TELE SATELLIT European Satellite News - English Version Number 6, Week ending 3 July 1994 By Martyn Williams CompuServe 100025,1637 Internet martyn@euro.demon.co.uk SPECIAL EDITION MURDOCH SAVES VOX, CBS IN MERGER TALKS WITH QVC Murdoch buys into VOX, rejects TelePił Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation announced Friday that it had bought a 49.9% stake in ailing German TV network VOX. The buy has saved the channel from an almost certain closure later this month. The station went into bankruptcy in April after failing to attract enough viewers in Germany's increasingly competitive market place. The channel has estimated losses of some DM 600 million and is currently running an emergency programme schedule. The sale to Murdoch gives him his first stake in German television. Earlier in the week the giant Luxembourg based media company CLT, parent of RTL, announced that it had bought a 24.9 % share in Vox. The remainder of the stock lies in the hands of the Bertelsmann group who were originla partners in VOX. Bertelsmann and CLT already operate several other TV companies between them including RTL and RTL 2. The addition of Murdoch will almost certainly mean a change in direction of the channel from up-market political discussion to down market US TV sitcoms. VOX will join the already crowded German entertainment market and compete head on with stations such as RTL and SAT 1. To fulfill licence promises though, VOX must inclued current affairs and will probably continue to air the documentaries and current affairs programmes from German production unit DCTP. The Murdoch deal was made possible by the pull out of News Corporation in talks with Silvio Berlusconi's Italian pay TV network TelePił. Murdoch was bargaining for a 25% stake in the two channel terrestrial network. As Murdoch announced the pull out of talks with TelePił and the purchase of almost half of VOX, Berlusconi announced that the wealthy South African Rupert family has bought the stake. The Rupert family control Swiss media company Richemont, which already owns a contollong share in FilmNet. CBS, QVC merger close In the United States the QVC network and CBS have announced that they are holding merger talks and are close to an agreement. The deal would merge QVC into CBS giving CBS an interest in cable television which it doesn't have at present. In contrast the other three broadcast networks, ABC, NBC and FOX all have associated cable stations. If the deal was finalised QVC shareholders would end up with nearly half of CBS. In a CBS press release Laurence A. Tisch, Chairman, President and CEO of CBS said: "The alliance of CBS and QVC combines two of the leading franchises in television. CBS is America's most watched television network, with leading program brands in daytime, primetime and latenight television. QVC is the nation's largest retailing television network, guiding the global revolution in the way consumer products are marketed and sold. Together, the foundation of this enterprise will remain devoted to the creation of first-rate original programming to attract viewers and consumers, while providing exciting new opportunities for advertisers, marketers, affiliated stations and cable operators. CBS is extremely fortunate to have Barry Diller become its Chief Executive Officer. Barry Diller's experience and track record in the entertainment and communications businesses have repeatedly proved him to be a brilliant and imaginative manager of creative artists and innovative technologies." The possible merger has an ironiy though, the main reason that CBS is currently in a weak position is because Rupert Murdoch's FOX network stole away the rights the NFL Football and recently bought 8 key CBS affiliate stations. As readers will know QVC, the very station that CBS is in merger talks with, it part of Murdoch's Sky package in the UK ..... New channel ? - Sky launch barker channel Sky has finally put transponder 47 on Astra to good use. The much talked about barker channel made it's first appearance last Monday night. The channel acts as a barker for the Sky TV channels by continuously running Sky promos in the centre of the screen. Around the outside there are twelve other smaller boxes showing what is currently on other English language Astra channels. Iraqi earth station to re-open Readers in Asia can look out for a new earth station sign on soon. The Iraqi telecommunications authority announced earlier this week that it' s satellite facility at Djail will soon re-open for business. The centre will carry telephone, telex and TV betwwn Iraq and nations across Asia from India to Japan. The centre sustained heavy damage as part of the allied assault on the country during the Gulf War. Telephone links to North America and Europe have been offered for some time and the upcoming resumption of service with Asia marks the full re-opening of this station. Arianespace win military contract The UK's British Aerospace Space Systems has announced the awarding of the contract to launch Skynet 4E to Ariane. The Skynet satellite network, currently of four satellites, provides a secure communications link for the British Armed Forces in the UHF and SHF bands. Ariane has previously launched two of the other Skynet birds. Pirate update ... Reports suggest that Sky used an ECM early this week to knock out the first round of pirate cards that had been made after the 09 card change. The ECM is thought to have knocked out all pirate cards and forced the makers back to the drawing board. The new issue Sky card is proving much harder to hack than the issue 07 card. The previous card had the disadvantage that part of the cards secret algorithm coding had been made public. Most pirate Adult Channel cards were also knocked out by a code change earlier this week. Even the famous German "Magic Touch" cards were affected it seems. RTL 5 scrambles ... We all knew it had to happen sometime. CLT's second Dutch TV station, RTL 5, has begun using the LuxCrypt scrambling system on it's mainly English language output. The system used is the same as sister station RTL 4 and brings to an end the free "english" TV channel on Astra 1D. Sky Radio expands ! Dutch soft pop station, Sky Radio, has announced further expansion plans. Last week we reported on the upcoming new German channel. It seems that this will now be a pan european channel whilst in the Netherlands "The Golden Oldie Channel", Sky Radio Gold, will be launched in direct competition with Radio 10 Gold. The Dutch service was due to start Friday, 1st July, and planned to use a digital circuit in the Dutch radio SCPC packet on Eutelsat 2F1. The service will broadcast twelve hours a day with the night-time hours being filled by Eurojazz. The Sky Radio Gold schedule is as follows : 07.00 bis 09.00 Uhr Peter Teekamp 09.00 bis 11.00 Uhr Meta de Vries 11.00 bis 14.00 Uhr Wil Luikinga 14.00 bis 15.00 Uhr Peter Teekamp 15.00 bis 17.00 Uhr Wim van Putten 17.00 bis 18.00 Uhr Nonstop-Musik 18.00 bis 19.00 Uhr Stan Haag 19.00 bis 07.00 Uhr Eurojazz World Tamil TV settles on Eutelsat 2F3 "World Tamil Television will be available here shortly" reads the caption over a testcard on Eutlesat 2F3. The new Berlin based network will use the old PolSat channel of 11.678 GHz, horizontal, to broadcast it's programme. The service will be VideoCrypt encoded eventually. Arabic BBC WSTV via Eutelsat The BBC's new Arabic language World Service Television is using Eutelsat 1-F4 at 25.5°E. The frequency in use is 11.660 GHz, H. The channel was first spotted by TELE Satellit monitors in Germany at 2100CEST on 21 June. Norwegian channel bouquet on Intelsat 702 Five of the eight available TV transponders on the new Intelsat 702 have already been leased to Norwegian channels hoping to establish a bouquet of programming from the 1° West position. So far TV Norge (clear PAL), TV 2 Norge (D2-Mac / Eurocrypt) and NRK (D-Mac) have announced plans to locate here. Intelsat 702 should begin broadcasts from the end of August. VH-1 sets 30 September launch The second channel from MTV, VH-1, has set a launch date of 30 September. The channel will use Astra 1B, transponder 22, currently used by MTV Europe in parallel to the service on Astra 1A channel 15. India rejects the easy route Indian Prime Minister, PV Narasimha Rao has announced that satellite TV will not be banned in the Asian country. The proliferation of satellite and cable TV networks, often unregulated, has become a problem in some sectors of the community with channel such as MTV Asia and foreign movie channels being balmed for everything from corrupting moral values to encouraging rape and murder. Indians have been turning off state TV Doordarshan in their millions and the authorities have been worried that unregulated foreign TV could change the Indian culture. A simple solution would have been satellite dishes, also killing a fast growing industry. The government has actually decided that Indian TV can learn a lot from the new channels. TV news in brief .... - BBC World Service TV is to launch direct to home to Japan on July 1st, via JCSat 2 - The France-German culture channel Arte is reported to be looking at a transponder on the new Eutelsat Hot Bird instead of a place on Astra. - MCM is now being offered to Belgian cable nets. The channel is currently carried by French, British and German cable companies and Belgium is the latest country the music channel is expanding into. - SAT 1 has begun using stereo. The 1st July was the official service start date. - Berlin info kanal n-tv is no longer using Kopernikus. The channel can now be found on Astra 1B only. Radio news in brief .... - The German langauge version of WRN will start in August. 10 hours a day of German language programming are expected at first. The station is expected to use the old english language channel of 7.74MHz on MTV Europe, Astra channel 22. - Radio Asia are the latest radio station to suffer "technical problems". The Radio Asia channel is currently quiet. Teletext news in brief .... - CNN Text now carries full listings for sister channels The Cartoon Network and TNT, indexed on page 260. - Travel has added a Nordic magazine. The main index is page 500. Swedish subtitles are on page 860. TELE Satellit Magazine This news is from the English language news service of TELE Satellit,a monthly satellite magazine edited in Munich, Germany. It consists of 164 pages, full colour with tables, charts and news with many off-screen photos of the satellite channels plus a informative technical section. Part of the magazine is written in English. Subscriptions are available for DM 120, Europe surface mail; DM 144, Europe airmail and DM 192, ROW airmail. Orders for subscriptions and more information should be sent to : TELE-satellit Customer Service, Silheimer Str. 6a, D-89278 Nersingen, Germany, Fax +49-7308-5296 Where to find satellite news : TELE Satellit News, English : LHARC'd Windows Write Version - CompuServe UKFORUM library 17, EURFORUM library 5, CEFORUM library 8 ASCII Text Version - CompuServe UKFORUM library 17 Fax polling - +31-45-273615 *2*44 TELE Satellit News, German : ASCII Text Version - CompuServe Deutsches Computer Forum (GERNET) Fax polling - +49-89-496287 / +31-45-273615 TELE Satellit TV ! Last Friday of every month, repeated following Sunday . Eutlesat 2F1, 11,596 GHz, Horizontal. 20:00 UK, 21:00 CET Other reliable sources of satellite news : - Satellite Journal International provides worldwide satellite news and can be found in UKFORUM, EURFORUM, TELECOM, BPFORUM and CEFORUM plus other networks worldwide including Internet, Nifty Serve Japan and Fidonet. - 3615 SATPHONE on Minitel in France for the latest hot news ! - +33-1-3670-8192 for the latest French language satellite news updates - SAT 1 Text, page 550 with fresh news every 3-4 days plus frequency charts. - Radio Sweden Mediascan. 1st and 3rd Tuesday, 20 minutes into the English programme via Astra, Shortwave, Mediumwave 1197 kHz and the World Radio Network. We encourage all European satellite users and viewers to drop by the UK Forum (GO UKFORUM) section 9, TV, to chat and discuss all issues related to European satellite broadcasting.