Zee Telefilms will buy out Star TV’s 50 per cent interest in Asia Today, the Zee/Star TV subsidiary which broadcasts Zee TV, Zee Cinema and Zee News. Patco, the operating company behind SitiCable is also included in the transaction, valued at $296.5 million. The agreement comes at the end of a long and sometime bitter dispute, fuelled by court actions between the two parties. The deal will leave Star TV as a minority shareholder (3.5 per cent) in Zee. The decision comes in the wake of Rupert Murdoch’s reported decision to withdraw from India after being frustrated by difficulties with the country’s regulators. ZeeTV’s shares rose some 60 per cent in September.

Sony-owned Columbia Tristar, one of German music channel Viva’s main shareholders, is to sell out of the German music channel over a dispute concerning plans to float it on the German stock exchange. According to German newspaper reports, Sony is asking for more than US$25 million for its 23.7 per cent stake. Viva’s managing director Dieter Gorny has confirmed that Sony intends to pull out. However he has declined to elaborate on whether existing main shareholders Time Warner, EMI and Universal will buy Columbia Tristar’s stake or a new partner will be taken on board. Gorny said that the schedule for the flotation remains unaffected. It is expected that Viva’s shareholders will make a firm decision about the flotation in October or November. Sony had been opposed to the decision to take the channel to the stock market.

A complaint made by BSkyB about the terms under which BBC News 24 was offered to cable and satellite operators has been rejected by the European Commission. BSkyB had complained that the BBC offering a licence fee-funded service free of charge to operators contravened EU law. However, the EC ruled that state funding for a channel such as News 24 was justifiable because it covered "public service remits for public broadcasting".

Investors have reacted positively to Lockheed Martin’s announced plans to sell eight non-core business units. Lockheed Martin has had a difficult year that included rocket failures and a loss of confidence amongst investors. More recently the company received some good news with the successful launch of the first Lockheed Martin Intersputnik (LMI) satellite, the first of the four planned LMI spacecraft. LMI-1 took off onboard an International Launch Services Proton Block DM rocket from Baikonur. Over 50 per cent of the satellite’s capacity has been booked by Russian telecom operators Rostelecom, Sistema Telecom and others. Meanwhile, Locheed Martin is now waiting for US Congressional approval for its proposed purchase of the remaining 51 per cent of Comsat, the US signatory to Intelsat.

German public broadcaster ZDF will launch its planned theatre channel in time for Christmas. A ZDF spokeswoman revealed that the launch will take place on December 9. "Details about the programme structure will be fixed six weeks ahead of the launch," she said. The new thematic channel will be distributed on cable and satellite as part of ZDF’s free-to-air digital package.

Norwegian component manufacturer Tandberg Television has bought the digital TV activities of News Digital Systems (NDS) for NKr2.177 billion (pounds 170 million). NDS is a unit of News Corp, and run from London by Dr Abe Peled. Oslo-based Tandberg says it will finance the deal partly through a NKr1.2 billion share issue but News Corp/NDS will hold 20 per cent in the Norwegian company upon completion. Crucially, the deal does not include NDS’ conditional access division.

Delayed a month by the recent earthquake, CNN’s latest joint venture CNN Turk will go live on October 11. Initially it will be broadcast over the air on a UHF feed and on cable. But a senior CNN executive says it will soon be available on satellite over the whole region. Turner Broadcasting senior executive Ron Ciccone said the Turkish venture was perhaps the one of the most exciting yet in CNN’s development, "first, because there are some 70 million Turks who will be able to see this channel, and elsewhere in Europe where the Turkish expatriate audience takes the total audience potential to 100 million." CNN expect distribution to reach seven to eight million initially. CNNI’s English-language feed remains on Turk Telekom "which will complement the Turkish-language channel," said Ciccone. CNN Turk is backed by Turner Broadcasting and Turkish publishing conglomerate Dogan Group.