Satellite News

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E4 has acquired the rights to How I Met Your Mother and Being Erica.
According to C21 Media, E4 has picked up the 13-episode first season of Erica to air in early October.

The series, starring Erin Karpluk, follows a woman who begins seeing a counsellor to deal with regrets in her life. She later discovers that the counsellor has the ability to send her back in time to change the events in question.

The first four seasons of Josh Radnor-fronted Mother have also been secured, which E4 aims to begin airing later this year.

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Virgin Media has said that it is still reviewing various interest-based advertising options, including the online tracking service developed by Phorm.
This follows a decision by BT and TalkTalk not to go ahead with plans to rollout Phorm's technology, which enables targeted advertising based on internet habits.

For the past 18 months, Virgin Media has conducted a technical and legal consultation on the company's offering prior to any potential implementation.
Despite running surveys on consumer attitude towards the technology, the internet service provider has not at any stage trialled the system over its network.

Virgin Media has said, though, that it supports the opportunity represented by interest-based advertising for consumers, ISPs and online firms.
"However, given the fast moving nature of the sector, Virgin Media is reviewing potential opportunities with suppliers including Phorm prior to making any commitment to launch any of these technologies," a spokesperson for cable operator said in a statement.

"We recognise some consumers have significant concerns about the potential implications of interest-based advertising for their privacy. Virgin Media is committed to ensuring that any future deployment complies not only with the relevant legal requirements but - as an absolute minimum - the best practice guidelines contained in the Internet Advertising Bureau's recently published code of practice.

"Virgin Media will communicate openly and transparently with consumers before and after any future deployment of interest-based advertising technologies across its network."

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This summer will see the satellite and digital broadcaster, UKTV, move into a new and exciting time, after signing an agreement with Channel Four.

The multi million contract will see around two hundred hours of Channel Four content being shown across the newly rebranded UKTV channels.

This means that UKTV will not have to rely so heavily on the BBC for content, which will give UKTV a stronger footing in the UK pay TV market place.

The deal will be made up with eighty nine hours of comedy, sixty hours of drama and thirty eight hours of entertainment.

A lot of this content will be getting its first showing on pay TV in the UK.

The deal is said to have taken a long time to negotiate and will start on the 1st August.

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Russia’s Comstar-UTS says it ended June with over 145,000 cable subscribers to its Stream TV service in the Saratov region of the country.

It adds that Stream TV, which is distributed in the region by Kaskad TV, is now the leading cable service there, claiming a market share of up to 95% in the city of Balakovo alone.

The Saratov region is located in the South West of Russia.

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The leading Latvian cable operator Baltkom has posted H1 results that defy the scale of the recession the country currently finds itself in.

Its consolidated turnover in the period was LVL8 million (€11.5 million), or 12% more than in the corresponding period in 2008, while operating profits rise 70% year-on-year to LVL1.2 million.

Baltkom’s internet subscriber total as of the end of June was 50% higher than a year earlier, and 80% of new connections were to a NGN network.

This currently serves 30,000 homes in the capital, Riga, with the figure expected to rise to 100,000 by the end of the year.

Baltkom was launched in 1991 and currently claims 230,000 cable TV subscribers.

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The leading Russian DTH platform Tricolor TV posted revenues of R1.56 billion (€35.2 million) from its pay-TV service in 2008, according to its CEO Vyacheslav Mordachev.

Quoted in Cableman, he added that the platform aims to reach 13.5% of the Russian population by the end of this year.

Tricolor TV is at present the fastest growing DTH platform not just in Russia but Europe as a whole, recently topping the 5 million-subscriber mark.

It offers viewers a 19-channel subscription package and 12 channel-package free of charge.
As of 2008, 2.6 million viewers received the former.

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Sky Deutschland has terminated its contract with Deutsche Telekom to distribute content on the telco’s IPTV platform T-Entertain.

A spokesperson for the German pay-TV operator, formerly known as Premiere, said both companies were still in talks but confirmed it had terminated the distribution contract.
Until last season, Premiere and Deutsche Telekom had collaborated on Bundesliga football coverage. From next season, Constantin Medien will produce the telco’s IPTV Bundesliga coverage.

Separately, 99.8% of Sky Deutschland’s shareholders have approved the company’s name change.

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TiVu_logoAgcom is to investigate whether the possibility of RAI pulling its channels from Sky Italia in favour of Tivù Sat would be in breach of the public broadcaster’s platform neutrality. The move would see the departure of its three flagship channels, Rai Uno, Rai Due and Rai Tre as well as its digital portfolio.

The authority’s president Corrado Calabrò told a meeting of the RAI supervisory board that the decision risked losing sight of the basic principals of quality and fair competition.

Tivù Sat, backed by RAI, Mediaset and Telecom Italia, is scheduled to launch on July 31, using the same Hot Bird position that is already home to Sky Italia, but using the rival Nagravision encryption system that will render reception of the RAI channels impossible to Sky households.

According to Il Sole 24 Ore, Calabrò’s intervention comes at a crucial time for talks between RAI and Sky Italia, the public broadcaster seeking additional carriage fees that Sky would seem unlikely to meet.

A public broadcaster seeking commercial advantage, and forgetting its obligations, is nothing new. However, RAI’s move comes with the added twist of its partner Mediaset being controlled by the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

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AsiaSat 5, a new communications satellite of Asia Satellite
Telecommunications Company Limited (AsiaSat), has arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in preparation for launch by a Proton launch vehicle currently planned for early to mid-August.

AsiaSat 5 is a replacement satellite for AsiaSat 2 at the orbital location of 100.5 degrees East. The spacecraft, based on Space Systems/Loral‟s 1300 satellite bus, is produce to deliver advanced satellite services including television broadcast, telephone networks and VSAT networks for broadband multimedia services across Asia Pacific.

“AsiaSat 5 will become the newest member of the AsiaSat fleet to help us continue our mission of providing first-class regional satellite services to Asia Pacific. Equipped with the latest but proven technologies, improved and new beam coverage on AsiaSat 5, we look forward to serving existing and future clients with enhanced power, connectivity and network flexibility,” informed Peter Jackson, Chief Executive Officer of AsiaSat.

AsiaSat 5 will carry 26 C-band and 14 Ku-band transponders, and has an estimated operational life of 15 years.

It will offer an enhanced pan Asian C-band footprint that covers more than 53 countries spanning from Russia to New Zealand and from Japan to the Middle East and parts of Africa. Its Ku-band coverage will consist of two high-power fixed Ku-band beams over East Asia and South Asia, and an in-orbit steerable Ku beam. The three Ku-band beams are designed with switching capability to switch any uplink to any downlink beam to meet specific application requirements.

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Dragan Solak will head the new company

Mid Europa has completed the acquisition of a 100% stake in UPC Slovenia from Liberty Global.
Significantly, the operator will now be headed up by Dragan Solak, the head of Serbia Broadband (SBB), which was itself acquired by Mid Europa in 2007.

He said that SBB and UPC Slovenia are “complementary platforms that are leaders in their respective markets.”

SBB also operates the DTH platform TotalTV, and as a result the acquisition of UPC Slovenia makes Mid Europa one of the leading operators of pay-TV services in the former Yugoslavia region.

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Celtic chairman John Reid has expressed his dissatisfaction after the Scottish Premier League accepted ESPN and Sky's joint bid for TV rights, according to reports.

It was announced yesterday that the SPL had opted for the £65m, two-year deal on offer from the two broadcasters to replace the former carriage agreement with Setanta.

Prior to this development, Celtic and Old Firm rival Rangers were believed to be readying an alternative bid after becoming dissatisfied with the terms proposed by ESPN and Sky.

Despite confirming that a formal approach from the two clubs was never actually made, Reid said that that the TV rights situation has not reached a satisfactory conclusion.
"Celtic have a responsibility to speak out for our supporters who will be deeply dissatisfied with the background to, and outcome of, today's SPL decision and the events leading up to it," he told reporters yesterday after the SPL's annual general meeting.

"No-one should underestimate the blow that has been inflicted on this club and Scottish football by the way in which the whole affair has been handled and by the losses incurred."
Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell recently revealed his regret at the previous rights deal agreed with Setanta, and Reid believes that this could be a case of history repeating itself.

"Last year's decision to reject the Sky bid and opt for Setanta - arrived at against the strong opposition of Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen - has proved to be the disastrous misjudgement we indicated it might be, with Setanta now in administration," he explained.
"In turn, this has led to the dilemma we now find ourselves in. Today the SPL accepted a bid that is less than half the value of that offered by Sky last year. The whole SPL is now a commercial victim, in an uncompetitive TV market, in the middle of a recession, locked in for years to an income some 60% lower than last year's bid.

"This is the direct consequence of last year's misjudgement, one that has cost us all some £70m in a sport that desperately needs the income and where our supporters are already paying their own hard-earned cash.
"To Celtic it means a potential loss of up to £12m over the four-year period – the equivalent of around 6,500 season tickets each year. We need to face up to some harsh realities. In an environment crying out for long-term thinking this concentration on short-term gain only leads to long-term pain.
"Above all the SPL must learn the lessons of these events. That is why we initiated discussion with Rangers Football Club to examine possible alternatives to the present position.

"We reserve the right to continue to explore those options not only for the longer term benefit of Celtic football club but for everyone involved."

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Finally, despite all of the counter arguments against the deal, the Scottish Premier League (SPL) has sign an agreement that will give the live football match rights to Sky Sports and the sporting newcomer ESPN.

There was talk of an alternative deal, where Celtic and Ranger would take on the contract, but this has not materialised and so the bid from the satellite broadcasters, of just £65 million, will go ahead.
Effectively this means that the SPL is accepting half the amount of money that the original deal was worth.

Collapsed satellite broadcaster Setanta had a deal worth £125 million with the SPL.
This lack of cash is going to have an effect on some of the clubs that rely on the income from TV to survive.

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UK free-to-air broadcaster Channel 4 and pay-TV broadcaster Sky are set to merge their advertising sales teams in a bid to cut costs.

The pair are set to ink a deal that will see both companies cut the number of employees by around 50%.

However, the deal is not expected to be announced officially for a couple of months until the country’s Competition Commission publishes its findings on regulations surrounding rival broadcaster ITV’s advertising sales.

The Commission is currently investigating whether to abolish its contract rights renewal system, the system that governs how much ITV can currently charge advertisers.

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LONDON - ESPN, the US broadcaster, has handed its UK advertising brief for the launch of its Premier League coverage to Wieden + Kennedy's London office.
ESPN hands Premier League brief to Wieden + Kennedy

The broadcaster, which is owned by Walt Disney, works with Wieden + Kennedy in the US and UK activity for above-the-line campaigns will run out of its London office.

There had been speculated that there would be a pitch involving other agencies.

Media planning and buying will be handled by Carat, which already works on its ESPN America and ESPN Classic TV channels and is also an incumbent on Disney. Brand strategy and creative services will be handled by Heavenly, and on-air branding by Bruce Dunlop and Associates. Collective and Agenda21 will handle digital services.

Damion Potter, ESPN communications director said: ‘ESPN and Disney may decide to extend any current agreements with existing service providers that will accommodate the scope of work required for the launch of our new channel.'

Last month ESPN picked up the TV rights to the FA Premier League from Setanta. It will broadcast 46 live games during the 2009-10 season and 23 games each season from 2010-13.

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TV viewers living in Latin America can now watch Russian channels, particularly, RTR-Planeta. VGTRK, which runs such TV channels as Rossiya, Vesti, RTR-Planeta and Kultura, has become the first Russian company of this kind on the South-American TV market.

RTR-Planeta is already broadcast by Cable Onda operator in Panama, while news channel Vesti is supposed to be launched in Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Argentina and Brazil a few weeks later.

In spring 2009 Inter Russia TV channel based in Panama started broadcasting in Latin America. The mission of the channel is to inform about life in Russia and the world.