Thread: Satellite News Aprail 2010

Fox launches formats division Fox Look
02/04/10

Fox Networks Group is launching a formats division to increase its footprint in the unscripted world.

The division - Fox Look - will be headed by David Lyle, who was most recently president of Fox Reality Channel, which closed last year. It will license formats internationally by setting up partnerships with existing international production companies as well as establish new production entities in a number of territories.

Fox Look will assume responsibility for existing formats from the Twentieth Century library including Tempation Island, Beauty and the Geek and Celebrity Spelling Bee.

Lyle will report to Fox Networks Group chairman and chief executive Tony Vinciquerra and will also work closely with Marion Edwards, president of international television, Fox.
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NBC Blocks Free TV Episodes on iPad


April 2, 2010, 10:38 am

The NBC broadcast network has, for now, ditched its plans to stream full television episodes onto the Apple iPad.
Steve Carrell in “The Office.”

Last week, NBC executives showed a reporter a mock-up for an iPad-optimized version of its mobile Web site and indicated that full-episode streaming of shows like “The Office” would be possible by the end of April. The network already streams shows to the iPhone and other cellphones, making it relatively easy to add iPad functionality.

But the network decided in recent days to prohibit iPad viewing of full episodes at this time, an NBC official said Thursday.

There are business reasons for the decision. Some media companies want to encourage people to pay for television episodes and films through Apple’s iTunes store rather than streaming them free through the Web browser.

CryoSat-2 Arrives at Baikonur

April 3, 2010
by Staff Writer

The European Space Agency's (ESA) CryoSat-2 ice satellite has arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and has been integrated with the Dnepr rocket in preparation for its April 8 launch, the ESA announced April 2.
The satellite will be powered up and tested April 3, with simulations to test communication sequences and procedures between the launch site and ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Germany the next day.
CryoSat-2 is the ESA’s third Earth Explorer mission to be launched in the last year following the SMOS mission, launched in November, and the GOCE mission, launched in March 2009.

Bentley Walker Adds Hub to Enhance Eurasian Coverage

by Staff Writer
April 3, 2010

U.K. satellite broadband provider Bentley Walker is upgrading technology to its satellite Internet coverage of the Middle East and Europe, the company announced April 2.
Bentley Walker added a sixth Hughes HX hub on Eutelsat’s W7 Eurasian beam to provide greater capacity and availability of service. The Eurasian beam has two areas of focus where the signal is strongest, one targeted on Southern Europe and the other on the Caspian Sea area providing coverage in Iraq, Afghanistan and neighboring states.
The provider said that increased demand in Internet via satellite systems has soared in recent years. “This is particularly true in Afghanistan and Iraq, where coalition military personnel and western contractors expect the services they receive at home despite the remote locations that they serve in,” the company said in a statement.

D-Smart channel D Filmbox

Turkish satellite platform D-Smart, which offers a paid service via a satellite Turksat 2A/3A position 42E, included in our offer movie channel D Filmbox. The name can be associated with a product from an international manufacturer of SPI International, which in Poland offers Filmbox channels, but it is a wrong impression. D is the original project Filmbox D-Smart platform.

D Filmbox movie offer is aimed at families and includes domestic production, as well as abroad in the USA. The station gives two soundtracks - the original and Turkish.

D Filmbox was included in the package for a family package Aile 19.99 liras / month. which is about 37 PLN.

Suitable channel in test mode, which is why the moment is the FTA.

Specifications:

Turksat 3A (42E)
tp. 9 (11.012 GHz, pol. V, SR: 30000, FEC: 5/6; DVB-S/QPSK)

ID: D FilmBox
V PID: 1110
A PID: 1210 (in Turkish), 1310 (original)
PCR PID: 1110
SID: 1410
PMT PID: 1410
Encoding: temporarily absent (target *** VideoGuard)

Ofcom 1, Murdoch 0. Rupert suffers a rare defeat

The regulator's ruling on Sky's prices for TV sport has rattled the broadcaster


* James Robinson, media editor
* Sunday 4 April 2010

Gary Lineker said that football is a game played for 90 minutes between two sets of 11 men, at the end of which the Germans win. In the world of TV sport, BSkyB are the Germans. Battles between Sky and its adversaries, both real and imagined, tend to end in triumph for Rupert Murdoch's satellite broadcaster – but that orthodoxy was turned on its head last week.

In a ruling last Wednesday, media regulator Ofcom said that it will force Sky to make its valuable sports content, including Premier League games, available to rival broadcasters at a far cheaper price than it currently does. Fans who have had more television sport to choose from since Sky's inception, but have to pay ?40 a month or more to watch it, rose from their armchairs in delight.

Ofcom's decision, which will be challenged by Sky in the courts, could herald an era of cheaper TV sport. It must make two of its four paid-for sports channels, Sky Sports 1 and 2, available to other platforms at a "wholesale" price of up to 23.4% less – ?10.63 per subscriber per month – than it does now. In theory, those cost savings can be passed on to customers, so Virgin Media might reduce the price it charges its customers for the Sky channels that carry live football, rugby and the England Test matches and much else besides. British Telecom's television arm, BT Vision, has already said it will offer both sports channels to its 500,000 or so customers at a price in the "mid-teens".

The amount of money Sky could lose by being forced to sell its sports channels on for less is relatively small; City analysts estimate it makes just ?100m from such deals, out of total annual profits of around ?900m. But if the reductions on offer prove enticing enough for consumers to switch from Sky, that could force the satellite company to drop the price of its own sports package. It believes a dangerous principle has been established and will fight hard to protect the content on which its business has been built.

The Sun, still the most powerful title in Murdoch's British newspaper empire, was quick to portray Ofcom as a New Labour invention peopled by "meddling lefties". Its chief executive, Ed Richards, has worked for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the BBC. Murdoch's youngest, James, who is now second only to Rupert at News Corp, the sprawling media empire the family controls, delivered a landmark speech last year attacking the size and scale of the BBC, but saved some of his ire for Ofcom.

The Sun abandoned Brown on the evening of his speech to the Labour party conference last autumn, prompting talk of a deal between Murdoch and the Conservative leader, David Cameron. That is vigorously denied by the Tories, but Cameron promised in a speech last year that he would strip Ofcom of its policy-making powers. "Under a Conservative government, Ofcom as we know it would cease to exist," he said.

With a general election just over a month away, a Labour defeat would probably kick Ofcom's pay-TV proposals into touch. It was telling that the Conservatives issued a statement last week emphasising that they believed the regulator should be independent from government, but failed to endorse its findings.

Ofcom's three-year inquiry into the pay-TV market was prompted by a joint complaint from "gang of four" broadcasters, including Virgin Media and BT. They argued that Sky uses it market power to table huge bids for "premium rights", mainly football and films. Sky has spent 20 years building the technology and subscriber base needed to make money from that content. More recent entrants to the market, including British Telecom, which has struggled to make a success of BT Vision, argue they cannot afford to match Sky's bids. As market leader, Sky benefits from a virtuous circle. Little wonder it walks away with the rights to cricket, rugby union (although the BBC screens the Six Nations), rugby league and top-flight football.

Competitors, including Virgin Media and BT, welcomed Ofcom's ruling, arguing that they can finally compete on a level playing field. Sky's chief executive, Jeremy Darroch, reacted like a coach who had arrived at a game to discover the referee had awarded the opposing team a two-goal lead before kick-off – with a mixture of fury and disbelief. "The prices we charge are fair, they're fair for customers and they're fair for the companies we supply our channels to," he said.

Sky argues it gambled by spending unprecedented sums on sports rights, enriching the games it covers, and is now reaping the rewards. It says Ofcom has no right to force it to make expensive content available to competitors at a knockdown price. It has six weeks to draw up new contracts with Virgin and others, but will appeal to the courts for a stay of execution in an attempt to prevent the ruling from coming into force while it prepares a full appeal. A long legal battle lies ahead.

Even if Ofcom's changes are implemented, it may not revolutionise the market. Only two of Sky's four sports channels are affected, but the company can screen big games on any of them. Customers who want to watch Premier League matches, for example, would still need all four, and Sky could continue to portray itself as "the home of sport". Yet the decision is a landmark one, and Ofcom has demonstrated it is nothing if not brave. Regulators, including the European Union, have challenged Sky's market power before, but Murdoch has always outfoxed them.

The fact that the sports bodies which depend on Sky's largesse, and have chosen to sacrifice larger audiences for more cash, also criticised the regulator demonstrates just how cosy the relationship with Sky has become. They fear that Sky will reduce the amount it pays them if it is forced to hand on rights at a knockdown price. The cost to Sky will be minimal, but it is the intent behind the ruling, which demonstrates a willingness to take on the most profitable part of Murdoch's UK empire, that has rattled Sky.

In seeking to break the company's dominance of live TV sport, Ofcom may only have loosened its grip – but that still constitutes a rare defeat for Rupert Murdoch.

France 24 accuses Iran of blocking its website

by Andy Sennitt.

News channel France 24 has accused Iran of blocking its website to users there, the latest in a series of international broadcasters to complain of censorship by the Islamic Republic. “France 24 learned today from various sources that its website france24.com was no longer accessible from Iranian territory,” the French rolling news station said in a statement, describing the move as “censorship”.

Iranian authorities have cracked down on the media and arrested scores of journalists since anti-government protests erupted after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election last June. The ITU last week called on Iran to stop jamming foreign radio and television broadcasts and EU foreign ministers vowed to act against Iran’s blocking of satellite broadcasts and Internet sites.

The BBC has accused the Islamic regime of jamming its Persian-language broadcasts and France has complained that radio and television stations transmitting to Iran via the Eutelsat satellite have been jammed.

France 24, which is publicly funded and broadcasts in French, English and Arabic, linked the latest blockage to its online coverage of the opposition movement. “This censorship comes as all France 24’s editorial teams are following day by day the events surrounding the opposition movement… particularly with the help of (online) social networks and amateur pictures sent by the Internet.”

Euronews enters Malaysia

* 2010-04-02 15:51:11 / Janusz Sulisz
* Last update: 2010-04-03 17:35:56
* Source: Euronews

Euronews, one of the most popular news channels in Europe, signed a distribution agreement with TM NET ADSL service provider in the biggest telecommunication company in Malaysia - Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM). From March 24, 2010 Euronews was added by Malaysian operator to the basic ADSL package. There are 8 of 9 channel Euronews languages - English, German, Arabic, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Turkish.

This agreement signals a new stage in the development of Euronews in Asia. For now, Euronews has a range of nearly 5 million households in Asia, but it is a market with huge growth potential for the channel from Europe. In 2009, Euronews has signed distribution agreements with operators in Korea, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines.