More Industry News articles

It was a good night for ITV1 last night, with a Hollywood movie, soaps and a cop-based drama all bagging healthy audiences.As is only to be expected, Emmerdale and Coronation Street drew the biggest audiences of the evening, with peaks of 8 million adults and 9.8 million adults respectively.Emmerdale, on at 7pm, saw Daz’s birthday… Continue reading Strong Night For ITV1

ITV is making further inroads into becoming a broadcaster to be proud of, according to Simon Shaps, director of television, who was unveiling the ITV1 spring/summer programme commissions in London this afternoon.With four new commissions over different genres, Shaps stated that the broadcaster’s flagship channel would have more original and first run shows than ever… Continue reading ITV1 Spring/Summer Schedule Makes Inroads Into Shaps’ Masterplan

Apple TV is launching this week in the US for $299, allowing users to wirelessly transfer downloaded video content to their TV from their PC.Steve Jobs, Apple founder unveiled Apple TV in January, alongside the iPhone, a touch-screen handset that combines a mobile phone, internet access, and iPod music and video playback features (see Apple… Continue reading Apple TV To Launch

Ofcom has officially announced an inquiry into the use of premium-rate telecoms services (PRS) in television programmes.The inquiry will be lead by Richard Eyre, non-executive member of the Ofcom Content Board, and will include input from ICSTIS, the premium rate phone line regulator, which is already investigating some cases (see ICSTIS Outlines Plan To Tackle… Continue reading Ofcom Announces Phone-In Investigation

The Daily Express and its Sunday counterpart have overhauled their websites to make greater use of web 2.0 and community features.The new site was soft launched yesterday, with the Daily Star set to follow suit with its own major refit later in the year.“We have a loyal online readership and, while we’ve worked hard to… Continue reading Daily Express Overhauls Website

Virgin Media and Setanta Sports are in senior level talks about launching a rival channel to Sky Sports News, according to reports in Broadcast.A source at Setanta told the publication that talks had begun between the companies and that teaming up would be an obvious strategy.“It makes a lot of sense,” said the source. “Setanta… Continue reading Virgin And Setanta Join Forces For Sky Sports News Rival

The UK could lose between £4.1 billion and £15.6 billion in private and social value if high definition channels on the Freeview platform are not developed, according to research for the BBC.Consultant Indepen said the loss included the cost to viewers in switching to other platforms to get HD as well as the impact of… Continue reading UK To Lose Billions If HD Channels On Freeview Not Developed

Telecoms giant Vodafone has admitted that 11,500 text votes for Saturday’s Dancing On Ice final on ITV1 were not counted due to a technical error.The votes were not delivered to ITV until Monday morning and customers involved will be refunded the cost of their texts this week, the company said.ITV has said that these delayed… Continue reading Dancing On Ice Finale Misses Out On 11,500 Text Votes

Consumer awareness of digital switchover is still low, with a “drastic boost” needed, according to the head of communications at price comparison website uSwitch.com.Steve Weller’s comments follow last week’s announcement by Ofcom suggesting that less than half of Britons are still using the traditional analogue technology on their televisions.Research carried out by uSwitch suggests that… Continue reading Consumers Not Switched On To Switchover

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, stood up at 12.30pm to reveal his tax and spending plans for the next year, in what is likely to be his last budget presentation. Key points of Iron Gordon’s eleventh budget are as follows…Inflation will fall to 2% this year. In 2008 and 2009 inflation will also be… Continue reading Budget 2007 Coverage – The Chancellor’s Speech Live