The Russian business channel RBC TV has celebrated its fourth anniversary with the news that it is now watched by 2.5 million people on a daily basis and over 10 million a month. RBC TV, which has just introduced a new programme schedule, reaches up to 40 million people and covers 13 cities in Russia [...]

What looks like being a busy season of new channel launches has got under way in Poland. The long-awaited business channel TVN CNBC Biznes is finally up and running and being distributed by the DTH platforms n and Cyfra+. A new Internet shopping/auction channel named Promocja.TV has meanwhile begun test transmissions, while Religia.tv, a religious [...]

Arabsat has confirmed that it will distribute the BBC’s new Arabic language TV channel. The channel, scheduled to launch later this year, will be carried on Arabsat Badr-4 at 26 degrees East. The satellite has a footprint of 164 million viewers in the Middle East, Southern Mediterranean and Europe. “Arabsat already enjoys a very good [...]

The Slovenian IPV platform SiOL TV has added HBO to its programme line up and will offer the service free of charge until November 1. It will also introduce both HBO2 and HBO Comedy in October. SiOL TV is operated by the incumbent Slovenian telco Slovenije Telekom and one of the longest established IPV services [...]

The Russian public broadcaster VGTRK has launched a new children’s channel. Named Bibigon, it will, according to local sources, be carried in the daytime by the Rossiya and Kultura TV stations and in the mornings on the TV station Sport. Furthermore, it will join the children’s channels already offered by the DTH platform NTV-Plus.

Lettra is a new thematic channel for the German market with a focus on literature, books and authors, set for launch sometime next year. The cultural channel is an initiative of Jan Henne de Dijn, former director of the Hamburg media School. Part of the distribution plan is to join the new Premiere Star DTH [...]

A Spanish court has ruled that the production company Mediapro is free to enter the country’s football stadiums to produce its own coverage of the Spanish league until a final decision has been made on broadcasting rights. Mediapro is currently embroiled in a dispute with the Sogecable unit Audiovisual Sports (AVS), which had asked the [...]

Zone Romantica is to make its long awaited debut in the UK market on September 3. The Chellomedia channel is being parachuted into Channel 146 in the Sky EPG, currently occupied by the mixed format channel BEN, and next to Chellomedia’s suite of Zone Reality Channels starting on Channel 147. Zone Romantica screens a mix [...]

Mediapro is stepping up its football rights dispute with Spanish pay-TV operator Sogecable. The Catalan production company is taking Sogecable and its Audiovisual Sport subsidiary to the competition authority. It claims that Sogecable, which runs the Digital+ platform and the Spanish Canal+, has been broadcasting matches from the Spanish football league for which it does [...]