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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Satdude" data-source="post: 55907" data-attributes="member: 175600">Satellite news 18.08.04NewsUKC4 PREPARES FOR MERGER WITH FIVEChannel 4 has hired investment bank UBS to scope out astrategic review of its long-term options, includingthe possibility of a merger with either rival Five oranother broadcaster. The network is looking at a rangeof options, and while the possibility of a merger withRTL-owned Five fits the bill, it is by no means aforegone conclusion. Channel 4 and Five are lookingfor ways to consolidate in the U.K. market place,where both face the possibility of being squeezed byan enlarged ITV, since the merger of Carlton andGranada last year. The two television channels haveadmitted to holding informal merger talks, although C4has also had discussions with other broadcasters,including cable company Flextech. Channel 4 ispublicly owned but funded entirely by advertising andprofits are badly hit if viewing figures fall. Thechannel made a small profit on revenues of £770million last year, but had been in the red in 2002.Five, controlled by German broadcaster RTL, is alsofacing stiffer competition. BS*yB WANTS TO USE FREESAT NAMEThe BBC is in talks with BS*yB about allowing thecommercial broadcaster to use its "Freesat" trademark.BS*yB, whose shares have collapsed after poor results,announced last week that it was launching thefree-to-air satellite service, which has not yet beennamed, in October. Commentators have already dubbedthe service, which offers 200 channels for a £150one-off payment and no subscription charge, "freesat".BS*yB's chief executive, James Murdoch, said that itwas still in talks with the BBC about what involvementit could have in the S*y service. A BBC spokeswomanconfirmed that one option being discussed is to allowBS*yB to make official use of the Freesat name, whichit has copyrighted. The BBC has been in talks formonths with broadcasters, including BS*yB, aboutlaunching its own free-to-air, digital satelliteservice. TURNER TO TRANSMIT CHANNELS INHOUSETurner Broadcasting Systems Europe has confirmed plansto bring the transmission of all its Europeanentertainment channels in-house from January 2006,replacing the current play out deal with Ascent Media.This decision will involve building a new tx facilityand hiring some 40 additional staff at the company'sGreat Marlborough Street, London headquarters. Some12,000 hours from channels Cartoon Network, Boomerang,Toonami and TCM will also be digitized. Thedigitization of content is all part of a plan to allowthe company to explore emerging revenue streams suchas video-on-demand and broadband. Cartoon Network,TCM, Boomerang and Toonami are available in the regionfrom 17 feeds in 25 local-language versions.BS*yB TO SUE EDSBS*yB is preparing legal action against U.S. computerservices company Electronic Data Systems Corp. over adisputed contract terminated almost two years ago, EDSconfirmed on August 9.  The satellite TV company hiredEDS in November 2000 in a deal worth about £61 millionover two years to provide systems to help it handlecall center inquiries. EDS confirmed S*y has "asserteda contractual claim over the deal." It said S*y tookback responsibility for system delivery in early 2002and that it terminated its relationship with S*y atthe end of 2002. S*y said last week it "anticipatesissuing and serving a claim in the near future for amaterial amount against an information technologysolutions provider." AT THE RACES WANTS $93 MILLION FROM RACEHORSE OWNERSBS*yB and outdoor entertainment group Arena Leisureconfirmed on August 10 that they have issued a £51million writ against a group of Britain's leadingracecourse owners to recover unexploited media rights.Under the banner of their joint-venture channel At theRaces, S*y and Arena have been engaged in along-running wrangle with racecourse owners after thecollapse of their previous media rights deal that alsoinvolved Channel 4. The former deal was declaredinvalid by antitrust regulator the Office of FairTrading in April because it involved collectivebargaining that was deemed anti-competitive. Arena-ledventure At the Races is arguing that it put cashupfront to secure the media rights under the firstdeal and that those rights should revert to At theRaces after the deal's collapse. FIVE SIGNS OUTPUT DEAL WITH SONY PICTURESFree-to-air channel Five is bidding to outdo pay-TVrivals by inking a deal with Sony Pictures TelevisionInternational to air a number of Hollywoodblockbusters before the pay window. Five has secured afilm package comprising Terminator 3: Rise of theMachines; Bruce Willis vehicle Tears of the Sun; andCharlize Theron's Trapped. Terminator 3 is expected topremiere later this year. "This is a huge coup for thechannel," said Five's managing editor and director ofacquisitions, Jeff Ford. "Five's viewers will get tosee some of 2003's biggest blockbusters only 15 monthsafter their cinema release." The deal also coversterrestrial premieres of Charlie's Angels: FullThrottle; Anger Management; Bad Boys II; Maid inManhattan and Daddy Day Care.SPL SPORTS CHANNEL LAUNCHESThe new Scottish Premier League sports channel haslaunched, allaying fears that fans could miss the kickoff of the new season. Setanta has had a difficultsummer with rumours persisting that the channel hasnot generated an adequate number of subscribers tomeet the cost of paying what is due to the 12 SPLclubs. The company has strongly maintained they are oncourse and the first payment was made to clubs on thefirst of this month. Insiders claim fewer than 20,000fans have subscribed so far for the football package -costing £119 for the season - below the break-eventarget of 81,000. Setanta is paying ScottishTelevision £50,000 a game to use its equipment andproduction staff to provide live SPL coverage. Andcable giant Telewest is not offering Rangers TV orCeltic TV to its 256,000 Scottish customers. Earlierthis week, the Evening Times reported how theIrish-based channel was on the verge of clinching adeal to screen live Scottish rugby matches.S*y TO SELL FILMS VIA SATELLITESatellite TV viewers will be able to buy and downloadfilms through their dishes under plans being drawn upby BS*yB, according to a report in "The Times". Thebroadcaster is understood to be in talks withfilm-makers over securing the rights to distributefilm via satellite. Viewers would load the films ontoa personal video recorder with enough electronicstorage space to hold a library of programmes. Theservice would challenge the video-on-demand servicesalready provided by cable-television companies. S*ywill take its first step towards the service atChristmas, when it launches a new version of its S*y+personal video-recorder service. The new version willhave much greater memory capacity, and will retail for£399. EuropeRECORD TV VIEWERS FOR OLYMPICSThe International Olympic Committee expects that 3.9billion people will watch this year's games ontelevision, with more than 300 channels set totransmit about 35,000 hours of coverage. At the 2000Games in Sydney, 29,600 hours were broadcast to 36.1billion households. According to the IOC, more than 60per cent of broadcasters have promised to enhancetheir coverage compared with four years ago. NBC aloneis promising 1,210 hours, three times its Sydneycoverage, while Canada's CBC and TSN are to provide440 hours, and CCTV will offer more than 600 hours. InGermany, ZDF and ARD have tripled their coverage to1,400 hours. And in South Africa, SupersportInternational, SABC2 and SABC3 will provide 1,965hours. This year's games also promise mobile phone andonline streaming video and highlight clips fromseveral broadcasters, as well as some HD coverage.T-SYSTEMS SUPPLIES OLYMPIC COVERAGE TO BROADCASTERST-Systems is to broadcasting video, sound and datasignals during the Olympic Summer Games in Athens forthe European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the CanadianBroadcasting Corporation and ARD and ZDF. T-Systemswill also send the video signals of the Olympicfootball tournament in High Definition Television(HDTV) to Tokyo for Japanese television and broadcastprogrammes via satellite news gathering (SNG) for theGreek Telecommunications Organization (OTE). TheDeutsche Telekom subsidiary is a partner for the EBUduring the Olympics. Together with the OTE, T-Systemswill send the signals and data via submarine cablefrom the International Broadcasting Center in Athensto T-Systems' PoP (Point of presence) in Milan as agateway to Deutsche Telekom's global network. Thisnetwork will be used to broadcast the data to Germany,Canada and some 70 EBU members in Europe, North Africaand the Middle East. Within Germany, signals will betransmitted to the national broadcasting network ofthe public service broadcasting organisations whichpermanently connects state and regional broadcastingstudios with high bandwidths. T-Systems will beproviding ZDF Mainz, SWR Baden-Baden and RBB Potsdamwith sound and video signals, as well asbroadcasting-specific signals for reporting,conference and data applications.GermanyKIRCH AND UNIVERSAL STUDIOS CLOSE TO SETTLEMENTUniversal Studios is close to an out-of-courtsettlement in its four-year-old lawsuit with bankruptGerman rights giant KirchMedia. Insiders at Universaland KirchMedia said on August 9 the two sides haveagreed on a deal that would see the German group payUniversal $80 million-$100 million in exchange fordropping the suit. Universal first filed againstKirchMedia in 2000, alleging breach of contractrelated to a 10-year output deal Kirch signed with theHollywood studio in 1996. Kirch allegedly reneged onthe deal in 1999, refusing to pay the agreed price forUniversal's films and television shows. PROFITS UP AT PREMIEREPay-TV platform Premiere swung to a half-yearoperational profit (before interest, tax, depreciationand amortization) of ?18.1 million ($22.2 million)from an $18.8 million loss the previous year, whilerevenue grew 3.6% to $598 million. Net deficit of$86.2 million was down from $135 million in the sameperiod last year. While Premiere's subscriber base hasgrown 7.5% to 2.9 million since last year, it hasfallen 14.3% since January.VIVA MEDIA REPORTS INCREASED PROFITSGerman music TV group Viva Media on August 12announced a profit of ?2 million for the secondquarter of this year. The figure is up from a ?424,000profit over the same period in 2003. Sales at theCologne-based group slipped slightly, hitting ?27.4million, a fall from ?29.2 million in second quarter2003. Last month, Viacom acquired Viva, the maincompetitor to the company's MTV network in Europe, foraround ?310 million.2Q PROFITS DOUBLED AT PROSIEBENSAT1Private broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1 Media said onAugust 13 that second-quarter profit more thandoubled, helped by higher sales and cost cuts, whilenet income rose to ?47.6 million from ?22.1 million ayear earlier. Sales in the second quarter rose 6 percent to ?496 million. The company reiterated itsforecast from last month that the TV advertisingmarket would grow 2 per cent this year. ProSiebenSat.1forecast that EBITDA would rise to ?330 million thisyear, helped by an increase in sales and lower costs.Sales growth in the second half will be slower than inthe first six months, according to chief financialofficer, Lothar Lanz. The company said it expected toraise its share of its German TV audience by 0.5-0.6percentage points in 2004. ProSiebenSat.1 plans toenter the pay-TV market to become more independentfrom the advertising market, although it will notinvest in Premiere, de Posch said. ProSiebenSat.1abandoned negotiations at the end of July over thepurchase of three of Premiere's channels after thecompanies could not agree on the price. The Sat.1channel posted a ?38.7 million pre-tax profit,compared with ?8 million a year earlier. Pre-taxprofit at the ProSieben channel rose 33 per cent to?63.1 million; N24 had a pre-tax profit of ?100,000compared with a ?5.5 million loss; and Kabel 1 morethan doubled its profit to ?9.6 million.SpainPRIVATE MEDIA REPORTS Q2 RESULTSPrivate Media Group, a worldwide leader inpremium-quality adult content, announced on August 12an increase in net income to ?1.2 million for thethree months ended June 30 compared to ?0.1 millionfor the comparable period in 2003. For the threemonths ended June 30, net sales were ?9.3 millioncompared to ?10.1 million for the comparable period in2003. Broadcasting sales increased 128% to ?1.3million primarily as a result of the broadcastinglaunch of the proprietary Pay-Per-View Satellite &Cable Television Channel, the Private Fantasy Channel,in the United States in February 2004. Regards Satdude.    <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big Grin    :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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