Channel 4 needed to diversify its revenue source out of a complete reliance on advertising.

"Channel 4's decision to exit from subscription channels in 2004, when it declined to renew carriage agreements with Sky and other pay TV retailers for its E4 and FilmFour channels, was a strategic mistake that has left it more exposed in the current downturn," it asserted. "Based on our experience of supporting third party channel partners, we would be prepared to work with Channel 4 to create a profitable suite of pay channels that will complement and provide financial support to its core free-to-air public service network."

Sky said that the government should take into account its £1bn investment in UK programme production across its channels and the £300m it pumps into joint-venture channels with A&E, Discovery, Nickelodeon and Disney.

"Given this track record, we are surprised that there has been very little consideration of the potential opportunities that pay television affords by Ofcom and Government in the wider policy debate about the future funding of public service content," Sky said

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Ad joy for TVP, Viva Polska

By Chris Dziadul | March 9, 2009 | 07:27 UK

February was an extraordinarily good month for ad income for the Polish public broadcaster TVP and the thematic channel Viva Polska.

Data produced by TNS OBOP for Wirtualne Media shows that TVP’s first channel secured revenues of PLN119,370,152 (€25,41,421) and its second PLN79,146,961, or 16.9% and 23.8% more than in the same month in 2008.

Viva Polska, on the other hand, posted PLN26,383,855, a year-on-year increase of 143.1%.

The biggest falls in ad revenues among the main broadcasters were at TV Puls (-21.8%) and Polsat (-12.3%), and 4fun TV (-39.4%) and TVN24 (-16.1%) among the thematic channels.

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France uncovers “large number” of illegal retransmissions

By Robert Briel | March 9, 2009 | 08:19 UK

In France, the media authority CSA has uncovered a “large number” of illegal retransmissions during the analogue switch-over process. In many cases, these unlicenced transmitters are used as gap-fillers to improve reception of the terrestrial analogue broadcasts. In many cases, the transmitters were set up by local municipalities

According to local press reports, these transmitters will have to fit into the national frequency plan or must cease transmissions. The CSA said the national digital coverage plan calls for 95% reach of the “historical” terrestrial channels at a national level; or 91% at a departemental level. But the authority also said that for the “new” FTA channels, potential reach will be less. People wanting to receive these channels will have to switch to satellite reception, where services such as TNTSat offer all the FTA terrestrial channels.

The CSA also found illegal retransmissions of four Catalan channels from neighbouring Spain in the Catalan part of the country, around the city of Perpignan. Until recently, these retransmissions were tolerated, but the analogue transmitters have been switched off on February 19th. Meanwhile, the Catalan government has requested official permission to include these rebroadcasts in the digital terrestrial frequency plan.

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Pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB has heavily criticised Channel 4 for “wasting” £270m on a slew of failed businesses. BSkyB made the allegations in a letter to the UK government’s Communications Minister, Lord Stephen Carter. Channel 4 has widely let it be known that the advertising downturn means it is facing a funding gap of some £150m in the next few years.


The cash crisis is so severe that Channel 4’s bosses have volunteered drastic cuts in their own (perhaps generous) salaries and bonuses. Kevin Lygo, C4 director of television and content, has cut 25% from his basic £750,000 salary and said he will not take a bonus this year. Last year his total remuneration package was more than £1m. C4 has cut staff by 15% already, and has trimmed its £620m programming budget by £40m.

BSkyB’s letter forms part of its submission to Lord Carter’s UK Digital Report. The full report is due in early summer. Sky says that C4 is in a much stronger financial position than many of its commercial broadcasting rivals, and has cash reserves of £425m, and argues that C4 should quit many of its unprofitable ventures, and instead create new sources of revenues. Those could include a portfolio of paid for channels which Sky would offer to viewers.

© Rapid TV News 2009