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Middle East platform Orbit is said to be ending its commitment to Telecom Italia uplink division Telespazio. Altaf Alimohamed, chief executive of Star Select, which shares the Orbit platform, confirmed to Interspace that there have been outage problems "while Orbit re-configured its uplink [to Arabsat]". He said he expected further "minor problems" to continue for the next 30 days." Alimohammed said part of the problem has been the recent deregulation of Italian telecom policies. "Therefore we will continue to reconfigure our uplink equipment so as to minimise our dependence on Telespazio," said Alimohammed. Orbit on November 1 will launch The Arabic Series Channel.
Sesat is slated to launch on November 21 from Baikonur. Eutelsat’s long-awaited ‘Siberia-Europe’ satellite, built under a joint-venture arrangement between Russian engine-builders NPO-PM and Alcatel, is destined for 36 degrees East.
Bloomberg TV has signed a three year deal to supply ProSieben’s new N24 news channel with business and financial news. N24 launches in January. ProSieben Media AG, recently integrated into the Kirch Group, owns and runs the two commercial channels ProSieben and Kabel 1, enjoying 13.1 per cent market share of German households.
Since October 4, the Italian thematic channel Marco Polo is also available in Poland. The agreement signed between the producer of the channel, Sitcom and Cyfra Plus, the Polish digital platform backed by Canal Plus, provides for satellite and cable distribution of Marco Polo’s programmes in Polish.
MTV has launched an advertising window in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The hourly two-minute window in embedded into the music channel’s German-language feed, giving national and international advertising clients the possibility to exclusively target the Swiss audience with their commercials. The marketing of the Swiss window which is present each hour during MTV’s 24 hour schedule is handled by domestic media company CineCom & Medi a AG. MTV Switzerland which reaches cable headends through a tailored digital satellite feed can be received by more than one million cable homes.
BSkyB breached the ITC programme taste and decency and sponsorship codes with its August telecast of Robbie Williams: Live in Concert show. The ITC regulator found that Williams used bad language and sexual gestures, even though after 2100, and breached Section 1.2(I) of the programme code. Additionally BSkyB’s presenter had twice referred to The Sun newspaper "in a promotional manner…without editorial justification", itself a breach (Section 10.6) of the programme code. BSkyB told the ITC it will be more careful in briefing performers at live events. Bloomberg TV fell foul of the ITC during its Trading Day show thanks to sponsorship from investment bankers JP Morgan, which is not permitted under Rule 6.2 which forbids sponsorship during "business and financial reports where they contain interpretation and comment."
BSkyB has hired John Swingewood, formerly British Telecom’s head of Internet and new media, as its director of new media content and technologies. He will report directly to BSkyB’s chief executive Tony Ball, and be responsible for the strategy and development of BSkyB’s broadband Internet, mobile phone and other new media properties, and content. Swingewood starts on November 1.
Russian media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky has bought $6.7 million worth of Central European Media Enterprises (CME) stock, the troubled Central European TV outfit. The deal represents about 17.27 per cent of CME’s stock. CME is majority-owned by Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics empire. CME controls six television stations in central and eastern Europe.
Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC) has been criticised by the ITC for allowing an advertisement for a video Banned from TV which purports to show people in extreme situations, including real life car accidents, facing a firing squad, being gored by a bull, etc. MBC defended its decis ion to show the ad saying it was post-watershed and that no actual violence appeared on screen. The ITC judged the ad as likely to cause gross offence and is unsuitable for showing "at any time on television".

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