Satellite news 04.08.08

Satellite news

Satellite news 04.08.08

News

TV3 buys Ireland's Channel 6

TV3 is to purchase Channel 6 from its founders and a consortium of investors for an undisclosed sum. The deal, expected to complete in Q3 this year, will first need approval from the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. Focussed on 15-34 year olds Channel 6 is the only non-subscription domestic digital channel in the Republic of Ireland. It already has distribution in 80% of multichannel homes over NTL-Chorus and Sky. Launched in 2006 its programming slate includes a strong library of recent imports from the US including Heroes, My Name is Earl, Family Guy, CSI, The Sopranos, Sex and the City and Friends and some locally produced content.

CanalSat joins Zattoo online service

CanalSat says it has joined the online video service Zattoo to offer 11 channels at no cost to subscribers. Viewers in France who subscribe to CanalSat will be able to see 11 channels for which the online rights have been cleared. The initial line-up will consist of Canal+ (only the free-to-air windows), RTL9, AB1, NT1, Infosport, Euronews, iTele, Jetix, MTV, MTV base, MTV pulse and MTV idol. Zattoo is available on Windows XP/2000/Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.

Sky One opens branded iTunes store

Sky One has become the latest UK TV brand to take space in Apple's iTunes store. To date the three available titles are drawn from Sky's list of US imports rather than any of its own original productions and all the selections can be found elsewhere in the iTunes Store. Bones and 24 can be found in the recently introduced Fox Television Classics, while Lost was an early addition for ABC Studios. However, Sky's presence on the store is key to the broadcaster being associated with first run content, and underlines the threat iTunes has to the Kangaroo project. While the Competition Commission discusses its impact on the market, iTunes has areas from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon amongst others. DC Comics has also recently added its content to the iTunes store.

BBC Trust opens 3G mobile trial

The BBC Trust has launched a consultation into the syndication of BBC television and radio channels over commercial 3G mobile networks. The BBC Executive believes the distribution technology will help build audiences that are presently underserved by the public broadcaster. It points to the use of existing BBC mobile services that are more likely to be aged 16 to 34 and be members of the C2DE social classes than users of the bbc.co.uk website. Last April the BBC concluded a 12-month trial of its content over the mobile networks of Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile and 3. All the main national TV and radio networks were carried. The issue for a public service broadcaster is that while its content was available free, the consumer was still required to pay between £3 and £10 a month to access the service through their mobile provider. However, the BBC says there is confusion among consumers because its broadcast competitors are present on mobile platforms and it is not understood why the BBC is not there as well. Where there is no other choice the BBC will place its content on the lowest tier possible.

German Mobile 3.0 service to close down

Just a few months after its start, the German mobile TV operator Mobile 3.0 is said to be closing down, according to a report in the online edition of Handelsblatt. The main reason is the refusal of mobile operators to sell handsets equipped for DVB-H reception. Earlier this year, Mobile 3.0 was issued with a nationwide licence to start offering a DVB-H pay service (see Broadband TV News passim). The company is owned by a consortium including the Burda and Holtzbrinck publishing firms and Naspers of South Africa. At the moment, Mobile 3.0 broadcasts in four cities with linear TV channels and radio stations, but has trouble finding customers. According to the report, published in a title owned by one of the Mobile 3.0 consortium members, the company plans to shut down operations soon. Earlier this year, Vodafone brought two mobile phones of the market with a built-in DVB-T tuner, reception of which does not require a subscription as with the Mobile 3.0 DVB-H service.

80% taking BT Vision subscriptions

BT Vision has given the first indication of the number of people taking out additional packages when subscribing to the IPTV service. In the quarter to June 30, 2008 over 80% of new subscribers signed up to one or more package, referred to by BT as the “subscription attachment rate”. No comparative figures have been released. A spokesman for BT told Broadband TV News that although people could sign up to BT Vision without subscription, and purchase content individually, customers were increasingly being encouraged to take a subscription package. The total number of BT Vision customers now stands at 282,000, an increase of 68,000 on the quarter.

New Premiere slogan Anything but Ordinary

German pay-TV platform Premiere has unveiled a new brand strategy that is designed to focus on the “Premiere Experience”. Accompanied by the tagline “Anything but Ordinary” the August 1 launch will coincide with a new marketing campaign that will also focus on Premiere's new football triple; coverage of the Bundesliga, the UEFA Champions League and the DFB Cup. A distinctive visual element has been developed in the form of a pulse that will appear with different colour variations representing harmony, action, curiosity, excitement and fantasy. The concept has been created in partnership with the Berlin-based agency MetaDesign.

Kabel Deutschland records record results

German cable viewers are finally embracing premium products, as evidenced by record annual results reported by Kabel Deutschland, but the cablenet is having trouble holding onto basic customers. In its annual results for the financial year ending March 31, 2007, the operator has pushed up blended ARPU (Average Revenue Per Unit) to €10.03 compared to €8.63 in the same period in 2007. Twenty three per cent of the subscriber base is now receiving a ‘premium product' of digital TV, internet or telephony. 393,500 subscribers now have broadband internet and 361,000 cable telephony. Digital TV is now in 1.7 million homes and 778,500 are taking a digital TV pay package. However, while premium subscribers have risen basic cable access numbers have successively fallen from 9,465,000 in December 2006 to 9,000,2000 in December 2007 and 8,979,800 in March 2008 as the company faces erosion from DTT in particular.

Sky growth in tough consumer market

Sky Digital drew ever closer to nine million subscribers at the end of June as the pay-TV operator admitted the challenging nature of the current consumer market. Chief executive Jeremy Darroch said despite the credit crunch customers were choosing a broader range of products and staying with the company for longer. “While there is much uncertainty around the consumer environment, there remains good headroom for profitable growth in our core sectors.” New customer additions for the quarter ending June 30, 2008 of 310,000 resulted in net growth of 92,000 taking the total subscriber base to 8.980 million. Churn reduced to 9.8% and ARPU increased to £427. The Sky+ personal video recorder added a further 321,000 net homes to reach 3,714,000. Sky HD added 33,000 on the quarter, climbing to 498,000. The renamed Sky+ HD product is being supported by the recent reduction in the cost of the Sky+ receiver from £249 to £150.

Portuguese regulator to reassess DTT tender

The evaluation commission of Portuguese communications regulator Anacom has announced that it will review the bids of the tender for the pay-TV DTT multiplexes. At the end of June, the commission passed a preliminary decision, declaring Portugal Telecom as the winner of the licences. However, the conclusions were challenged by the other bidder, Airplus TV Portugal, which requested the naming of a new jury that was “independent and capable”. The Swedish-owned company submitted documents to Anacom claiming jury president, Carlos Eduardo do Rego da Costa Salema, is the CEO of the Telecommunications Institute, of which Portugal Telecom is a client and financial backer, while Salema's daughter and brother are part of the PT management. In the latest twist in the tale, Salema has resigned as president of the jury, so the commission will now function with two members, as a legal replacement for the president has not been appointed.

ZON keeps up pressure on rivals

ZON Multimedia turned in a strong performance in the first half, despite intense competition in the Portuguese marketplace. The operator said that more than 20,000 cable and satellite subscribers had received its new ZON Box HD and PVR receiver launched at the end of May. The number of premium subscribers has fallen back to 820,900 from 832,600 in the first quarter, though ahead of the 775,900 in Q2 2007. Overall the trend is edging upwards, basic subscribers reaching 1,557,000, from 1,560,500 in the first quarter. RGUs (Revenue Generating Units) grew to 1.68 from 1.49 in the first half of 2007. The rise in RGUs also contributed to a year-on-year ARPU increase of 3.7% to €31.7. Operating revenues increased by 7/6% to €377.3 million in the first half with ABITDA putting on a 7.1% increase to €122.2 million.

Mediaset launches YouTube action

Italian broadcaster Mediaset has said it is suing YouTube in a Rome civil court over the misuse of its copyrighted material and seeking “at least” €500 million in damages. Mediaset says that in a sample survey carried out by the company on June 10, 2008 it found 4,643 movies constituting 325 hours of material that was available on YouTube without the copyright clearance. The company says its €500m claim does not include lost advertising revenue that it would have been able to sell were the content available directly on its channels. In a statement released to Broadband TV News, a YouTube Spokesperson said the company respects copyright holders and takes copyright issues very seriously.

France Telecom reports strong IPTV growth

With the publication of its figures for the first six months of 2008, France Telecom has reported strong growth of its IPTV customer base. The company had a total of 1.54 million subscribers in Europe at June 30, 2008, or 76% more than 872,000 one year earlier. In France, the company had 1.389 million IPTV subscribers, a 65.9% increase from a year ago, with VOD more than doubling to 2.182 million paid downloads in the first half of 2008, compared with 907,000 in the first half of 2007.

Blinkx out jumps Kangaroo

In a further threat to Kangaroo, blinkx has launched a single gateway for UK online video content, before the BBC-ITV-C4 venture even gets off the ground. The video search engine has introduced its Universal TV Remote, through which users can search for a favourite show by name or channel, before being pointed to the site where they can view or download the content for free. The line-up includes stations broadcast by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five. Video spam, illegal clips and other inappropriate material is filtered out by the blinkx search engine. Users can also tag their favourite shows and receive updates of new episodes by email or RSS. The remote is currently only available to UK audiences, but a version for the United States is planned. Kangaroo has been tethered by the Office of Fair Trading's referral of the project to the Competition Commission.

RTP HD starts as ZON exclusive

RTP HD is to commence broadcasting on August 8 in order to screen coverage of the Olympic Games. The channel will broadcast live from Beijing for 16 hours a day and is exclusive to ZON cable TV. There is no additional charge to those viewers already in possession of ZON's HD capable personal video recorder. The Portuguese public broadcaster's channel joins stations already on-air from MOV HD, National Geographic HD and Sport TV HD. From the beginning of September a fifth channel will be introduced in TV Cine HD. In addition to its HD service, RTP will also offer coverage on RTP1 and RTP2, the internet and mobile phones.

ITV.com adds more classic content

Popular ITV shows from the 1970s and 1980s have been added to ITV.com following a new deal with the shows producers. Programmes including Upstairs Downstairs, Poirot, On The Buses and Dempsey and Makepeace will be available as part of the 30-day catch –up window immediately after their transmission on ITV3. The move is part of an overall strategy to introduce more classic content to ITV.com. The broadcaster has taken a advertising supported approach to the site with little paid for content available. Use of the catch-up service has continued to grow with a four-fold increase in video views since August 2007.

Motorola to split Home & Networks Mobility group

Motorola has said it will split its Home and Networks Mobility group into three separate businesses, to be known as Broadband Home Solutions, Broadband Access Solutions and Cellular Networks. Broadband Home Solutions will consist of cable and video equipment, including set-top boxes and modems; Broadband Access Solutions, next-generation broadband equipment; and Cellular Networks, wireless network equipment. The reorganization is designed to keep the unit, Motorola's second-largest by revenue, “agile, focused and ideally aligned to realize its growth potential,” company spokeswoman Jennifer Erickson said in a statement.