Conditional Dealing Delayed For Yes Television

Yes Television’s stock market flotation, scheduled to get underway today, has been postponed after a plunge in US stock at the end of last week. The flotation was expected to value the company at around £600m, with Yes TV hoping to make £193m to fund its national roll-out.

Yes Television aims to provide video-on-demand services to television channels, whereby viewers would be able to control their TVs like videos. Programmes could be stopped, rewound, paused and fast-forwarded as high-quality, MPEG2 pictures. Yes TV has content arrangements with companies including Sony Pictures, Warner Bros and Buena Vista International Television. It was awarded a non-exclusive local delivery licence for the UK in March this year.

Yes TV owners Elmsdale Media announced the conclusion of an agreement with Kingston Vision today. This will see Yes TV providing a video-on-demand service as part of Kingston Vision’s multichannel digital TV. The two companies will begin technical Beta trails in the Hull area this summer, before the service is publicly launched later in the year. The news follows an announcement last week that NTL has terminated its agreement with Yes TV, with which it had been running a trial of commercial video-on-demand in Cardiff. The trial, which began in January 1999, will conclude in July this year. NTL is thought to be looking at other video-on-demand companies.

Yes TV’s future hopes are thought to be largely pinned on ADSL, the technology under development at BT. Later this month the BT Yes Television pilot is scheduled to launch in the Hammersmith and Chiswick areas of London. This will offer video-on-demand together with internet access and email services, available through the subscriber’s television.

Yes TV: 0207 462 5600