ITV

Tag: ITV

  • Nimbus’ channel named Neo Sports; Scott Ferguson to head international operations

    Nimbus’ channel named Neo Sports; Scott Ferguson to head international operations

    MUMBAI: Harish Thawani’s Nimbus Communications Limited appears to be on track as regards its stated aim to launch three sports channels between October 2006 and September 2007.

    Nimbus today announced the name of its main channel as Neo Sports and that the sports broadcasting business’ India operations have been spun off into a new wholly owned subsidiary called Nimbus Sports Broadcast Limited. The statement issued by Nimbus, however, made no mention of who would be heading channel operations in India. That announcement is expected next week.

    Nimbus’ international sports broadcast operations will meanwhile, be managed by Nimbus Media Private Limited based out of Singapore. Appointed as head of Nimbus Media is Scott Ferguson who takes charge as COO heading Asiawide sports broadcast operations.

    Scott, who has been heading sports broadcasting at Orbit in the Middle East, has over 20 years of experience and has had earlier stints at BBC TV, ITV, Sky and NTL.

    Nimbus is pumping over Rs 3 billion (approximately $ 67 million) into Phase 1 of the sports broadcasting business and will invest a further Rs 1.5 billion ($ 33 million) in Phase 2. As has already been reported, over the last one year Nimbus has secured over $ 75 million (Rs 3.4 billion) of fresh financing from 3i & Deutsche Bank.

    Meanwhile, Nimbus has commissioned Singapore based broadcast design company Brandspeed to do the channel branding and design.

  • ITV acquires ‘Six Degrees’ from BVITV

    ITV acquires ‘Six Degrees’ from BVITV

    MUMBAI: ITV has inked an exclusive UK deal with Buena Vista International Television (BVITV) for the licensing of Six Degrees, a new drama series from J.J. Abrams (creator of Lost) to air on its flagship channels ITV1 and 2. This makes Six Degrees the first US series to be aired in primetime on ITV1 in nine years.

    Six Degrees follows New Yorkers from all walks of life, whose lives unexpectedly become intertwined. The show will air in the US on the ABC Television Network this autumn in a primetime slot, following Grey’s Anatomy. Six Degrees is a story that underlines just how small the world really is, and how someone, just five metres away might be shaping our future right now.

    The show stars Jay Hernandez (Friday Night Lights), Erika Christensen (Flightplan), Bridget Moynahan (Sex and the City), Dorian Missick (Lucky Number Slevin), Hope Davis (About Schmidt) and Campbell Scott (The Secret Lives of Dentists). Its executive producers are J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk (Lost, Alias), Stu Zicherman and Raven Metzner (Elektra), and it is produced by Touchstone Television.

    ITV director of acquisitions Jay Kandola said, “My aim was to get brand defining shows for the ITV Network. I am delighted that Six Degrees will be a contemporary exciting new addition to the ITV1 and ITV2 offering.”

    BVITV EMEA executive vice president and managing director Tom Toumazis added, “As US series continue to return to primetime around the world, we are delighted to be working with ITV to launch Six Degrees in primetime on ITV1. We are sure that the series’ production pedigree and strong cast will appeal strongly to a UK audience.”

    The agreement was closed by ITV’s Kandola and BVITV executive director sales, UK and Ireland Catherine Powell.

  • UK broadcasters join forces in DTT high definition trial

    UK broadcasters join forces in DTT high definition trial

    MUMBAI: UK broadcasters BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five have joined forces to launch the UK’s first high definition (HD) trial broadcasts to terrestrial aerials.

    A specially selected 450-strong audience sample have collected their trial HD set top boxes (STBs) for the closed technical digital terrestrial television (DTT) technical trial, which is due to last six months.

    HD, the parties state, is a step change in television technology, which provides far clearer and more detailed pictures than normal standard definition TV. Each picture contains up to five times as much digital information as an ordinary TV picture.

    The trial will offer participating broadcasters and their technical partners valuable lessons about delivering HD broadcasts on a digital terrestrial network and also research how the audience enjoys this new format.

    It will help to discover whether there could be HD broadcasts on Freeview in future. The trial is being conducted under an Ofcom licence, which strictly limits the number of receivers and forbids reception of the trial stream by general members of the public. Humax and Advanced Digital Broadcast (ADB) have supplied the HD set top boxes for the trial.

    The DTT HD trial consists of low power transmissions from Crystal Palace in London on frequencies that are not suitable for high power broadcasting.

    National Grid Wireless (NGW) is transmitting the BBC’s HD stream, which went on air last month, and Red Bee Media provides play-out services.

    Arqiva is transmitting the multiplex shared by ITV, Channel 4 and Five, with Grass Valley, a business within Thomson, providing broadcast playout and video encoding equipment.

    Siemens Business Services is providing technical support for the BBC’s HD trial. The test broadcasts will use MPEG4 video coding, 8K carriers and 64QAM modulation at launch – different parameters may be tested during the trial period.

    The BBC’s trial DTT HD stream will offer identical programming to its HD trial broadcasts on satellite and cable over the trial period.

    That includes the BBC’s World Cup coverage, major Wimbledon matches and programming highlights such as Planet Earth and Bleak House.

    ITV will offer its own World Cup coverage in HD, completing the full line-up of World Cup games, as well as drama such as Agatha Christie’s Poirot specials Death on the Nile and Murder in Mesopotamia, documentaries such as Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Adventures and classic films including All Quiet on the Western Front and The Big Sleep.

    Channel 4’s HD trial broadcasts will include hit US drama series Lost and Desperate Housewives, FilmFour films and other Channel 4 programming.

    Five will be showing episodes of CSI in addition to commissioned programmes such as Tim Marlow at MOMA and movies like Cocktail.

    Research company TNS Media is conducting the research. The audience panel was selected from online volunteers who registered on a website in April. All had existing HD Ready television sets and will be supplied with special DTT HD set top boxes.

  • Major UK broadcasters team up for DTT high definition trial

    Major UK broadcasters team up for DTT high definition trial

    MUMBAI: BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five have joined forces to launch the UK’s first high definition (HD) trial broadcasts to terrestrial aerials. 

    A specially selected 450-strong audience sample collect their trial HD set top boxes this week for the closed technical digital terrestrial television (DTT) technical trial which is due to last six months.

    In an joint official statement issued, high definition is a step change in television technology which provides far clearer and more detailed pictures than normal standard definition TV. Each picture contains up to five times as much digital information as an ordinary TV picture. 

    The trial will offer participating broadcasters and their technical partners valuable lessons about delivering HD broadcasts on a digital terrestrial network and also research how the audience enjoys this new format.

    It will help to discover whether there could be HD broadcasts on Freeview in future. The trial is being conducted under an Ofcom licence which strictly limits the number of receivers and forbids reception of the trial stream by general members of the public.

    Humax and ADB (Advanced Digital Broadcast) have supplied the HD set top boxes for the trial. The DTT HD trial consists of low power transmissions from Crystal Palace in London on frequencies that are not suitable for high power broadcasting.

    National Grid Wireless (NGW) is transmitting the BBC’s HD stream, which went on air last month, and Red Bee Media provides play-out services.

    Arqiva is transmitting the multiplex shared by ITV, Channel 4 and Five, with Grass Valley, a business within Thomson, providing broadcast playout and video encoding equipment, states the official statement.

    Siemens Business Services is providing technical support for the BBC’s HD trial. The test broadcasts will use MPEG4 video coding, 8K carriers and 64QAM modulation at launch – different parameters may be tested during the trial period.

    The BBC’s trial DTT HD stream will offer identical programming to its HD trial broadcasts on satellite and cable over the trial period. That includes the BBC’s World Cup coverage, major Wimbledon matches and programming highlights such as Planet Earth and Bleak House.

  • User content sites will not replace television: BBC

    User content sites will not replace television: BBC

    MUMBAI: A few days ago UK broadcaster BBC One controller Peter Fincham
    delivered a speech to the Royal Television Society. The speech was called BBC One – Risk, Creativity, Challenges and Audiences.

    He debunked the notion that video clips on the net would replace traditional broadcast television. He says that predictions that video on- demand and 30-second clips on the video content site YouTube would replace traditional viewing showed breathless over-enthusiasm. This he says is reminiscent in some ways of the dotcom boom of the late Nineties, when all conventional businesses were apparently heading for the scrap heap.

    “It also reminds me of the late Sixties – yes, I can just remember them – when a bloke I met in a youth hostel assured me that Western civilization was on its last knees and the future lay in self-sufficient collectives living in Wales. The trouble is, it’s missing the point. Conventional television – old media, linear, whatever you want to call it – and new media don’t exist in opposition to each other. In fact, they’re perfect partners.”

    “Any anthropologist will tell you that our ancestors, although they lived in caves, had exactly the same brains and bodies that we have. Evolution just doesn’t move that fast I guess the equivalent to those cave-dwelling ancestors is people who sat in front of cathode ray televisions with a choice of two channels, the BBC and ITV. Nowadays they’ve got hundreds to choose from. And yet the evolution of taste, like evolution itself, is a very different thing. YouTube’s great. Google’s great. It’s all great. But if the conclusion you draw – and some people love drawing it – is that television is over, I think you might just be wrong.”

    He was responding to an article in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago, by Jeff Jarvis. The headline was ‘Television is dead’. Jarvis had argued that all the old definitions of TV are in shambles. Television need not be broadcast. It needn’t be produced by studios and networks. It no longer depends on big numbers and blockbusters. It doesn’t have to fit 30 and 60 minute moulds. It isn’t scheduled. It isn’t mass. The limits of television – of distribution, of tools, of economics, of scarcity – are gone.’ Jarvis had said that his teen son and his friends are getting hooked on new series not via TV but through the web and iTunes.’

    Jarvis, Fincham points out assumes that where technology leads, our tastes will follow. “He thinks that to embrace the new, it’s necessary to reject all that’s familiar. I think he’s wrong”. Fincham points to the new adaptation of Jane Eyre. “It was watched by seven million viewers. Jane Eyre had been widely admired and acclaimed – quite rightly in my view. Adaptations of classic novels don’t come much better than this. Does Jeff Jarvis’ new world of television mean there’s no room for adaptations of Jane Eyre? And if so, is that something we’ve gained? Or something we’ve lost? ”

    “People like programmes. Seems like a pretty obvious thing to say, but in our noisy and novelty-driven world it can’t be said often enough. They also like, in my view, an intelligently-balanced linear schedule. Yes, of course video on demand will enable us to create our own schedules and time-shift programmes at will. But we won’t want to do that all the time, will we? ”

    “Video on demand is to linear viewing what the microwave is to conventional cooking. Quicker, more convenient, more attuned to a busy, modern life. But it won’t improve the flavours of the cooking. User-generated content is a wonderful thing, but it won’t simply replace the professional stuff. There’s such a thing as a user-generated garden shed – you buy it from Homebase and put it together yourself. Or there’s the other sort, which I must admit I prefer – you get somebody else to do it for you. The two markets don’t cancel each other out – they co-exist. In the future, a short clip on YouTube might be all we’ve got time for. Sounds plausible, doesn’t it, but the evidence doesn’t back it up.”

  • Fifa World Cup to kick in €1.1 billion in profits

    Fifa World Cup to kick in €1.1 billion in profits

    MUMBAI: The Fifa World Cup, which kicks off in Germany next week, is on course for profits of €1.1 billion. The estimated €1billion cost of staging the event is far outweighed by revenues from the sale of media rights, sponsorship, merchandise and tickets.

    This information is contained in Sportcal.com’s newly-published World Cup 2006: The Commercial Report. Fifa, soccer’s world governing body, told the authors of the report that the World Cup would generate €1.9 billion in marketing revenue, with the sale of television and new media rights raising €1.2 billion and the remaining €700 million deriving from other sources such as sponsorship and hospitality.

    The sponsorship figure includes €60 million raised by the local organising committee. The ticketing operation, which is also being handled by the organising committee, should bring in a further €200 million.

    The figures are a feather in the cap of Fifa Marketing, the governing body’s commercial arm responsible for marketing sponsorship of Fifa and the World Cup, and of Infront Sports and Media, the Switzerland-based sports agency that marketed the media rights for the competition. Infront stands to benefit directly from its success, with profits over and above a guaranteed figure to be shared equally with Fifa. The report estimates that the guarantee was exceeded by between €200 million and €300 million for the 2002 and 2006 competitions combined.

    Fifa’s anticipated media rights revenues of €1.2 billion for the 2006 World Cup represent a 34-per-cent increase on the media rights revenues it realised at the 2002 World Cup, held in Japan and South Korea, a less favourable time zone than Germany’s for most of soccer’s top television markets.

    The UK’s BBC and ITV are among the largest contributors to overall 2006 World Cup revenues, jointly paying £105 million for the rights for the event. The largest single contribution to 2006 World Cup revenues is coming from ARD and ZDF, the German public-service broadcasters, which jointly agreed to pay €170 million for the television rights to screen the event.

    This figure Sportcal.com states was formerly eclipsed by a fee estimated at €360 million that TV Globo, the Brazilian broadcaster, undertook to pay for the rights for both the 2002 and 2006 tournaments. However, the deal was renegotiated in 2004, after a heavy recession in Latin America, with the result that TV Globo is estimated to be paying just €65 million for the rights for this year’s tournament. Fifa expects that television sales from the European market alone for the 2010 tournament would be worth €1 billion, more than double the fees paid by European broadcasters for this year’s World Cup.

    For the first time, sales of new media rights this year are set to make a significant contribution to overall revenues for this year’s World Cup. Fifa estimates, new media to bring in revenues of €120 million for the 2006 World Cup.

    Meanwhile, sponsorship revenues for this year’s competition include payments of between €25 million and €40 million each from 15 ‘official partners,’ 11 of which had also sponsored the 2002 tournament.

    From the next World Cup onwards, Fifa is restructuring its sponsorship programme, reducing the number of official partners to just six (which will, however, each pay a considerably higher fee) in response to concerns over sponsorship ‘clutter.’

    In Sportcal.com’s report Phillips, the Dutch electronics giant, cites sponsorship ‘clutter’ as one of its reasons for ending its sponsorship after this summer’s competition after a 20-year relationship with the World Cup.

    In a conference address last month, Philips’ head of sponsorship Andy Knee had issued a warning to Fifa and soccer generally not to take sponsors for granted. He said, “Partnership is a word used regularly but we are looking for a two-way partnership and there remains a mentality in football just to take the money. I expect someone to understand my business and my products, and that would make me spend more money.”

    Six local ‘suppliers,’ signed up by the organising committee, which are paying an average of €10 million each to be associated with the event.

    Fifa points out that its profits from the World Cup go towards funding its many other activities over the four-year cycle between World Cups, including less lucrative competitions such as junior and women’s World Cups and the quadrennial Confederations Cup between continental national teams champions. Between 2007 and 2010, Fifa will stage 22 such competitions, including the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

  • 3G operator in UK to launch mobile World Cup TV show

    3G operator in UK to launch mobile World Cup TV show

    MUMBAI: 3G, the UK-based mobile media company, is set to launch the first commissioned sports programming for Mobile TV. Berlin or Bust, which airs on 5 June, will be an irreverent and entertaining look at the tournament, providing fans with previews and reviews of every day’s action throughout the year’s most important event.

    Fronted by presenter Sam Delaney and with a host of footy-loving celebrities on the guest list, from the Kaiser Chiefs to Ray Winstone, Berlin or Bust will be a riotous magazine show, in contrast to the BBC and ITV suited and booted studio commentary teams. Football legend Ray Wilkins will join Sam to analyse the day’s play and news from the tournament, states an official release.

    3 customers will be able to tune in to two daily editions of Berlin or Bust’s flagship show, timed to ensure fans are kept entertained while on their way to watch games or on their way back from the pub.

    The show will be available free to all 3 customers throughout the tournament. 3’s World Cup related mobile TV programming also includes free 4-minute highlight packages of all 64 matches just five minutes after each match ends, adds the release.

    The preview show does what it says on the tin – previewing what could happen during the day’s matches, players to watch out for and refs that could prove tricky. The show will also include special reports from Ally McCoist “Man in Germany”, reporting on the latest gossip from the England camp and updates on what is happening on the ground in Germany. Preview Show special features include:

    * The Jock Report – 3’s embittered Scottish correspondent gives his unashamedly biased and abusive assessment of the day’s England news.
    * Ref Watch – A potted biog of the referees of the day’s key matches as the presenters pick holes in their performance so far.
    * Face-Off – The worst pre-match painted faces and comedy hats.
    * Journo-balls- Sam’s pick of the strange stuff, outrageous predictions and general news from the morning’s papers.
    * Flashpoint – The two players in the game most likely to clash.
    * Fan Updates – Video rants, messages, crazy celebrations; a round-up of the best amusing World Cup related content sent in by 3 customers.

    Fans will be able to access further updates throughout the day until the Review Show airs after the final match with more features and frank opinions on the day’s action. Features include:

    * Seven Faces of Sven – A gallery of the seven separate facial expressions of the England manager as he manages the team in his last major tournament.
    * The Furniture Store – A quick look at the World Cup tables to see who’s on the up, who’s struggling and who’s already heading home.
    * Ref Rant – The fans get their say about the refs of the day, with prizes for the best.
    * Table top analysis – pub-style tactical analysis featuring pint pots and ashtrays as the key players.
    * The Sub Plot – The hidden theme of the match, noticed by “the 3 sofa” whilst everyone else was focusing on the main action.

    3G UK marketing director Graeme Oxby says, “This is the first World Cup since the launch of 3G and we expect to see a massive difference in the way fans keep up with the action when compared to 2002. 3 has been keeping football fans up-to-date for the last three seasons with Premiership highlights, match updates and news and now its time to take this expertise into the World’s biggest sporting tournament. The launch of Berlin or Bust means that fans can now enjoy their best ever World Cup by making sure they are never out of touch with the action.”

    3’s free World Cup content will also include match highlights made available following every game, five minutes after the final whistle. A new match centre application for the 2006 Fifa World Cup will also offer minute-by-minute text commentary and in-match statistics from every game.

  • BBC, ITV to share coverage of Euro 2008

    BBC, ITV to share coverage of Euro 2008

    MUMBAI: UK pubcaster The BBC and ITV have announced plans for shared coverage of the UEFA Euro 2008 Championships in Austria and Switzerland.

    Live coverage of the group stage will begin on 7 June with the BBC broadcasting the opening match between Switzerland and the Czech Republic, and ITV broadcasting the later match between Portugal and Turkey.

    During the latter stage of the group phase where matches are played simultaneously, games will be shown live on BBC One, BBCi, ITV1 and ITV channels. Both broadcasters will simulcast all of their games online.

    Both broadcasters will show live coverage of two quarter finals and will show one semi-final each, with ITV taking the first pick.

    The final will be shown live on BBC One on Sunday 29 June, with highlights on ITV1 later in the evening.

    BBC director of sport Roger Mosey said, “We’re confident many millions of people will enjoy the tournament on BBC television, radio and online. There will be plenty of familiar faces on the pitch, and some great matches in prospect.”

    ITV director of news and sport Mark Sharman said, “Euro 2008 is one of the highlights of a huge year of live football on ITV and, with some of the world’s best players taking part, we are looking forward to an exciting tournament.”

  • ITV launches gaming network on Freeview

    ITV launches gaming network on Freeview

    MUMBAI: UK terrestrial ITV launched its newest digital channel, the interactive gaming network ITV Play, on Freeview, with programming to include the first show spawned from the broadcaster’s purchase of the Friends Reunited website.

    The channel airs daily from noon to 4 a.m. on Freeview, and is also available to be streamed live on itv.com. ITV Play launched at the end of March in the after-midnight slots on ITV1 and ITV2. The channel will be ITV’s first non-advertising-funded channel.

    Programming in the channel line-up includes The Mint, currently also airing on ITV1, which offers up cash prizes for a range of challenges; and This Morning Puzzle Book, produced by the This Morning team from Manchester.

    Friends Reunited – The School Run builds on the interest in nostalgia that is at the heart of the Friends Reunited website, which ITV bought last December. Based on a huge interactive board game, the show brings classmates together to test their knowledge of facts and trivia from a particular year.

    Also, all interactive programming, games and quizzes on ITV’s family of conventional TV channels, online and mobile will fall under the ITV Play banner, including the new Bullseye game, only available on ITV.com.

    The venture is part of ITV’s larger strategy to create new revenue streams and become a viable multi-channel offering. It aims to invest more in the participation TV sector to help build a long-term sustainable business by using its programme brands to create interactive formats.

    ITV Play controller William van Rest said, “ITV has a great heritage in producing the biggest and best live, interactive programmes and this is exactly what we want to do with ITV Play.”

  • Content providers criticize proposed EU broadcasting rules

    Content providers criticize proposed EU broadcasting rules

    MUMBAI: ITV, BT Group, Vodafone, Yahoo, Intel and Cisco are leading an alliance among the media and technology companies that have teamed to criticize proposed European Union broadcasting rules that they believe will restrict the growth of new media formats.

    The European Commission is proposing that rules for traditional media be extended to new media, like content provided over broadband or mobile phones. Such regulations would include limits on hate speech, advertising and children-appropriate content.

    The alliance takes up the issue of proposed legislation that calls for mobile content and IPTV programming to abide by the same rules as that on traditional broadcasters. The consortium maintains that these rules-including restrictions on advertising-would inhibit investment in multiplatform content.

    “Citizen media such as blogs, videocasts and the like are one of the most exciting developments enabled by new technology,” the companies said in a statement. “This phenomenon has the potential to create new businesses … but this proposed regulation severely risks stunting its growth.”
    The EU didn’t respond to the group, but has repeatedly insisted that they don’t intend to regulate the internet. It would need the support of the European Parliament and 25 member governments in order to be approved.