This news is provided free of charge to on-line users by TELE Satellit magazine and TS News Service GB. IT IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY. It may not be reproduced for commercial reasons by any means what so ever Der TS Nachrichtendienst is ein service fur die freunde von TELE Satellit und TS-TV und ist nur fur personaliche infromation freigegeben. TELE SATELLIT European Satellite News - English Version Number 8, Week ending 17 July 1994 By Martyn Williams CompuServe 100025,1637 Internet martyn@euro.demon.co.uk (c) TELE Satellit Magazine Filmnet to launch in Poland via Astra European pay TV sender Filmnet has announced a new channel for Poland to be carried via the Astra satellite. The launch date for the new channel will be October 1st and it will be specially customised for the Polish market with all movies being broadcast in Polish via either dubbing or subtitles. The new channel comes just a few weeks after the establishment of Multichoice Poland, a joint venture between FilmNet's parent company Nethold and News Datacom, a subsidiary of News International PLC. The new FilmNet channel will be broadcast via the Astra satellite system and will be encrypted in VideoCrypt II. In addition to Poland, other Central European countries could benefit from this new channel in the future. At the launch of the new channel Hans Klok, Managing Director of FilmNet Television Europe, explained: "I am delighted that the proven expertise of FilmNet is to be used to develop a unique channel that is tailor-made for the Polish viewer. FilmNet is recognised by satellite and cable subscribers as offering a superior service and will maintain its exclusivity and high quality standards, yet at an affordable price, in the new channel for the Polish market." The home of the new channel is still a secret. In response to the question of what channel would be used a Filmnet spokesman said "Sorry, it is definitely great news, but the transponder on Astra is still kept confidential at this stage." For some time Filmnet have been trying to move users off the D2-MAC Scandinavian service on Astra's channel 11 and get them to watch the service on the Thor DBS satellite. The Astra channel is expected to be vacated soon and it would then seem the natural position for Filmnet Poland however a look at the Astra footprint reveals that channel 63, currently used by Filmnet's Movie Channel, covers Poland with a stronger signal. We expect Filmnet to move The Complete Movie Channel from transponder 63 to transponder 11 and place the Polish service on the Astra 1C channel. August 19 launch for Sky Sports 2 Sky have finally announced a launch date for the much delayed Sky Sports 2 channel. Friday August 19th will see the start of transmissions on Astra channel 47. The new service is being launched to allow Sky to cover two sports events live and simultaneously without the need to disrupt programming on Sky One or any other channel as was done in the past. Initially the service will broadcast at weekends only with an expansion to a full seven days a week schedule being a possibility according to a Sky spokesman. Live golf and rugby union will fill the majority of the schedule for the first couple of months with expanded coverage of sports already carried on the Sky Sports filling out the rest of the day. All sports subscribers will enjoy the new channel for no extra charge. As for using the new channel as a launching pad for future pay per view sporting events Sky would only comment that these are rumours at the present time and there are no plans to introduce PPV in the immediate future. The preliminary program scheme for Sky Sports 2, currently being finalised, will be in next weeks TELE Satellit news. UK government plans TV future In a UK government statement on July 14th, Heritage secretary Peter Brooke gave the go-ahead for the advertisement of the channel 5 licence and also digital TV. The Channel 5 licence was advertised before but only a handful of consortiums ended up submitting a firm bid. The main problem with the new network is that it will only cover around two thirds of the country due to shortages of broadcast channels in the UK. The channel will have to cover the country using just one channel - that already used by most of the nations VCRs. The licence includes a clause stipulating that the successful bidder must provide free re-tuning of any VCRs that require. This alone is expected to cost around GBP20m. Brooke added that if the new network adopted digital technology to send their signal they would reach almost 90% of the UK. The government is keen to see the launch of digital TV, using the MPEG 2 system, as UK companies such as NTL and Pace were heavily involved in the development of the system and consumer technology. Brooke also unveiled a plan which calls for 12 digitally compressed channels being available nationwide by the year 2000. The announcement by the Heritage secretary doesn't mean that the channel will be launched though. The ITC can now decide whether it is worth advertising the licence. CBS QVC deal dead It's been a fast moving week for executives at US networks CBS and QVC. Late last week the two networks announced they had almost finalised plans to merge into a single company. Everything was going fine until July 12th when Comcast made an 11th hour bid for the home shopping network leaving CBS with no deal. The Comcast offer, worth $2.2 billion, resulted in CBS chairman Laurence Tisch announcing that he was not interested in entering into a bidding war for QVC. Instead the network went ahead with a share buyback of up to 3.5 million of it's own stock. Later in the week CBS and the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, Group W, announced an agreement that would ensure long term affiliation for Group W TV stations and CBS. The Group W TV stations, KPIX San Francisco, KDKA Pittsburgh, WBZ Boston (currently NBC), KYW Philadelphia (currently NBC), WJZ Baltimore (currently ABC), will sign a 10 year agreement with the CBS network. The two companies have also announced an intention to acquire other TV stations in major markets across the US. Comcast launch $2.2bn bid for QVC The Comcast bid that sunk the CBS/QVC alliance in the water was made on July 12th. The bid was worth more to QVC shareholders than the CBS deal as QVC chairman Barry Diller explained "I said at the outset that if someone else wanted to bid for QVC, we would, of course, deal with it. And we will, with the only consideration being the best interests of the QVC shareholder." In a letter to Diller, Brian Roberts, President of Comcast explained that the deal was launched because they were unhappy with the proposed sale to CBS. Comcast are involved in US cable TV and were one of the founding shareholders of QVC. Ariane V65 launch - correction, latest news There were several mistakes in last weeks story on the latest Ariane launch for which we apologise. The launch was in fact V65 and the launcher used was an Ariane 44L rocket. The two satellites on board were PanAmSat 2 and BS-3N. The latter satellite will be used for back-up to the existing BS birds in Japan. Many thanks to David Thorpe at Transponder for pointing these errors out to us. PanAmSat announced this week that they had already signed several contracts for use of the new satellite. The companies involved include Japanese telephone company KDD, Philippine TV station ABS-CBN, Discovery Channel, ESPN, Turner Network TV and US Viacom. The new satellite is expected to become a primary path for TV traffic between Japan and the USA using 16 ku band transponders and 16 on C band. The next Ariane launch will be flight V66 and will take place on 30th July. An Ariane 44LP will carry Turksat 1B and Brasilsat 1B into orbit. UKTV International Bob Phillis, deputy director general and chairman of BBC Worldwide, the division responsible for BBC WSTV, said at a British Labour Party conference last week that the corporation will actively look for more programme input from ITV and Channel 4 in the new BBC World Service TV stations that are starting around the world. He said "We would not rule out wider co-operation with major ITV companies either in particular regions or on particular kinds of channels." The BBC are keen to take on board some of the award winning documentary output from stations such as Central TV and Anglia. Sunergy broadcast next week ... The next Sunergy broadcast from Sun Computers will take place next week on 28 July. The title of the broadcast is "A discussion of object technologies". The transmission is number 10 in the quarterly series of Sunergy programmes. This live broadcast will be viewed in over 40 countries. The panel of object computing experts will provide time for audience question and answer and will entertain questions from the worldwide audience via interactive satellite and email. Don't miss this opportunity to participate in lively discussion regarding the present and future usage of object technology in a variety of arenas. The broadcast will be carried on a full Intelsat K transponder for Europe on 28 July. Technical details next week. Cable Plus back on 11 West Czech movie channel, Cable Plus, has returned to it's original position on Gorizont at 11 degrees West. A few weeks ago the channel moved suddenly. At the same time the Reuters Moscow feed moved over from 14 degrees West to 11. The Reuters feed is now back in place although the bird at 14 degrees West is in an inclined orbit. NBC to launch Asian business news net American TV network NBC has announced that it plans to launch a satellite business TV network during August. The new channel, called ANBC, will initially use the overnight hours on Australia's ABC TV International to broadcast news and business programming from the domestic NBC and CNBC channels. ANBC plans to broadcast 24 hours a day by early next year. The channel is aiming to provide in depth and comprehensive coverage of the US markets to viewers across the continent. Global TV will scramble TS News GB has learnt that new Asian TV channel, Global TV, will scramble. Viewers will require VideoCrypt decoders to watch the service which is currently testing under the name GSTV on Eutelsat 2F3. Russia launches maritime watch satellite A new satellite to pin point ships in distress was put into orbit by the Russian military on July 14th. The launch, from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, took place at 0913 Moscow time. The satellite, named "Nadyeshda" will link up with an existing US / Canadian / French network. Russia wins Mexican launch contract The new Mexican space authority has switched launch contracts from China to Russia after Long March launch failures. The countries first domestically made satellite will be used for geographical study and will be launched by a Russian vehicle. TV news in brief .... - Where is WTT ? After briefly transmitting a caption on the Dutch PTT's transponder on Eutelsat 2F3 stating their intention to start a service shortly nothing has been seen of World Tamil Television. - Italian state TV, RAI, has a new president, Letizia Moratti. Radio news in brief .... - Ambitious plans from Holland FM. News this week suggests that they may move their studios to a ship anchored just off the Dutch coast. The move is expected to take place during August. - There is speculation that Holland FM may merge with Happy RTL. - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty is now broadcasting from a new base in Prague after closing and moving from their Munich headquarters. - Goodbye "Armee sender" - AFN and BFBS radio have ended broadcasts in Berlin. - Listen out for SDR 3 radio via ZDF on Astra from 25 July. Teletext news in brief .... - New teletext on Pro 7 - as predicted last week, Pro 7 started a new teletext on 12th July called Express TV. The service aims to be Germany's best text TV guide carrying listings for around 30 channels. So far we have counted around 12 channels being carried but regional ARD stations are expected to be added soon with more satellite listings. The main index is on page 100 with the hour by hour guide starting on p400. 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 ASCII Text Version - CompuServe UKFORUM library 17 Fax polling - +31-45-273615 *2*44 ; +49-89-496287 *9 alt.satellite.tv.europe newsgroup on Internet World Wide Web : http://xan.esrin.esa.it:2602/satellite.html 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 . Eutelsat 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. World Wide Web users can access several electronic journals and more information via the European satellite home page, URL http://xan.esrin.esa.it:2602/satellite.html We encourage all European satellite users and viewers to drop by UK Forum section 17, Entertainment, to chat and discuss all issues related to European satellite broadcasting.