British prime minister Boris Johnson has reiterated the government’s plans to review sanctions for non-payment of the TV licence fee. The treasury’s chief secretary Rishi Sunak confirmed that the PM has ordered a review to the process which can see non-payment end in a court appearance and potential fines of up to £1,000. Speaking on […]
Sports streaming service DAZN, Portuguese service provider MEO and Israeli telco Partner Communications were among the winners at last night’s VideoTech Innovation Awards in London. Sports streaming pioneer DAZN took the trophy for OTT service of the Year, while MEO and Partner jointly won the prize for TV App of the Year. Partner also featured […]
Comcast-owned studio/broadcaster Sky has unveiled plans to build a new 32-acre, state-of-the-art TV and film studio next door to the world-famous Elstree Studios. Sky says the proposed development represents a significant new investment in the UK and European creative economy and will be made with Comcast’s blessing. According to Sky, the new Sky Studios Elstree […]
Europe is in danger of falling behind the rest of the world in delivering digital innovation, with an urgent need for a new approach to regulation, according to Joakim Reiter, group external affairs director, Vodafone Group. However, the EU has an opportunity to catch up and take advantage of its biggest asset, the scale of […]
Amazon is to bring over 15 new Fire TV Edition devices to the North American and European markets, is to take its new Fire TV Cube to the UK, Germany and Japan. New products include what Amazon describes as he world’s first Fire TV Edition smart TV with built-in far-field voice control, the first OLED […]
The BBC is developing a voice assistant to rival Amazon’s Alexa, the broadcaster has revealed. The public service voice assistant – which is being developed with the working title ‘Beeb’ – has been created by an in-house team. It will launch next year and will understand British regional accents – a common problem for voice […]
Sports media technology firm Delatre has published a wide-ranging analysis of the sports sector (Where the Money is Going: The Future of Sports Entertainment), in which it estimates that global distributors of sports content currently commit 15% of their total budget to the development of the OTT technology stack. In the US alone, this figure […]
France Télévisions director-general Delphine Ernotte used an appearance at the Series Mania event in Lille yesterday to express her frustration at regulatory delays that have prevented France’s main broadcasters from making progress with their joint streaming project. Ernotte was speaking after the European Commission, which had been examining the Salto project, the SVOD JV between […]
Disney completes its US$71 billion acquisition of the bulk of 21st Century Fox today, paving the way to create what chairman and CEO Bog Iger described as “the preeminent global entertainment company, well positioned to lead in an incredibly dynamic and transformative era.” Disney is acquiring 21st Century Fox’s film production businesses Twentieth Century Fox, […]
RTL aims to grow the number of paying subscribers to its SVOD services to three million and to grow revenue from video-on-demand to €360 million by 2021, after the number of paying subscribers to its services passed the one million mark at the end of last year. CEO Bert Habets said the group would focus […]
