BSkyB is still seeking funds to help establish its digital television projects *BSkyB Talks To Bank Over Digital Deal. The company is reported to be looking for over £600 million to set-up its digital TV venture. This badly needed cash injection will be used to subsidise the price of set-top boxes.
The ITC has announced that the licence fees payable by its licensees in April to December 1997 will, for the first time, remain at 1996 levels.The Commission has decided that the licence fee tariffs for 1997 should provide a total income of £15.7 million, the same requirement as the previous year. Taking account of the… Continue reading Licence Fees Remain Static
It has been reported that the BBC’s multi-million dollar joint-venture with American based Discovery Communications has been delayed until June this year *BBC To Set Up 8 New Cable Channels.This is six months later than originally forecast, and will mean that the launch of the international channels will be postponed until early 1998. The deal… Continue reading BBC Delay Link-Up With Discovery
The Internet is a medium in its infancy. It has been with us for only a few years and only recently has it begun to make inroads into the UK. At present, it provokes more questions than answers.Yet the one thing which can be said about the Internet is that it is here and big… Continue reading Focus: The Future Of The Internet
Johnston Press this morning announced results for the year ended 31 December which show turnover increasing 61% to £165 million while pre-tax profits grew by 43% to £24.1m.Overall, ad revenues were 6% ahead of the previous year, with jobs advertising the strongest performing category. Fred Johnston, chairman of the group, said: “Trading conditions in the… Continue reading Johnston Announces Record Results
C5’s share of peaktime viewing fell from 5.8% on its opening night to 2.7% on Monday evening, according to unofficial estimates. Family Affairs put in a modest performance on Sunday, with 1.5 million viewers, but this fell to around 300,000 the next night. The biggest audience for Monday evening was for the Helen Mirren film… Continue reading C5 Viewing Plummets
A special edition of Observer editor Will Hutton’s forthcoming book will be free to every reader of the paper in April.The State To Come will be cover-mounted to the paper on three consecutive weeks starting on April 6 in London, the South East and Scotland. The promotion will be supported by a national advertising campaign… Continue reading Free Book For Observer Readers
The latest Television report from Zenith Media predicts that pay-TV will account for 17% of all viewing by the end of 2001, the year it expects pay revenues to overtake advertising at £3.5 billion and £3.4 billion respectively in today’s prices.Other parts of the report state: free-to-air television will be “very much alive and well”,… Continue reading Zenith Say Pay-TV Will Outstrip Ad Revenue By 2001
After much speculation *New Rank For Carlton, Carlton Communications has confirmed that it has bought Rank Film Distributors Ltd, the UK’s largest film distributor.The deal, which cost Carlton £65 million, gives Carlton access to 740 feature films in the Rank library, the largest independent film library in the UK. The library spans over sixty years… Continue reading Carlton Buys Rank
Prior to the launch of Channel 5, Newsline interviewed several key players in advertising to discover what the general feeling was towards the new channel *ISBA Wishes Channel 5 Success. Now that Five has gone live, Newsline has gone back to the industry to find out what it thinks about the final result.Andrew Canter, group… Continue reading Channel 5 – What The Industry Thinks
