Latest SATELLITE NEWS/TV LISTING SECTION

[mike566]

Ukrainian channels look to Russia

Ukraine is seeking wider distribution of its TV channels in neighbouring Russia.

According to AKTR and Sat Expert, Russia’s National Radio and TV Council has received a letter from Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting help in the matter.

It has been concluded that the best solution is for such channels to have carriage on cable networks and the DTH platform Tricolor TV. Both have extensive coverage and there is the added bonus that Ukrainian channels would be able to reach direct agreements with cable operators without any government interference.

It is believed that carriage of the channels solely on the DTH platform NTV-Plus, as has previously been suggested, would be insufficient to meet demand from viewers in Russia.

[mike566]

Buoyant Pace plans new gateway acquisition

Pace increased its first half profits by 46% on the back of a 12.9% rise in volume shipments. Announcing its results for the six months ending June 30, 2010, the world number one supplier of pay-TV set-top boxes signalled a further step into the residential gateways market with a proposed £308 million (€367m) acquisition of 2Wire Inc.

Shipments of 9.6 million units included new customers Multichoice, M7, Sky Deutschland and Astro, delivering pre-tax profits of £45.4m.

“These results were produced despite some challenges within the supply chain, due to the skill of our operations teams, scale and strong supplier relationships,” said Pace CEO Neil Gaydon. “With today’s announcement of our proposed acquisition of 2Wire, we expect to widen out our US customer base and opportunity as well as develop Pace’s technology capability.”

With a medium term operating margin of 8% now in sight, Pace has raised its expectations for the second half of the year, anticipating “at least mid-single digit over the medium term”.

The move for 2Wire is designed to widen the company’s US customer base follows the earlier acquisition of the Paris-based IP and cable gateways spe----------------t of Bewan Systems SA. Pace says that the proposed acquisition will strengthen the development of its home entertainment convergence strategy while taking it into the telco market.

2Wire is currently owned by a consortium including Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Telmex, and Oak Investment Partners. Its ten-year relationship with A&T means that at a stroke Pace will become the number one provider of telco residential gateway devices in the US and the number three globally.

The Acquisition is conditional on shareholder approval from both Pace and 2Wire, certain regulatory consents and finalisation of Pace’s bank financing arrangements

[mike566]

Irish national broadcaster RTE could be privatised


RTE, the Irish national broadcaster, has been dealt a double blow by two unconnected events - director general Cathal Goan has announced he is stepping down and the station has been put on a list of state companies to be considered for privatisation.

The decision of 56-year-old Goan to quit his €320,000-a-year post after just one term has come as a surprise, as he had started his broadcasting career with the station and was considered “a lifer”. No reason was given for his refusal of a second term, nor has he spoken of his plans. He has agreed to stay on until a successor is chosen.

The appointment of Goan, a programme maker, to the top job had been widely welcomed and RTE chairman Tom Savage, in a tribute, described him as a man with ” a unique understanding of the special role that RTE has in Irish cultural life”. Communications minister Eamon Ryan said he had made “a genuine contribution to the arts in Ireland”.

During his seven-year term he had also presided over the financial restructuring of RTE, cutting costs and jobs to reduce the station’s €68 million budget deficit to less than €20 million. Internal candidates are being tipped to succeed him when the job is advertised in the coming weeks. The person chosen will have the immediate task of overseeing an ambitious redevelopment of the station’s Dublin campus, including the construction of a €350 million high-definition digital TV and radio studio.

Meanwhile, uncertainty surrounds the future status of the national broadcaster, currently funded through a combination of licence fee and advertising, as a result of its inclusion on the list of state companies to be considered for possible privatisation. The aim is to ease the national debt by selling them.

A special review group has been appointed to examine the companies listed and report back to government by the end of the year. What will alarm RTE is that the group is headed by economist Colm McCarthy, the man who recommended the arts council be emasculated and the arts ministry scrapped to reduce state spending.

[mike566]

Football rivals BT and BSkyB square up

July 26, 2010


Some of the UK's biggest firms will be in the spotlight this week during a major test of confidence.

The biggest crisis in BP's long history threatens to tip the oil giant into the red for the first time since 1992 tomorrow as it gives more details on the havoc wreaked by the Gulf of Mexico spill.

Although the final bill is not yet known, the provisions for the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster could submerge the £3.3bn in underlying profits expected for the second quarter, a 60 per cent rise on a year earlier.

BP reported its first quarter figures just a week after the explosion when the magnitude of the disaster was not yet apparent and media scrutiny was focused on the looming General Election.

But since then the company has axed its dividend for the first time since the Second World War - and the company and its chief executive Tony Hayward found themselves at the centre of a storm not seen since disgraced Royal Bank of Scotland boss Sir Fred Goodwin refused to give back his pension.

Shares are down more than a third from their peak - hitting pensions on both sides of the Atlantic - while the firm has set up a 20 billion dollar compensation fund to assuage fury in the US.

The cost of the clean-up is estimated at around £2.6bn so far, with assets in the US, Canada and Egypt sold to rival Apache raising £4.6bn for the cause.

Although BP should finally kill the leaking well next month with the completion of a relief well - and begin restoring its battered reputation - heavy financial penalties also await.

Charles Stanley analyst Tony Shepard said the Gulf spill would be a "permanent feature in the results for some time," adding: "There is no doubt BP has valuable assets and attractive cashflows going into the future but uncertainty remains over the potential liabilities."

Rival Royal Dutch Shell's results on Thursday should be far less eventful, with Mr Shepard expecting a 25 per cent increase in underlying profits to around £2.6bn for the second quarter.

The firm - left in the slow lane by BP until the Gulf of Mexico spill - is looking to dispose around 15 per cent of its refining capacity as well as developing new production sources, with 13 projects due to come onstream over the next year.

"The group has a rich selection of potential new projects which are expected to add some 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent resources and which will help underpin production growth to 2020," he added.

Transport group National Express expects to show "good progress" in boosting half-year profits on Thursday thanks to a major cost-cutting drive under former Tube Lines boss Dean Finch.

Mr Finch is getting to grips with the tough task of reviving the business following a disastrous year for its rail arm, which returned its loss-making East Coast franchise back to the government in November.

At this stage last year, the East Coast deal sent the firm plunging into the red with a £48.1m pre-tax loss. But a cost crackdown by the new chief executive is helping shore up results, while the firm says revenue trends are "resilient".

BoA/Merrill Lynch analyst Mark Manduca forecasts pre-tax profits of £155.6m for the full year, 34 per cent ahead of 2009. But analysts will also be interested in the firm's view of the likely impact of Budget cuts on prospects going forward.

British Gas parent Centrica will see profits from its residential business almost double in results for the first half of the year as shivering households cranked up the heating in a bitterly cold winter.

Citigroup analyst Peter Atherton is expecting operating profits of £583m from British Gas for the first six months of 2010 - up from £299m previously - with its business division also forecast to double profits to £132m.

Although the high profits on Wednesday are sure to spark anger in some quarters, Centrica says a reasonable level of returns is needed to invest in new sources of production.

Both British Sky Broadcasting and telecoms giant BT report on Thursday, but the figures come at a tense time for relations between the two firms.

BT, which reports first quarter figures as BSkyB posts annual results, announced earlier this month that it was slashing the cost of watching Premier League football to as little as £6.99 a month in a major push into the pay-TV market.

But in a canny move, rival BSkyB increased prices for its sports customers from September in a move triggering higher charges for wholesale customers such as BT.

Friday's update from British Airways will reveal the impact of a nightmare first quarter for the airline, which has already said that it "could hardly have had a worse start" to the year.

The opening three months of BA's financial year saw it hit by Iceland's volcanic eruption, which closed most of European airspace for almost a week in April, and crippling strike action.

BA has already lost around £120 million from the volcanic disruption, while it said the first wave of industrial strikes cost it £43 million - with the group widely thought to be facing a total bill from the disputes of £150 million.
__________________

[mike566]

Sky Broadband to sponsor Channel 4 films

Sky Broadband is to sponsor the peaktime transmission of films on Channel 4, E4 and More4 for the next twelve months in a seven-figure deal.

The sponsorship will build on its 'Broadband Happily Ever' fairytale positioning.

The deal, which was brokered by MediaCom, includes the sponsorship of peaktime films on the three Channel 4 channels as well as their +1 and high definition versions and the daily early evening film on Film4.

Robert Tansey, group brand marketing director at BSkyB, said: "Sky Broadband provides a high quality, great value service, and we believe this sponsorship deal is the right way of helping customers get the message about what we have to offer."

In June Sky appointed Engine to handle the advertising for its Sky Broadband service, after a pitch against roster agencies.

Sky Broadband has over 2.5 million customers and around one in five of Sky's 9.77 million homes takes all three of Sky TV, Sky Broadband and Sky Talk.

[mike566]

Farncombe secures Mirifice Professional Services

Farncombe Consulting Group is to purchase the Professional Services arm of Mirifice Ltd. The deal extends Farncombe into engineering services and testing practices, while leaving Mirifice to concentrate on its multimedia services monitoring and automated set-top testing businesses.

“This agreement is a perfect fit for us,” said Farncombe managing partner Dr Stephen Upton. “The Mirifice team complements and strengthens the skills and experience that Farncombe can offer its existing clients. Farncombe now has the capability to provide end-to-end consulting services to the digital video sector: from strategy and business planning through to implementation and testing.”

Andrew Barker, CEO, Mirifice Ltd said although the company had established itself as a TV consultancy, the principal objective had always been the products business and the time was now right to separate the two. “We weren’t going to have the focus on the consultancy to expand it in the way the team might have liked,” Barker told Broadband TV News. “The products business was where I wanted to focus, but the consultancy was still very healthy and growing.” He added that design and test work that Mirifice had carried out for clients such as Virgin Media and BT Vision compared with Farncombe’s focus on strategy meant the combined company could now run from strategy through to implementation.

All Mirifice Professional Services employees and associates have now transferred from Bath to Farncombe, including Managing Partner Gary Marshall and Sales Director Geoff Aitken. A number of employees who previously worked for Mirifice in London will also transfer to the Bath operations.

[mike566]

Orange in talks with Canal+

The French telecoms operator Orange is in talks with Canal+ about the future of its premium TV channels, according to local reports.

There is a possibility that the Orange Cinéma Séries channel will merge with Canal +’s movie channel TPS Star. Further news is likely on Thursday, July 29, when France Telecom, the owner of Orange, is expected to report the Q2 results.

France Telecom is reconsidering the future of its content business since its CEO Didier Lombard stepped down. Stéphane Richard, the new man at the helm, recently announced the company will concentrate on its core business rather than be involved with content and premium TV channels.

At the moment Orange Cinéma Séries has 480,000 subscribers, while its sister channel Orange Sport has 320,000. TPS Star is a legacy from the old TPS DTH platform, which was taken over by the Canal + Group from a consortium of TF1, M6 and France Telecom.

Interestingly, according to French news reports, Orange is looking for another partner for its sports channel. Richard seems to be looking to tie up with News Corp for its sports channels rather than with the Canal Group.

Orange Sports shares the rights to the French football league (Ligue 1) with Canal+ till 2012.

[mike786]

great work nice info thank u

[mike566]

42E: TRT HD parameters changed, remains FTA
42E: TRT HD parameters changed, remains FTA

Unscrambled HD channels Turkish state television TRT HD changed its parameters to the satellite Turksat 3A (42°E). Free broadcast signal can receive all satellite viewers with HD set-top box. Change parameters held in early July. It is now officially broadcasting from the new frequency.

TRT HD stations aired recently on the frequency 11.490 GHz, pol. V . and 12.688 GHz, pol. V. These signals have been disconnected and is broadcast on the new parameters:

Turksat 3A (42°E) freq 11.041 GHz, pol. V, SR 6400, FEC 3/4, DVB-S2/8PSK

Most of the content on TRT HD is distributed freely (FTA). Some programs are but because of restrictions on broadcasting rights encoded N.D.S Videoguard. Encoded content can monitor D-Smart subscribers.

[mike566]

26E: Le Bouquet de Canal + switched to Badr 5
26E: Le Bouquet de Canal + switched to Badr 5

The new Arab telecommunications satellite Badr five Arab satellite operator Arabsat has been from the original satellites Badr 4 and Badr 6 pay-TV broadcasters moved Le Bouquet de Canal +.

Le Bouquet de Canal +, the Arab version of the French CanalSat pay-TV, has moved one of her transponder on Badr 4 to Badr 5 and two more transponders of the Badr Badr 6 at the fifth Frequencies and reception parameters remain. Significantly, however, changed the cover, which is more directed at the Arab world countries and coverage in Europe is more limited.

Platform Le Bouquet de Canal + is currently the only regular broadcast of new 5th Badr Other multiplexes are at the end of last week disconnected. The service is only muxy with test content (test pattern, test card).

Technical parameters - Le Bouquet de Canal +:
Badr 5 (26°E) freq 12.265 GHz, pol. H, SR 27500, FEC 3/4, DVB-S/QPSK
Badr 5 (26°E) freq 12.303 GHz, pol. H, SR 27500, FEC 3/4, DVB-S/QPSK
Badr 5 (26°E) freq 12.322 GHz, pol. V, SR 27500, FEC 3/4, DVB-S/QPSK