Satellite News

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A motion filed on March 12 to the Delaware Bankruptcy Court argues that Worldspace has submitted incorrect information to the Court, at least as far as its Washington HQ lease might be concerned. The claim comes from Worldspace’s landlord at 8515 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC.

Worldspace hasn’t paid the rent on its HQ offices since it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October. Worldspace owes the landlords $195,512 to the end of March. Worldspace has asked the Court to permit the delayed payment for another 90 days.

Worldspace told the Court that until it knew who the successful bidder was for Worldspace’s assets they could not determine whether the Headquarters lease will be assigned to a buyer. This is not true, say the landlord’s lawyers. We now know that the successful bidder was a Noah Samara-owned business, Yenura Pte Ltd, and the March 9 ‘sale’ of Worldspace’s assets specifically excluded the HQ lease. In other words “the lease is not being included as part of the sale,” argue the lawyers, cheekily adding that “[Worldspace] obviously does not to intend to reorganise and continue its business since it is selling all of its assets needed to operate…and thus has no need to retain the HQ lease.”

The Motion adds: “The lease is no longer an important asset of the estate since it is not being sold [to the new Worldspace owners]. Indeed, in light of the fact that [Worldspace] has sold all of its assets and must be ceasing business operations leads to the inevitable conclusion that the lease is not required for any plan of reorganisation.”

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Jeremy Darroch, BSkyB’s CEO (and former CFO) told the Financial Times that his pay-TV subscribers were trading down a little. Asked what 2009’s recession looked like in terms of its own business, Darroch said “It's difficult to predict exactly - 2009 is going to be a difficult year for the consumer environment.”

Darroch confirmed that “so far” pay-TV income had proved to be “pretty resilient” to the downturn and that through 2008 Sky had grown at a slightly faster rate than 2007. But he was cautious on what might be happening to subscribers and Sky’s top tier bundles.

Asked whether subscribers were “trading down”, Darroch admitted this was happening “a bit… Right across our business what we are seeing are more marginal pressures and we are certainly seeing more customers come in at a basic level and a bit more pressure in terms of downgrades. Conversely, though, we're also seeing customers taking more services from us. One of the things we are seeing is that TV remains central to people's lives. They are consuming more TV than ever before.”

He told the FT – and perhaps referring obliqely to the current dilemma at Tiscali - that Sky had no need to buy another Internet company. “We've worked hard over the past few years to assemble the distribution assets we think are going to be competitive for the long term, and that is why we acquired our own broadband network three years ago. If there are opportunities we will be open-minded, but there is not really anything we feel we need to do,” he said.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Echostar’s DISH Network has added another cluster of “national” (as distinct from local-into-local) HD channels to its portfolio – and promises more for this Spring.

On March 12 Dish launched HD feeds of Showtime Showcase HD, SHO2 HD, The Movie Channel HD and BET J, expanding its national HD count to 128 channels. In addition, DISH Network also announced that it will add BET, Comedy Central, CMT, MTV, Nickelodeon, Spike TV and VH-1 in HD this spring.

"We are excited to add new national HD channels to our growing programming line-up," said Dave Shull, SVP of programming for DISH Network. "Our subscribers are asking us for more HD, and we're responding by continuing to launch new local HD markets and new national HD channels, making DISH Network the best value in the pay-TV industry."

Showtime Showcase HD, SHO2 HD and The Movie Channel HD are located in the Showtime Unlimited package, available for just $12.99 per month. BET J is part of PlatinumHD, which can be added to any programming package for $10 per month. Existing DISH Network subscribers who upgrade to HD programming will receive PlatinumHD free for the first three months.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Christian broadcaster Hope Channel has commenced transmissions in Germany. The 24-hour service is available free to air on Astra (19.2° East) in APS’ digital package on the frequency 12.149 GHz H (SR 27,500, FEC 3/4). A live-stream on the website at www.hopechannel.de is also offered.

The programmes, oriented around Christian values, cover areas such as health, family, education, advice and spirituality. The TV station, which was granted a broadcasting licence in January by media authority LPR, is backed by the church of the Seventh Day Adventist. Programmes are produced by German association “Stimme der Hoffnung“ (Voice of Hope), which already operates the radio station Hope Channel Radio, also available via Astra.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Sarajevo-based Bosnia Herzegovina TV-1 (BHTV1) switched off its transmissions on Friday night, admitting that it could not meet Eutelsat’s satellite transmission bill of almost €1 million.

BBC Monitoring carried a report saying BHTV1 said it owed €924,000 to Eutelsat, and that transmissions were being curtailed. “Because of the announced switch-off B-H's diaspora will not be able to receive B-H TV One and B-H Radio One. Also, B-H Radio-TV programmes will not be able to reach significant part of B-H's territory, because 38 land transmitters that receive the signal via satellite will be out of operation as of midnight tonight. This practically means that around 270,000 citizens in B-H will be left without B-H TV One reception and 82,000 without B-H Radio One,” said the station.

“As of tomorrow, Bosnia Herzegovina will be the only country in Europe that does not provide its public broadcaster with satellite transmission.”

“The B-H Council of Ministers announced that, at a session on 19 March, it would analyse ways of settling B-H Radio-TV's debt. B-H TV One and B-H Radio One programmes will continue to be available via www.bhrt.ba website,” said the station.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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According to a report from Screen Digest the Blu-ray market is suffering from a shortage of replication factories. European consumers bought a total of 37.8m Blu-ray (BD) discs last year. This includes both straightforward video titles and games (for PS3 players). However, when you include the number of movies (and extra video content) that needed an extra disc the number of actual discs is significantly more.

Screen Digest reckons that this year a total of some 85.7m actual discs will be needed, helped along by rising BD hardware sales. By 2010 demand will top 150m total discs, touching 250m by 2011 and topping 300m during 2012.

There is also a material shift taking place in what consumers are buying. Last year, says the report, games accounted for 72% of consumer transactions. The volume of games discs will increase this year some 35%, but the percentage of games vs videos sold will fall to 43%.

There’s another shift happening. Traditionally most games are created on single layer 25GB discs. Screen Digest says its research shows that most videos are being released on the larger BD50 discs.

And there’s not enough factory replication about to handle this year’s anticipated volumes. In Europe alone the pattern during 2008 was such “that the BD replication lines operational by the first quarter of 2009 could, if running all year at maximum capacity, have been sufficient to meet these manufacturing requirements with no additional investment.”

But this is not the whole story. BD demand is highly seasonal which means that some 30% of pressing lines are largely redundant through much of the year. Last year 25% of European BD sales occurred during the first half of the year, with 60% happening in the pre-Christmas quarter. This pattern will happen again in 2009, suggests the study.

Therefore, despite Europe’s current 59 production lines for BD, Screen Digest says another “minimum” 18 further production lines will be needed to be made operational in readiness for this second half/2009, in order to handle the Q4 seasonal demand.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Two major investors in Irish-based pay-TV sports broadcaster Setanta have written off the value of their investment stakes in the broadcaster. Doughty Hanson, which owns about 20% of Setanta and investment bankers Goldman Sachs (5% stake) have reportedly written down their stakes to zero valuations.

Setanta is said to be reviewing its business strategy following the English (soccer) Premiership awarding 5 out of a possible 6 bundles of TV soccer rights to BSkyB, leaving Setanta with just 50% of the already meagre cluster of matches it currently transmits. The new rights package kicks in with the 2010-11 season.

London newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported that Setanta is reviewing its assets and options, which include possibly reducing its existing coverage of boxing and rugby.

While the two investors might only be making prudent accounting provision for their Setanta valuations, it does not mean that Setanta has zero value. However, raising more cash to acquire other rights might now be even more difficult with positive sentiment ebbing away.

© Rapid TV News 2009

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Multiteritoriální Pay-TV Digi TV platform to make substantial changes in the Nagravision conditional access system, which means that pirated excluded income, including the so-called AutoUpdate.

Digi TV is recently the most popular platform on the black market due to the use of the old system Nagravision 2 but also mainly because of the rich menu of attractive film and sports TV channels. This platform is one of the few services that have long nevypořádala black income. Other European platform has moved to a higher version of the coding system, possibly using a different coding system.

Pay-TV service is distributed via satellite, Intelsat 10-02 (1 ° W) and Thor 5 (0.8 ° W) and operates in six countries, including the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Is gaining viewers thanks to its rich menu of programs for a low price.

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The Portuguese IPTV operator Meo has launched nine channels aimed at the main expatriate communities living the country.

The channels offered free of charge in the basic package are Inter + (Ukraine), Channel 1 and Russia Today (Russia), Pro TV (Romania), BNT (Bulgaria) and Phoenix CNE (China).

Three more channels will also be aired unencrypted until June 30, after which they will be only available for a premium fee.

The channels in question - SET Asia, SET Max and SAB TV - are aimed at the Indian community.

Meo added 72.000 new IPTV and DTH subscribers during the first quarter, bringing the total to 384.000.

Pay-TV clients represented 14.5% of the traffic generating lines and 51.1% of ADSL clients.

Around 50% of Meo IPTV clients used the VOD service, consuming on average 2.8 movies per month.

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The international children’s channel KidsCo will make its debut on the Greek IPTV service conn-x TV on June 1.

KidsCo is owned by NBC Universal, Cookie Jar Group and Corus Entertainment Inc and already present in a number of key European territories including France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Russia and Poland.

Conn-x TV is meanwhile operated by the incumbent Greek telco OTE.

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Spain's government will allocate a maximum of €165 million more for public broadcaster RTVE's 2009 budget, so compensating the corporation for the loss of advertisements.

New laws covering the public broadcaster, to be approved soon, anticipate RTVE won't have any more than €1,200 million in incomes and expenses during 2010-2011 although this amount could increase during the following three years. Growth is unlikely to be over 1% a year. From 2014 on, the amount will be even with inflation.

Apart from the State's allocations for RTVE, the government also anticipates a new income model based on a tax for the use of radioelectric services (80%), another on the private TV channels (3%) and one on the revenue of telcos (0.9%). This point has been very controversial because the country's telcos claim they don't have anything to do with the television market.

Included in the measures are a proposal to allow RTVE to commercialize its radio and TV content on the internet by means of a payment for basic packages. The government will also allow the Corporation to offer contents under conditional access in the case of value-added services.

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tmc Content Group, a Swiss media service provider specialising in erotic content, will launch pay-TV channel Lust Pur in Germany on June 1.

The service, which will be distributed on Eutelsat’s direct-to-cable platform KabelKiosk, screens erotic films, series, reports, documentaries and short videos from German and international producers each evening from 8pm to 6am CET. The target group is 20 to 59 year old men, women and couples. In order to meet youth protection requirements, programmes will be accessible before 11pm only after entering a youth-protection PIN. From 11pm the PIN is no longer necessary.

The channel, which until now carried the working title Blue Movie Soft, was granted a broadcasting licence by Berlin-Brandenburg’s media authority MABB. tmc Content Group, in which erotic industry group Beate Uhse holds a stake, already operates erotic channel Beate-Uhse.TV and adult video-on-demand services Blue Movie, Blue Movie Extra, Blue Movie Gay and redXclub.

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The Bulgarian DTH platform Bulsatcom has taken another transponder on Greece’s Hellas Sat.
According to Parabola, it will be used to carry two of its existing channels (Film Plus HD and Eurosport HD), along with two new HD channels and some SD services.

Bulsatcom’s current HD offer also includes the channels Hobby TV HD and Music Plus HD. Its main programme packages are named ‘Economy’, ‘Standard’ and ‘Premium’, with the latter consisting of 16 channels, including TV 1000, AXN Sci-Fi and MTV Europe.

Bulsatcom is one of two DTH platforms in Bulgaria – the other being ITV Partner – and the most recent figures available indicated that the two had a combined subscriber total of around 90,000.

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MTV Networks will launch its high definition television channel MTV Networks HD (MTVN HD) in Germany on June 3.

The music and entertainment channel, comprised of programmes from MTV, VH1 and NICK (Nickelodeon in the UK), will be available on the IPTV platform T-Home Entertain on Deutsche Telekom’s VDSL broadband network. MTVN HD screens concerts and events such as MTV Unplugged, MTV World Stage and VH1 Storytellers, award shows such as the MTV Video Music Awards and the MTV Europe Music Awards as well as footage from international music festivals such as the Roskilde and Oxegen festivals.

To celebrate the channel’s launch live concerts by Scottish band Franz Ferdinand and Swedish rock group Mando Diao will be screened on June 7 and June 21 respectively. On weekends a NICK programme window is offered with cartoons, including SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar – The Last Airbender and Jimmy Neutron.

Telekom announced at the beginning of March that it would include MTVN HD as part of its IPTV offer from summer. The channel, which was launched in Europe on 15 September 2008, is already available in many countries including France, the UK and Scandinavia.

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South African pay-TV is in a mess. Even ICASA, the telecom and media authority, seemingly admits it has got things wrong, especially given that it is to re-advertise the planned pay-TV licence opportunities for the country.

Local reports state that, besides Multichoice, the other licences awarded by ICASA back in 2007 have gone badly wrong. None of the proposed – and newly licensed - services (to the ‘Walking on Water’ religious channel: On Digital Media, which has SES Astra as a junior partner; and Telkom Media) have yet to start transmissions.

Icasa chairman Paris Mashile said yesterday that the regulator would hold a second round of licensing to increase competition in the pay TV market. His announcement, at a breakfast briefing hosted by Neotel and the Mail & Guardian, came despite Icasa's recent statement that it would look at issuing satellite free-to-air licences as an alternative to pay TV, reported IOL Business Report.

David Moore, a media analyst at Africa Analysis, said: "I think Icasa is in a state of turmoil, and needs to pause and re-examine where its focus should be and how best to fulfill its mandate. "It needs to determine a single path to follow, and stick to it," he said. Its handling of Vodacom's listing was "a clear indicator that Icasa staff are not all reading from the same page. This situation just adds to that."

"It is not up to the regulator to decide competition issues. It is up to the market and the proper competition authorities… Icasa should award licenses to as many companies that want one and can reasonably prove that they can survive the market, and then let the market itself decide who sinks or swims. That is how it is done in the free market system."

IOL Business added that the industry has cautioned that the South African market would not accommodate more than two players, given that MultiChoice has already sewn up all content available and is targeting all segments of the market through its different bouquets. Media commentator Sei Mukoma said that if Icasa planned to issue new pay-TV licenses, it should do an intensive market study to ensure that the market could accommodate more operators. "The first round of licenses has not produced anything so far, as none of those licensed operators has launched services."

Mashile said that the new licensees, such as Walking on Water, had been given six months to commercially launch operations. If they failed to do so, the regulator would revoke their licenses. Telkom Media was recently sold to Shenzhen Media and there is still a veil of secrecy on its operational plans.