IN BRIEF
DISNEY KIDS SOAP
TV series
Violetta
– Disney
Channel's first full investment
in the telenovela genre, a
co-production within Disney
Channel LatAm, Europe,
Middle East, Africa and
Argentina's Pol-ka Produc-
ciones - launched in the UK
in July. The English version
is dubbed the UK Channel's
first 'soap' for kids.
Attracting strong viewing
figures in LatAm and Europe
(20m cumulative audience in
Europe)
Violetta
features a
multinational cast and tells
the story of amusically
talented teenager from
Buenos Aires in a series of
45 minute episodes.
TELIASONERA 4G
ROAMING
TeliaSonera has won Best
LTE/4G Roaming Product
and Service at the 2013 LTE
Awards in Amsterdam for
enabling Danish TeliaSonera
customers to use their 4G
connection in Sweden.
TeliaSonera launched the 4G
roaming service in February
2013, as the first company in
Europe. During 2013 the 4G
roaming service will be
launched in other
TeliaSonera markets, and
the company is also opening
up roaming agreements with
operators outside its own
markets.
TV NETWORK FOR
DOGS
Forbes reports that Israeli-
based Jasmine TV is
launching DOGTV nationwide
on Direct TV in the US,
offering dog-friendly
programming scientifically
developed to provide the
right company for dogs
when left alone. DOGTV CEO
Gilad Neumann says that pet
experts have long
recommended that pet
owners leave TVs or radios
on for their lonely animals.
The channel will be available
in over 20m households,
24/7, for $4.99 a month. With
dogs in about 40% of US
households, it could be a
winning formula.
RFE/RL reports interference pattern
Why pay-TV goes TV
Everywhere
THE CHANNEL
|
MEDIA MARKETS
Radio New Zealand International
has completed a leadership
programme for the Pacific Media
Assistance Scheme. PACMAS is
a 10-year project that supports
better governance in the Pacific
region by contributing to the
development of a diverse,
independent and professional
Pacific media. It is funded by
Australian government agency
AusAID, and managed by the
Australian Broadcasting
Corporation. The inaugural
programme was completed by
Nanise Fifita, General Manager
of the Tonga Broadcasting
Commission (below), who took
up a secondment at Radio New
Zealand to focus on leadership
development, spending time with
all of RNZ's senior managers.
RNZI Manager Linden Clark says
she hopes the successful ten
month project can be replicated
in the region again.
Pacific
leaders
Since late April, RFE/RL's weekly
Azerbaijani language news
magazine, broadcast to
Azerbaijan on the Medya TV
channel on a popular Turksat
satellite from Turkey, has been
interrupted with jittery images,
distorted sound and static.
On three successive
weekends the show,
Different
News
(
Ferqli Kheberler
),
registered interference that
began four to five minutes into
programming and ended shortly
after it concluded. In an attempt
to get around the interference,
the show was placed on a
different satellite and two other
channels, Denge TV and Sivas
A report in
The Economist
says
that pay-TV executives hope to
hang on to customers by letting
them watch shows on their
mobile devices. Now that online
video has freed viewers to watch
programmes wherever they wish,
pay-TV is taking part in this
liberation movement, by offering
subscribers “TV Everywhere”.
Users have an access code to
watch channels streamed live —
or individual shows on demand
— on their mobile devices, much
as they can on Netflix or Hulu. It
costs only a few million dollars to
build the online platform to
deliver it, but it could work
wonders in persuading
subscribers to stay with their
costly pay-TV packages.
It also helps attract young
consumers to pay-TV, and the
real pay-off from TV Everywhere
will become evident over the next
decade, as today’s teenagers
establish their own households.
Each young American who
subscribes to pay-TV will
probably spend around $40,000
over their lifetime in subscription
fees, so if TV Everywhere deters
5% of current subscribing
households from cutting the
cord, it will protect around
$4.2bn a year in revenues.
So far TV Everywhere’s rollout
has been slow. Some companies
still restrict use of the service
outside the home, limiting its
appeal. Many have done too little
to promote it to consumers. In
the UK BSkyB has been offering
Sky Go for two years, and around
35% of its 10.3m subscribers now
use it. No American operator has
had such a big uptake.
The TV Everywhere market is
not without interesting twists.
The three broadcasters that own
Hulu —Disney, 21st Century Fox
and NBC Universal — want to
see the site, which had revenues
of nearly $700m in 2012, become
profitable. But too much success
might upset traditional pay-TV
firms, which are big customers
for the three broadcasters. So
the three owners called off
Hulu's sale. Were they worried
that the business could
eventually disrupt their own, if
the new owner made a success
of it?
SRT. On each occasion,
engineers with the US
International Broadcasting
Bureau documented electronic
noise and distortion.
Acting President and CEO
Kevin Klose (above) says that
RFE/RL journalists have been
targeted in numerous cases of
harassment in recent years, and
this interference amounts to a
continuation, and indeed an
escalation, of such acts. Klose
says these developments are
serious, as they concern possible
violations of well-established
international treaties, norms and
standards regarding media
freedom, and he called on the
Azeri and international
telecommunications authorities
to investigate.
14
|
ISSUE 2 2013
|
THE CHANNEL
