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:: MediaScan ::
:: SWEDEN CALLING DXERS ::
:: from Radio Sweden ::
:: Number 2235--Nov. 7, 1995 ::
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Satellite, shortwave and other electronic media news from Radio Sweden.
This week's bulletin was written by George Wood.
Packet Radio BID SCDX2235
All times UTC unless otherwise noted.
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On October 25, the International Telecommunications Union celebrated
the 100th anniversary of radio communications, which was makred by a
special function held by the Geneva International Conference Center.
We've also just seen the 50th anniversary of Arthur C. Clarke's
landmark article in "Wireless World", proposing artificial satellites,
which could relay communications to the planet below.
The anniversaries coincide with the launching of Europe's first all-
digital communications satellite, as well as the launch of many new
satellite channels to Europe. (On a less majestic scale, Radio Sweden's
Swedish service is also now available by satellite to North America.)
Remember, this file is also available on Radio Sweden's WWW site, with
today's interviews included as donwloadable soundfiles. Several other
recent Radio Sweden features are also available as Web sound and text,
including programs on the Nobel Prizes, the first anniversary of the
Estonia disaster, and the Gothenburg Book Fair. Check out:
http://www.sr.se/rs
NORDIC MEDIA NEWS:
RADIO SWEDEN--Our Swedish service has joined Radio Finland on the World
Radio Network's new WRN2 service to North America. Other WRN2
broadcasters include RTE in Ireland and Radio Vlaandern International.
Like WRN1, the new service is on Galaxy 5, transponder 6, which is
WTBS. The audio is 6.2 MHz, and you can hear Radio Sweden in Swedish
there daily at 2:00 PM Eastern Time, 11:00 AM Pacific.
SPORTS--Sweden's Kinnevik company plans to compete with Nethold's
planned SuperSport channel with a Scandinavian sports channel of its
own early next year, with separate audio feeds in Swedish, Norwegian,
and Danish. Unlike SuperSport, this would be a free channel,
presumeably from the Sirius satellite. (TT)
Meanwhile, the last of the FilmMax outlets has closed on Sirius, and is
now carrying Kinnevik's Swedish TV6 channel in D2-MAC.
EUROPEAN MEDIA NEWS:
NEW ASTRA CHANNELS--November 1st saw the introduction of several new
satellite TV channels to Europe on the Astra satellites, although most
are restricted to people in the British Isles, as they are under the
British Sky Broadcasting umbrella. No matter what the Maastrict treaty
may say about the free availability of services through-out the
European Union, Rupert Murdoch refuses to give access to his channels
outside Britain and Ireland.
The first new Astra channel was European Broadcast News, which has been
relayed 24 hours a day on Eutelsat's Hot Bird satellite for some time.
Now EBN has joined Astra transponder 42, broadcasting mornings before
Bravo. When Bravo signs off at midnight British time, another new
station, the Playboy Channel, takes over. While like all adult channels
licenced in Britain, Playboy is soft porn only, both the Church of
England and Britain's Methodist Church have sold their stakes in
British Sky Broadcasting in protest. (Reuters/AP)
The Paramount Channel now follows Nickelodeon on Astra transponder 46.
Originally, the Nick-At-Night channel from the States was supposed to
share this transponder. The new channel seems to be Nick-At-Night with
just another name, designed to appeal more to adults, and made possible
by Viacom's purchase of Paramount.
A motor sport channel called The Racing Channel is now sharing
transponder 60 mornings with Sky Movies Gold. And Regal Shop is sharing
transponder 41 with TLC and Discovery between midnight and 9:00 hrs
UTC. (James Robinson and Nils Sundstrom, "Aftonbladet")
Meanwhile, things have been happening on Astra transponder 47, which
until November 1st had been shared among Sky Soap, Sky Travel, Chinese
News and Entertainment, and Sky Sports 2. They have been joined by:
The History Channel, now operating weekday afternoons on transponder
47. Late evenings there's now a Sky Sports Gold on the transponder as
well....and in between, there's the new Science Fiction Channel, which
broadcasts for three hours a night Monday to Thursday, as well as a few
hours after Sky Sports 2 signs off. Actually the channel is 24 hours,
but that service is being carried digitally in MPEG, from Eutelsat's
Hot Bird on 11.283 GHz, and is only available to cable networks. (James
Robinson and Bertil Sundberg in "Paa TV")
British Sky Broadcasting has a rather strange way of counting channels.
There are now 7 so-called channels on Astra transponder 47, as well as
three each on 41 and 42. Considering that BSkyB is still only using one
of its several transponders on the Astra 1D satellite, there are other
places to put these channels.
With the new channels the multichannel subscription rises to GBP
10.99. The full package is GBP 24.99. ("Tele-satellit")
On FilmNet's Eastern European channel on transponder 63, there is Czech
audio on 7.74 MHz, but so far only for soccer commentaries. (James
Robinson)
EUTELSAT--The German music channel Onyx TV (ComTV) began November 1,
uncoded on Eutelsat II-F1, 11.146 GHz. (Nils Sundstrom, "Aftonbladet")
TV Erotica continues on Eutelsat II-F3 11.575 GHz, but D2-MAC
broadcasts have also begun on Hot Bird, on 11.533 GHz. (James Robinson
and "What Satellite TV")
Bloomberg Information TV began its business channel on Hot Bird 11.283
on November 1. This channel is broadcasting in MPEG-2. ("What Satellite
TV") This MTV Europe transponder also apparently includes the new
digital service of the Sci-Fi Channel.
SATELLITE DIGITAL TV--We're now set for the next leap in European
satellite broadcasting, the digital age that was ushered in on October
18th, with the launch of Astra 1E.
With eighteen 85 watt transponders, Astra 1E is Europe's first all
digital broadcast satellite, with a life expectancy of 15 years.
Initial tests are at 14.5 degrees East, in the 11.7 to 12.1 GHz band.
(Bertil Sundberg in "Paa TV")
The main companies booking transponders are Scandinavia's Nethold,
France's Canal Plus, Germany's Kirsch, and CLT from Luxembourg. Sky has
booked transponders, but doesn't seem to have plans yet to do anything
with them. Astra has plans for three more digital satellites. Astra 1F
is scheduled to launch early next year on a Russian Proton rocket.
As we've reported before, Nethold is planning on launching a Nordic
sports channel called SuperSport, as well as a European video-nearly-
on-demand service from Astra 1E by the end of the year. (Bertil
Sundberg in "Paa TV"/TT/AP/Reuters)
Nethold is also involved in tests of what is being called Europe's
first digital satellite network, three channels from Italy's Telepiu
using MPEG-2 coding from Eutelsat II-F1 on 12.542 GHz.
Regular service of themed channels and video-nearly-on-demand are due
to start after the Hot Bird 2 satellite is launched next August. This
includes MTV, and a Nethold spokesman says they will have up to 80
channels by the end of next year.
Telepiu is also reported to be talking with Time Warner. The company is
planning full-scale video-on-demand with viewers e-mailing their orders
for films. Telepiu is one third owned by Germany's Kirsch group, with a
slightly smaller stake by Nethold, and 10 percent by Italian media
mogul and politician Silvio Berlusconi. (Eutelsat/Reuters)
Eutelsat says broadcasters such as Nethold, Arte, France Television,
RAI, TF1, and Viacom have confirmed plans to launch digital services
from the Hot Bird satellites. The Franco-German cultural channel Arte
is putting together a package of digital channels. Besides Arte, the
package includes TF1, La Cinquieme, M6, TV5, and probably also MCM and
Euronews. This is to compete with a rival package from Canal Plus,
which is said to include 24 French-language channeks. (Eutelsat/Nils
Sundstrom, "Aftonbladet")
Canal Plus has delayed Canal Numerique, its Astra 1D digital channel
package, until next spring. ("What Satellite TV")
SUPER CHANNEL--NBC is expected to split up its NBC Super Channel
services on Astra and Eutelsat II-F1 at the end of February, 1996. CNBC
Europe will be an uncoded 24 hour service on Astra 1D transponder 50.
NBC Super Channel will continue as a purely entertainment channel on
II-F1. (James Robinson and Nils Sundstrom, Aftonbladet)
BRITAIN--Britain's Indepedent Television Commission has awarded the
Channel 5 television licence to Channel 5 Broadcasting, combining
British media firms Pearson and MAI, with Luxembourg's CLT. They've
received the licence despite bidding less than Canada's CanWest Global
Communications, which also included the Scandinavian Broadcasting
System and Australia's Network 10. Other losers are Richard Branson's
Virgin TV, and Rupert Murdoch's New Century. (Reuters)
NORTH AMERICAN MEDIA NEWS:
BRAZILSAT--Hughes has bought the Brazilsat 1-A satellite, and is now
using it to broadcast to North America from 63.5 degrees West. Video
bars seen on ch. 8, 10 vertical (domestic video frequencies). Seems to
have comparable signal strength to TDRS - hotter than nearby Intelsats.
(Mario Bernardo on Usenet news)
Hughes is calling it A1 in their press release. The satellite is
inclined. They hope to get 2-5 years out of it. This is a real
"dishheads" find for those of us in North America! I'm sitting here
watching a beautiful NTSC slate on 3.860 GHz. I gather Hughes has 're-
directed' the footprints of this satellite for sending newsfeeds, etc.
to North America. (Curt Swinehart)
BBC--BBC World Service has formed a partnership with Public Radi
International and and WGBH radio in Boston to co-produce a daily global
news program to be broadcast through-out America. The hour-long
program, "The World" will address what is described as the "current
void of international news on American public radio". The program will
initally be launched in January, 1996, when it will be broadcast free
of charge to seven stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland,
New York, Boston, and Dallas, with plans to expand to Chicago,
Minneapolis, and Washington. The service will be available to all
public radio stations nationwide after April 1, 1996. (BBC "Ariel" via
Richard Buckby)
MURDOCH AND TIME WARNER--According to the New Yorker Magazine, Media
magnate Rupert Murdoch seriously considered spearheading a more than
$40 billion bid to buy the Time Warner communications empire but
abandoned the idea in late October.
In a profile on Murdoch, the magazine's media correspondent Ken Auletta
said that despite many public denials that he was interested in buying
Time Warner, Murdoch was considering organizing a group of investors to
make the bid.
Time Warner announced in September that it was buying Turner
Broadcasting System Inc. for $7.5 billion. Auletta said that Murdoch
thought the merger with Turner would frustrate his own expansion
plans.
If Murdoch headed such a bid, it could have led to the world's largest
takeover, surpassing the more than $25 billion paid by Kohlberg Kravis
Roberts in 1988 to buy RJR Nabisco.
"One scheme that he (Murdoch) discussed internally and ordered his
bankers and lawyers to dissect carefully was to attempt a takeover of
Time Warner valued at more than $40 billion," Auletta, who interviewed
Murdoch extensively for the article, said.
Auletta quoted a central figure in the proposed deal as saying in late
October that Murdoch's News Corp was still working on the deal but
that days later the magnate became convinced that the effort would
fail and abandoned the idea.
"The impediment, two participants say, was not finding partners but
figuring out how to avoid the steep capital gains taxes on the sale of
Time Warner's various pieces to eager buyers. The idea was to make a
bid for Time Warner in the next few months, before the merger with
Turner was consumated," Auletta said.
He added, "There were internal discussions about such potential
partners as the Bronfmans, whose Seagrams already owns just under 15
percent of Time Warner; U.S. West, which owns 25 percent of Time
Warner's entertainment assets and opposes the terms of the Turner
merger; and John Malone, the president and chief executive officer of
Tele-Communications Inc., the world's largest cable company."
The article also detailed a summer meeting between Murdoch and Malone
in which the two men discussed ways of helping Ted Turner make a bid
for CBS. Turner did not make the bid and instead agreed to a merger
with Time Warner, which Malone, as a major shareholder in Turner
Broadcasting, went along with.
Auletta quoted Murdoch as saying that Malone in August -- a month
before the Time Warner deal with Turner -- tried to convince him to
buy five percent of Time Warner to put the company into play.
Auletta added that Murdoch's major goal was to find a way to gain
control of Turner's Cable News Network. (Reuters)
ASIAN MEDIA NEWS:
JAPAN--Thirty-nine companies, mostly non-broadcasting firms, plan to
join Japan's first multichannel digital satellite broadcasting service
due to start late next year, a business daily has reported.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun said the companies include Nippon Television
Network Corp (NTV), Television Tokyo Channel 12 Ltd (TV Tokyo), Pioneer
Electronic Corp major movie distributing firm Shochiku Co Ltd and
Daiichi Kosho Co, which sells and leases karaoke machines.
The initial 40-channel service will start next September after a test
run beginning in April, the daily said. The newspaper said NTV and
other TV stations will provide satellite channels carrying the same
programs as their non-satellite broadcasting, and TV Tokyo will provide
an economic news channel.
Companies which make TV programs will have their own channels for
travel and English conversation programmes, the daily said. New
channels will also feature foreign languages, cars, coaching for
examinations, stock prices, shopping and adult programmes, as well as
sports and movie programmes, it said.
In the U.S., Hughes Communications Corp started a 150-channel digital
broadcasting service in June last year, and now has one million
subscribers, the daily said. Hughes Communications is planning to open
another digital satellite broadcasting service in Japan. (Reuters)
GLOBAL MEDIA NEWS:
DOW JONES/CNBC--It's been reported that executives at Dow Jones and at
General Electric Co.'s CNBC have held discussions about merging their
cable television services in Europe and Asia, according to several
people familiar with the talks. Executives at both companies declined
to comment.
Both companies have expanded into Europe and Asia with English-language
news services, and both are said to be losing money on those
operations. The reports that they were considering combining their
services has a logic that appeals to some industry analysts, given the
cost of starting cable services.
But one media executive pointed out that discussions like this go on
continuously. He said that he doubted either company would be willing
to give up control of its own services.
CNBC, which reaches 55.6 million homes in the United States, has some
programming in Europe that is produced in conjunction with Financial
Times Television as part of the NBC Superchannel. CNBC Europe, which
was started last year, reaches 70 million homes.
CNBC Asia, which began in June and is on the air 24 hours a day,
reaches 4 million homes full-time and 6 million part-time. The service
is in English and Mandarin.
Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, does not
have a U.S. cable news service. But it is making forays in
international markets. Dow Jones and Tele-Communications Inc. each own
49.25 percent of Asia Business News. Hong Kong Business News Network
owns the balance of the service, which was started two years ago and
reaches about 14 million homes and 120,000 hotel rooms.
Dow Jones has 70 percent of the recently started European Business
News. The remainder of the service, now in 6.5 million European homes,
is owned by Tele-Communications' Flextech.
Last summer Dow Jones and ITT Corp. agreed to buy WNYC-TV, the New
York City television station. Dow Jones is expected to provide
business and economic reporting for the station, which would also run
the sports events owned by the MSG Network, the cable sports service
owned by ITT and Cablevision Systems Corp. Once the purchase is
completed, the two companies hope to turn WNYC into a superstation,
reaching across the country.
Both groups are attempting to create a business news version of CNN
and such a tie up would make sense say some observers. Others contend
that such talks, or at least the rumours, are continuously circulating
in the business and there is little to them. (NY Times/"Tele-satellit")
WORLDSPACE--Alcatel Alsthom says its Alcatel Espace unit has started to
construct and deliver the WorldSpace global audio satellite system on a
turnkey basis. WorldSpace said in the same statement that it had closed
its USD 650 millioin long-term financing.
The system includes the in-orbit delivery of three satellites --
Caribstar, Afristar, and Asiasat. The system, using digital audio
broadcasting to reach Third World countries, is due to start in 1998.
The portable radio receivers are expected to cost initially less than
USD 100. (Reuters)
GE*STAR--GE American Communications (GE Americom) has announced that it
filed with the FCC to construct, launch and operate its new
geostationary satellite GE*Star System. Utilizing Ka-band frequencies,
the proposed GE*Star System will provide broadband, high-speed digital
communications connecting the United States, North America, Europe,
Asia, India, the Pacific, the Caribbean, South America and Central
America, as well as providing services within those regions.
As envisioned, the GE*Star System will feature nine state-of-the-art,
high-technology satellites in the Fixed-Satellite Service (FSS), each
delivering 1,000 MHz of communication channel bandwidth. The GE*Star
system is designed to bring innovative and low-cost broadband services
to a wide range of customers in the United States and throughout the
world. The system will make possible services that include high-speed
data, direct-to-home and broadcast video, audio, video telephony, and
other important data-based applications to both individual and
commercial users.
GE Americom's GE*Star System will deliver these services through
highly spectrum-efficient spot-beam technology that will allow signals
to be uplinked and downlinked to small antennas. The spacecraft will
feature on-board processors that can accommodate large streams of data
traffic and switch them between spot beams to provide full connectivity
and worldwide coverage. Proposed orbital locations include 106 degrees
West, 82 degrees West, 16 degrees East, 38 degrees East and 108 degrees
East. ("Tele-satellit")
CYBERSPACE:
WORLD RADIO NETWORK--WRN has been making English programs from Radio
Sweden and 20 other international broadcasters available in RealAudio
over the World Wide Web on the Internet. This allows users to listen to
pre-recorded soundfiles while they download, rather than wait until the
download is finished (which can take over an hour for a 10 minute
program).
WRB has also been relaying its programming live over the Net using the
Multicasting Backbone system, which requires access to high-speed UNIX
workstations. But now a new live Internet relay is starting, using the
Streamworks format. In today's program WRN's Karl Miosga tells us about
the new service.
More details about Streamworks at:
http://www.xingtech.com
More about RealAudio at:
http://www.realaudio.com
SWEDEN--And if you check out Radio Sweden's World Wide Web pages you'll
find that we're now making available multi-media editions of some of
our programs, including the MediaScan bulletins, with text and
downloadable soundfiles of the interviews.
I was joined in the studio today by the man who's written most of our
domestic service Web pages, Swedish Radio's Webmaster Philip Ruben, who
described how Swedish Radio is using the Web.
WORLD WIDE WEB SITES--A launch manifest of upcoming commercial
satellite launches from the United States can be found at:
http://www.dot.gov/dotinfo/faa/cst/cst.html
Bill Harwood's CBS News "Up to the Minute Space Space" can be found at:
http://uttm.com/space/welcome.html
Phillips Business Information has links to many space-oriented
publications:
http://www.phillips.com
Ham Radio Today On-Line, the first British Amateur Radio-based magazine
on the We, has now been officially released:
http://www.tcp.co.uk/~slorek/
Thanks to the hard work of a net-friend, AIRWAVES now has a free easy-
to-use World Wide Web page for searching the FCC's AM radio database:
http://radio.aiss.uiuc.edu/~rrb/fccdb.html
(Curt Swinehart)
JAPAN--J-Wave has a WWW site in English at:
http://www.infojapan.com/JWAVE/Welcome-e.html
(Hiroaki Yashiro)
HOBBY NEWS:
WAVELENGTHS--"Wavelengths" is "A Shortwave Newsletter for Women". More
information from:
Wavelengths
Box 381766
Cambridge, MA 02238-1766
USA
Fax: +1-617-489-1249
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Sweden Calling DXers/MediaScan is the world's oldest radio program
about international broadcasting. Radio Sweden has presented this
round-up of radio news, features, and interviews on Tuesdays since
1948. It's currently broadcast on the first and third Tuesdays of the
month.
Radio Sweden broadcasts in English:
To Europe:
17:15 hrs 1179 and 6065 kHz
18:30 1179, 6065, 7240, and 9655 kHz (also Africa/Middle East)
21:30 1179, 6065, and 7230 kHz (also Africa/Middle East)
22:30 1179 and 6065 kHz (also Africa/Middle East)
23:30 1179 kHz
Asia/Pacific:
12:30 hrs 9835, 13740, and 15240 kHz
01:30 hrs 7120 kHz
North America:
13:30 and 14:30 hrs on 11650 and 15240 kHz
02:30 and 03:30 hrs on 7120 kHz
Latin America:
00:30 hrs on 6065 and 9850 kHz
The broadcasts at 17:15 and 18:30 hrs are also relayed to Europe
by satellite:
Astra 1C on ZDF's transponder 33 at 10.964 GHz, audio subcarrier at
7.38 MHz
Tele-X via TV5 Nordic/Femman's transponder at 12.475 GHz, audio
subcarrier 7.38 MHz
Radio Sweden is also relayed to Europe via the World Radio Network on
VH-1's transponder 22 on Astra 1C, audio 7.38 MHz, daily at 22:00 hrs
CET. Radio Sweden can also be heard on WRN's North American service on
Galaxy-5, on WTBS's transponder 6, audio 6.8 MHz, daily at 21:30 and
00:00 hrs Eastern time.
Our new World Wide Web page is at:
http://www.sr.se/rs
A multimedia version of this bulletin can be found at:
http://www.sr.se/rs/english/scdx.htm
Sound recordings of interviews from previous programs can be found at:
http://www.sr.se/rs/english/media2.htm
Sound files of Mediascan are archived at:
ftp.funet.fi:pub/sounds/RadioSweden/Mediascan.
You can also find the programs among the offerings of Internet Talk
Radio at various sites, including:
ftp://town.hall.org/radio/Mirrors/RadioSweden/MediaScan
Radio Sweden programs (recorded at 01:30 hrs UTC daily) is available in
the Real Audio format via the World Radio Network, at:
http://www.wrn.org
Contributions can be sent to DX Editor George Wood by fax to
+468-667-6283 or by e-mail to: wood@rs.sr.se
Reports can also be sent to:
Radio Sweden
S-105 10 Stockholm
Sweden
Contributions should be NEWS about electronic media--from shortwave to
satellites--and not loggings of information already available from
sources such as the "World Radio TV Handbook". Clubs and DX
publications may reprint material as long as MediaScan/Sweden Calling
DXers and the original contributor are acknowledged.
We welcome comments and suggestions about the electronic edition,
Sweden Calling DXers, and our programs in general.
The mailing list for the Electronic Edition is now open to general
subscription. If you can send e-mail over the Internet, send a message
to:
subscribe@rs.sr.se
You ought to get a confirmation message in reply. To unsubscribe from
the list, send a message to
unsubscribe@rs.sr.se
To get a copy of Radio Sweden's English program schedule, write to:
english@rs.sr.se
And for general questions, comments, and reception reports, our e-mail
address is:
info@rs.sr.se
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Thanks to this week's contributors Good Listening!
************************
George Wood wood@rs.sr.se
Radio Sweden http://www.sr.se/rs
S-105 10 Stockholm tel: +468-784-7239
Sweden fax: +468-667-6283
************************