The Hungarian media group RTL Televizió has with Klub Publishing jointly acquired the country’s leading online retailer NetPiac. NetPiac was established in 1999 and was the first online film store in Hungary. It currently competes in the online DVD, book and Blu-ray retail sectors. RTL Televizió’s interests include the Hungarian national commercial station RTL Klub.

The Russian telco Teleset has launched a cable service on its fibre-optic network in the city of Kazan. Offering around 40 channels for $5 (€3.66) a month, compared to the average $5.80 a month charged by such competitors as TVT and Divan-TV, it will be offered to all of Teleset’s existing 104,250 telephony subscribers, as […]

MTV has launched a localised service in Ukraine. According to reports, it began test transmissions earlier this month and is now operational. MTV Ukraine is backed by Horizon Capital’s Emerging Europe Growth Fund (EEFG) and is likely to be followed by VH1, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, as well as digital media products for broadband and […]

Plans by the Sistema subsidiary Comstar-UTS to secure control of Russia’s largest telco Svyazinvest may be thwarted. Local reports indicate that the government is prepared to oppose plans that would give minority shareholders – such as Comstar UTS now is in Svyazinvest – a bigger say in its operation. Last December Comstar-UTS secured a 25% […]

According to local reports, the Bulgarian sports betting company Eurofootball is about to launch its own TV channel. Eurofootball was established in Sofia in 1993 and in the same year obtained a licence from the Bulgarian government to organise bets on football matches. It introduced online betting in 2003 and earlier this year was awarded […]

Speaking to the local press, Tomasz Zuranski, the president of Poland’s second largest MSO Vectra, has said that it plans to spend PLN120 million (€31.5 million) on the further roll out of its digital TV service. The service currently has 70,000 subscribers, with the figure expected to rise to 120,000, following its introduction in at […]

The Czech leisure and shopping channel Top TV is reported to have returned its licence to country’s Radio and TV Council (RRTV) and gone into liquidation. The service, which was backed by KKCG Investments, went off the air at the end of July and was expected to remain so for a month while its future […]

Data produced by AGB Nielsen Media Research shows that Viva Polska is currently the most popular music channel in Poland. In H1 2007 it claimed an audience share of 0.51% among all viewers aged 4+ and 0.95% in the cable and satellite sector. MTV Polska was in second place (0.27%, 0.50%), followed by VH1 Polska […]

The recent sale of a 90% stake in the Bulgarian incumbent telco BTC to AIG Investments is to be investigated by the country’s Financial Supervision Commission (FSC). Local reports indicate that the regulator is to look into whether or not the deal should have triggered a requirement offer to minority shareholders. The sale appeared to […]