No one can doubt the huge advances that have been made by Central and Eastern Europe’s TV industry in recent years, though especially since eight countries in the region joined the EU in May 2004. However, they have been far from uniform, and there is clearly much work that still needs to be done. This [...]

BT’s fledgling IPTV service BT Vision has attracted just 5,000 customers in its first few months of operation. Confirming the figures BT said the total was entirely in line with expectations. It is estimated by investment bank Morgan Stanley that 40% of subscribers are BT employees. At its launch in December last year BT said [...]

BSkyB has promoted Ian Lewis to become director of Sky Movies and Sky Box Office. Lewis, who was previously director of broadcasting, will be responsible for Sky’s premium movie channels as well as pay-per-view service Sky Box Office. He reports to Sophie Turner Laing, who assumed the role of Managing Director, Entertainment, in February this [...]

1320 UPDATE – The Football Association has confirmed that the BBC and Sky have lost the rights to screen live matches from the FA Cup. The two broadcasters have been trumped by a joint bid from Setanta Sports and ITV worth £425 million (€625m). The four-year deal, commencing August 2008, represents a 42% increase on [...]

The film channels Filmbox and Nonstop Kino will officially make their debuts in Poland this coming Tuesday (April 2). Both services have been available in neighbouring Slovakia and the Czech Republic for around one and a half years and are owned by SPI International, which earlier this month acquired the Polish film channel Kino Polska [...]

The Czech public broadcaster CT has said it is likely to launch a paid-for VOD service within the next six months. Such a service, operating under the name Kinomania, is already provided over the Internet by the national commercial station TV Nova, with movies costing viewers CZK46 (€1.64) a day to watch. CT is understood [...]