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NEWS
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Season's
Greetings and Best wishes for the coming year - 2002!
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advanced-television.com |
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Advanced-Television.com
will resume posting news from our own correspondents on January
7th 2002.
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MTG
4 new services
New digital German channels
Holiday PPV film offer
New
directors on Swedish TV
Showtime
Egyptian head appointed
Playmates
on mobile phones
Blomfield
dismissed
Vivenid withholds content for Kirch
Univision
in Grupo deal
MTG 4 new services
Pan-Nordic Viasat, the DTH operation controlled by media conglomerate Modern Times Group, MTG, has announced four new services for Viasat's digital platform.
Two are brand new and targeted at audiences in all four Nordic countries while two are aimed at Norway and Denmark respectively. All four will go on the air on January 1.
As leaked some weeks ago, one of the new channels is Viasat Explorer, a new "upbeat channel with fast paced programming," according to Viasat. The content will be focused on adventure, extreme sports, natural phenomena, predators in the animal world and space exploration.
Matthew Hooper, IR and press officer at MTG's offfice in West London, says that contrary to speculation, Explorer will not replace the MTG mini-pay service TV6 which broadcasts wildlife and action programming between 6 pm and midnight; during the daytime this frequency is used for MTG's home shopping service, and after midnight The Playboy Channel takes over. Explorer will be advertising-free like TV6, competing with international services such as Discovery and UPC's Extreme Sports.
Another new service is Reality TV, following the dangerous work of police, firefighters and paramedics and their struggle with natural disasters and human emergencies. This channel will be on air 24 hours a day.
Viasat Sports, a medium-pay service launched in Sweden in 1999, will now expand into Denmark and to Viasat Gold card holders. Apart from Viasat the sports service is also available in several major Swedish cable networks and will also be available in Denmark.
In Norway, the existing Viasat Plus - a 'complementary service' to MTG's leading generalist free-to-air operation TV3 - will be replaced by a local version of ZTV, MTG's MTV clone, established in the early Ninieties in Sweden. Attempts were made in the mid-Nineties to launch ZTV in Denmark and Norway, but to little success.
MTG now claims 527,000 digital subscribers (ie almost half of the total subscriber stock) in Scandinavia as per end of September. New figures will be released at the beginning of January. Matthew Hooper says, "they will be considerably higher."
New digital German channels
Germany's Tele Munchen Group and Get On Air are launching new digital pay TV channels, scheduled to take off during the coming year.
The first to be launched will be a kids channel called 'Toongate', due to launch in March. Sole owner of the new offer, which will become part of the new German cable operators' packages, including iesy in the German state of Hesse, is Get On Air which is owned 75 per cent by Jochen Kroehne. Previously he was the General Manager of TM3, a channel owned solely by TMG and NewsCorp until it was sold to KirchGroup in summer 2000. Some 25 per cent of Get On Air is held by Thomas Broenauer, TM3's late CFO.
Get On Air was also asked to build up the TMG's new digital cable channels all being marketed under the 'gate' - brand. Actiongate is scheduled to take off around mid 2002, Homegate, a service channel for house and garden, is due to be launched by Autumn. TMG is Germany's second largest producer and sales house for TV programmes run and owned by Herbert Kloiber.
Holiday PPV film offer
Canal Satellite is offering the PPV films for one euro over the holiday
period. Presumably the idea is not only to provide good customer relations,
but also to get subscribers used to ordering PPV movies on the platform
and linking the set top box to the phone. The usual price for PPV movies
on Canal Satellite is €5.30.
New
directors on Swedish TV
The board of TV4, Sweden's biggest channel, appointed a new Director of
Programming (19/12/01) to succeed Jan Scherman, whose promotion to the
position as Managing Director. The move made public a month ago has now
been confirmed by the station's board. The new director of programming
is Eva Swartz, who has been head of TV4's entertainment and feature department
for the last four years.
This appointment did not come as a shock to the Swedish media industry.
Swartz's name has been the most frequent in the speculation about who
will succeed Scherman, the ex-journalist and former head of TV4's News
department, who has developed into a commercially conscious advocate of
TV4's position as a 'leading, broad and popular channel.'
Swartz is generally considered to have done a great job in her capacity
as head of entertainment and features. She has made TV4 the winner not
only of the crucial weekends (by Swedish versions of international hits
such as 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?', and 'Gladiators') but also developed
several week-day feature hits in areas like travel, DIY and food magazines.
Swartz, now 45, has a long background in television. She was recruited
to TV4 from Meter where she had worked her way up to the position of MD.
Meter has long been the leading supplier of programmes to TV4.
Swartz will start her new job on Jan 1. The same day Sweden's public service
broadcaster, Sveriges Television, SVT, will see a new Director of Programming
installed. That position has been vacant since November of 2000, when
Mikael Olsson, an ex-public affairs producer, was fired. He had held the
post for just 11 months, before his dismissal for various 'irregular'
private financial and tax affairs, and unlawful use of a company credit
card. It took the new board over a year to appoint a new Director of Programming
- Leif Jakobsson, Head of Finnish public service broadcaster YLE's Swedish
department, and earlier head of culture at SVT.
Showtime
Egyptian head appointed
Middle East digital pay TV network Showtime has appointed Amer Elwy to
the position of Regional Sales and Marketing Director for Egypt and North
Africa.
Elwy joined Showtime from Motorola, where he was country manager for Saudi
Arabia. He also has experience in the region's satellite TV industry,
gained when launching the Disney Channel Middle East service. Previous
blue chip experience includes Mars and Coca-Cola.
Elwy commented, "Showtime has an impressive track record of growth because
subscribers know that they get the best family entertainment and added
value services. Showtime is leading the digital convergence revolution
in the Middle East. We will launch the first interactive television service
in the region early in 2002 and offer subscribers an even wider range
of added value services."
He adds, "The next year will be very exciting with the launch of SmartTV
complementing the best in Western entertainment for an Arabic family audience
on Showtime, and a further increase in the range of quality free-to-air
Arabic channels available to subscribers from the NileSat satellite."
Playmates on mobile phones
"Everything you can imagine related to Playboy," will be available to download to mobile phones said Mika Eriksson, Chief Executive of Wireless Entertainment Service Finland. "You'll be able to download Playmates and other pictures for a small fee," he said.
WES was chosen to help Internet site Playboy.com, a majority owned subsidiary of Playboy Enterprises Inc, to put selected content online as mobile phone and Internet technologies converge.
Eriksson said sex had a significant growth potential on the mobile phone space as telecoms operators were keen to find new services consumers would be willing to pay for, reported Reuters.
"On the Internet sex is the only thing that has been profitable and it's one area we focusing on," he said.
The service is expected to be available in the first quarter of next year. Belgium will be the first to switch it on but Playboy entertainment will soon be available in other countries, including Britain and the United States.
Similar to the beginnings of television, the first pictures to be downloaded will be black and white because most handsets do not have colour screens. But by the end of 2002 more advanced phones are expected on the market, capable of handling high-quality colour pictures and images.
"Our research shows that we can anticipate approximately one-million downloads in the first year alone," Larry Lux, President of Playboy.com, said in a statement.
Parent company Playboy is best known for publishing its eponymous magazine, launched almost 50 years ago. It has also branched out into online media and digital television.
Blomfield dismissed
Foxtel Chief Executive Jim Blomfield has been dismissed from his job in a surprise move by Australia's largest pay TV platform.
Blomfield had been in the position since March 2000 and he had overseen the rise in subscriber numbers to 770,000 and the winning of rights to Australia's most popular winter game, Australian Rules Football. There was no announcement of what Blomfield's next role will be and no reason was given for the decision which was taken by News Corp which owns 25 per cent of Foxtel, but which has sole responsibility for hiring and firing the Chief Executive. Fox Studios Australia's chief executive Kim Williams replaces Blomfield.
Speculation about the reason for Blomfield's departure centre around a possible rift with Chairman Sam Chisholm, the former BSkyB TV boss who was brought in by Australia's dominant telecommunications company Telstra which owns 50 per cent of Foxtel in mid-year. PBL, which has the remaining 25 per cent of the company, did not comment on the move.
Foxtel faces a number of important decisions about its strategy in 2002. In order to increase per subscriber revenue and cut churn it is anxious to digitise the network. But a court decision obliging it to open the network to competitors has halted progress because the shareholders do not want rivals to have access to the upgraded system.
Foxtel is preparing for a $50 million loss on the financial year, compared to $31 million the year before because the falling value of the Australian dollar has increased programme costs, a situation exacerbated by the premium prices locked into long term contracts for content signed with US studios when Foxtel was set up.
Vivenid withholds content for Kirch
Vivendi Universal is withholding further TV programmes and films from Germany's Kirch Gruppe, until it receives payment on outstanding bills of some $100 million.
Germany's Kirch Gruppe has DM11 billion to 12 billion (€5.6 billion to €6.1 billion) debt, and may have to meet a further DM5 billion in contingent liabilities next year plus it faces several expensive legal suits.
Vivendi Universal and Kirch have had a long-standing dispute after Kirch sued Universal in December 1999 over alleged breach of contract, claiming that the quality of films and TV series had deteriorated.
A Californian court rejected the claim and Universal subsequently launched a counter-suit scheduled to be heard by mid-January in Los Angeles - hence Universal withholding content.
Kirch's Premiere World is the only substantial pay-TV platform in Germany, with roughly 2.5 million subscribers, though Universal would prefer to sell its content to other rights buyers in Germany.
Univision in Grupo deal
Hispanic broadcasting network Univision, which has 80 per cent of the US Hispanic TV market, has won exclusive rights to programming produced by Mexico's Grupo Televisa and Cisnero Group's Venevision.
Univision now has 15 years of exclusive rights to Grupo Televisa's programmes. The move comes just two months after NBC, the broadcasting arm of General Electric, bought Telemundo, Univision's smaller rival, for $2.7 billion.
Univision has existing deals with Televisa for its current two channels and the new deal covers a second network that Univision plans to launch in January, to be known as Telefutura.
Jerrold Perenchio, Univision Chief Executive, was reported as saying that the new deal would enable all three companies to accelerate future growth by capitalising on the tremendous opportunities in the US Hispanic market."
Televisa is also making a $375 million investment in Univision, which will increase its stake from six per cent to 15 per cent. Venevision's stake will rise from 18 per cent to 19 per cent.
NTL bondholders rail at delays
A swap of UK cableco NTL's new equity for most or all of NTL's $17 billion (£12 billion) debt now looks inevitable in expected new year restructuring for the company.
Consequently minority UK and European bondholders have appointed Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, the international law firm, to represent their interests to ensure their claims are not over-ridden by those of the banks and shareholders, including management and staff who own about 11 per cent of NTL equity. A shortlist of US law firms is being drawn up by US bondholders.
Some US bondholders have called for NTL management - including Chief Executive Barclay Knapp, and Chief Finance Officer John Gregg - to be replaced for not starting the restructuring process sooner.
Banks lent NTL-owned companies about $6 billion as at September 30, secured against NTL assets, with prior claim to bondholders among the company's creditors.
NTL is estimated to have outstanding senior bonds of equal status worth $7.4 billion. The company's assets are currently valued at anywhere between $7 billion and $25 billion because of uncertainty surrounding the company's future.
Bonds have fallen to about 30 per cent of face value because of concerns over NTL's long-term funding and its ability to meet heavy bank and bond interest from its cash and bank facilities.
SES Global appoints Americom directors
Satellite operator SES Global, whose business interests now include fully-owned SES Astra in Europe, SES Americom in the United States, and strategic investments in regional satellite operators in Asia, Europe and Latin America, has appointed the Board of Directors of SES Americom.
The Board of Directors of SES Americom is chaired by Romain Bausch, President and CEO of SES Global. Members of the Board are:
Robert Bednarek
Ferdinand Kayser
Dean Olmstead
Jurgen Schulte
Rene Steichen
The Board of Directors of SES Americom has appointed the Management Committee of the company, headed by Dean Olmstead, President and CEO. Members of the SES Americom Management Committee are: Walter Braun, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Andreas Georghiou, Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing, and Mark O'Leary, General Counsel. A Chief Financial Officer (CFO) will be appointed. In the interim, Dean Olmstead takes on additional responsibilities as CFO.