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. If you wish to reproduce this news or redistribute it for non commercial use please contact the email address below. Der TS Nachrichtendienst ist ein Service fuer die Freunde von TELE-satellit und TS-TV und ist nur fuer persoenliche infromation freigegeben. TELE-satellit EUROPE'S SATELLITE MAGAZINE International Satellite Broadcasting News Number 44, Week ending 26 March 1995 By Martyn Williams News Desk : Internet martyn@euro.demon.co.uk or CompuServe 100025,1637 (c) TELE-satellit Magazine ARIANE SCRUBS LAUNCH. HOT BIRD STILL ON THE GROUND KOUROU, FRENCH GUIANA, (TS) -- It's looking like NBC Super Channel chose wisely when they dropped their Hot Bird lease and took up space on Astra 1D. The London network said that they changed the contracts because Hot Bird could be delayed and delayed.After the third attempt at launch the satellite is still on the ground after launch engineers called a halt to the caountdown last Monday night after a launch in the rockets troubled third stage. Also alongside Eutelsat's cargo is Brasilsat B2. The Ariane programme has been on hold since the December 1st explosion that sent PanAmSat 3 into the Atlantic Ocean. NASA COUNTS ANOTHER ATLAS SUCCESS CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA, USA (TS) -- NASA successfully launched an Atlas 2AS rocket early on the 22nd after a delay of two days. The on board cargo included Intelsat 705 which will provide broadcasting services to the Americas from May 8th. HENDRIKS RESIGNS FROM NBC SUPER CHANNEL LONDON, UK (TS) -- Ruud Hendriks, Managing Director of NBC Super Channel, has announced his resignation effective July. He will return to his native Holland where he will head up the new Endemol Productions company. ARGUEMENTS CONTINUE AS EC PROPOSES CONTENT LAWS BRUSSELS, BELGIUM (TS) -- The European Commission has proposed new limits on international television in Europe. The new content based quotas call for general entertainment channels to have at least 50% European based programming excluding news and sports. Specialist channels such as Cartoon Network and TNT will have the choice of carrying 50% European programming or investing 25% of their programme budget in European productions. Fierce opposition to the plans were voiced by representatives on the UK, Netherlands and Scandinavian nations, each of which shows a large amount of US produced programmes. The situation was further complicated this week when a German court ruled that the government had violated states rights by agreeing to the EU proposal. Currently the "Television Without Frontiers" document calls for TV stations to devote the majority of their airtime to European productions "where practical" - which is where the existing arrangements fall down. PARAMOUNT GOES NORDIC George Wood, Radio Sweden STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN (SR) -- TV 5 Nordic, or Femman, as France's TV Cinq would prefer the Swedes to say, has a new part owner. The station is 75 percent owned by a Luxembourg-based company called the Scandinavian Broadcasting System, which also owns TV Norge in Norway, Denmark's TV2, Belgium's new VT- 4, and a number of Nordic radio stations. The largest owner of SBS is the American ABC network. Now the Paramount Television Group has bought a smaller share of SBS. According to "Dagens Nyheter", a 10 year programming contract is included. Paramount has one of the world's largest film libraries, with 14,500 series episodes, and 2000 files. Nordic's Managing Director Hans von Schreeb says: "For Femman, the agreement means that we have first option on all material from Paramount, which will mean a significant improvement in the quality of our programming." ("Dagens Nyheter") TV5 Nordic has already been broadcasting Paramount's "Star Trek" and "Star Trek Next Generation" series. Perhaps now they'll add the new series "Star Trek Voyager", which launched Paramount's new American TV network UPN in January. NEW HEAD OF RUSSIAN BROADCASTING SERVICE APPOINTED Laura Belin MOSCOW, RUSSIA (OMRI) -- President Boris Yeltsin has appointed Valentin Lazutkin to head the Federal Television and Radio Broadcasting Service, which oversees all broadcasting in the country, Russian and Western agencies reported on 17 March. Yeltsin said Lazutkin, who had been first deputy chairman of the broadcasting service, commands the respect of Ostankino employees. Alexander Yakovlev resigned as head of the federal broadcasting service and chairman of Ostankino on 16 March in order to concentrate on building the Russian Party of Social Democracy he launched in February. A replacement for Yakovlev at Ostankino, which is being reorganized into a production company, has yet to be appointed. Lazutkin declined Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's offer to appoint him to the post, Interfax reported. In 1994, Lazutkin resigned as vice chairman of Ostankino after admitting the network's coverage during the 1993 parliamentary campaign had been biased toward Yeltsin's supporters, Reuters reported. OSTANKINO TO RETURN TO LITHUANIA Saulius Girnius VILNIUS, LITHUANIA (OMRI) -- Broadcasts of Russian Ostankino TV programs, which were halted in early February after Lit-poliinter TV declared bankruptcy, will soon resume in Lithuania. The Lithuanian Radio and TV Board on 14 March declared that the new Free Independent Channel has won the contest to take over the channel that Litpoliinter used, BNS reported. FIC will transmit at its own cost Ostankino's main newscasts and selected cultural programs. Broadcasts are to run at least 18 hours a day. FIC's found ers include the state-owned Lithuanian Agricultural Bank, the Lithuanian Workers' Union, and the joint-stock company Vingis, formed by some former Litpoliinter employees. LATEST US NUMBERS Fred deFerbrache III ELKHART, INDIANA, USA (SDA) -- C-Band satellite sales growth made a slight recovery in February after the typical post-Christmas drop. About 27,000 new systems were installed in February, up 1.4% over Janurary. Installs and upgrades together amounted to over 36,600 for February, bringing the C-Band subscriber base up to 2.26 million. DSS sales also shook off the post-holiday blues and increased from 2200 turn-ons per day to nearly 2800. A total of just under 500,000 systems were authorized as of March 8th. Time Warner Cable announced that, as of early March, it has 100,000 Primestar customers and is currently signing up an average of 4,000 customers a week. Time Warner expects to have 200,000 Primestar customers by the end of the year. Primestar is a joint venture of G.E. American Communications, Comcast, Continental Cablevision, Cox, Newhouse Broadcasting, TCI and Time Warner. There are currently around 340,000 PrimeStar installations nationwide. NEWS FROM FAXCAST NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA (TS) -- Faxcast Europe recently joined with The New York Times Information Services Division to provide satellite delivery of the TimesFAX to attendees of The ITB Travel show in Berlin. The eight-page edition of TimesFAX was transmitted on March 4-8. The TimesFAX edition is a daily digest from The New York Times of the same day. "Faxcast is the only company in the world capable of offering simultaneous broadcast facsimile service over the air to an unlimited number of subscribers, so we are uniquely qualified to deliver the TimesFAX," says Vince Waterson, director of technology at Faxcast USA, Inc. Separately, Faxcast recently signed an agreement with NBC Data Network which allows the company to use NBC's broadcast signal as part of its proposed launch of a U.S. broadcast fax network. In addition, Faxcast is testing the distribution of daily summaries of major national and international newspapers using the signals of NBC-owned stations, and CNBC. The company is a leading designer and manufacturer of data distribution technology using direct satellite, cable and television broadcast signals to reach end-users. Its technology has allowed its customers to dramatically reduce the cost of sending faxes via telephone lines. In Europe, the signal is carried on the VBI over the BSkyB-TV channels. PRIMESTAR ADDS DMX LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, USA (TS) -- Subscribers to Primestar, the US provider of digital direct broadcast satellite (DBS) service now have the chance to access Digital Music Express according to the company who just signed the music programming network to their service. DMX, owned by International Cablecasting Technologies Inc., is a 120-channel, CD-quality music service with no disc jockey or commercial interruptions. Each channel features 24 hours a day of music in a narrowly defined format, ranging from traditional and contemporary country to alternative rock, symphonic, salsa, movie soundtracks, children's, cajun, a wide variety of international channels and many more. The DMX signal is fed directly from the Primestar receiver into a stereo amplifier, providing a tre mendous enhancement to home or business stereo systems. Primestar currently offers subscribers Superaudio, a six-channel analog audio package known as "Prime Audio," as a part of its basic service. ICT holds a 50 percent ownership position in Superaudio, which will continue to be carried on Primestar. SATELLITE NEWS IN CYBERSPACE Every two weeks George Wood on Radio Sweden's English Service presents one of the best 10 minutes on radio - Mediascan. A round up of Nordic and International media news which TELE-satellit amongst others has been contributing to for some time. TS News also carries articles from Radio Sweden's Mediascan and the full electronic version of mediascan is now available on the Internet as a direct mailing. If you would like to subscribe, send an e-mail message to: wood@stab.sr.se with the words "subscribe mediascan" in the subject field. You should receive a confirmation message in return. To take yourself off the mailing list, send a message with "unsubscribe mediascan" in the subject field. IN BREIF - Asia Business News, sister station of the new EBN, is now available on PanAmSat's PAS 2 satellite. The new transponder is in addition to thier Palapa B2P transponder and now enables ABN to reach a larger area of Asia and the US West Coast. - APTV has signed for space on the new Asiasat 2. The US news feed network will take 9MHz of transponder space which means a digital TV service on the side of a regular Asiasat 2 transponder. The satellite is scheduled to be launched later this year. - Wharf Cable in Hong Kong has signed to carry ESPN International, the US based sports channel. The non stop English language channel will also be available 12 hours a day in Cantonese. The service will be produced from ESPN's new Singapore production centre. - PanAmSat is planning a DTH television service for India in 1996. They will use the upcoming PAS 4 satellite and go for the maximum number of big name international and Indian channels. - Deutsche Telekom has paid $586m for a 25% stake in PT Satelit Palapa Indonesia, or Satelindo. The company operates the Palapa satellite system and had been thought to be in talks with the UK's Cable and Wireless until Telekom outbid them this month. - Singapore's cable network has signed an agreement with Star TV that will enable the network to carry eight of the Star TV channels on the system. - In Thailand Country Music TV has signed a contract that will add the Bangkok cable system to the stations distribution. The CMT Asia service will be carried 24 hours a day. - March 18th, during ABC's Wide World of Sports, the first national television ad for C-Band satellite systems aired. By September, when this advertising campaign is over, General Instrument claims that the target audience will see the Full View message at least 10 times (SDA). - If Ted Turner can complete an agreement with Time Warner, he is expected to make a bid in excess of 5 billion dollars for CBS. He is backed by TCI, which owns 20% of Turner's business (SDA). 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 an informative technical section and Europe's best satellite frequency guide. 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 +49-7308-919001 or email 100543.660@compuserve.com Where to find satellite news : TELE-satellit News, English : CompuServe UK Forum (UKFORUM) - Windows Write / ASCII version, library 19 CompuServe European Forum (EURFORUM) - Windows Write version, library 5 CompuServe Deutschland on line (GERLINE) - Windows Write version, library 15 CompuServe Telecommunications Forum (TELECOM) - Windows Write version fax on demand +49-8282-81003 fax on demand +49-2163-81744 fax on demand +49-7308-919009 fax on demand +44-1875-614888 NBC Super Channel - NBC Text page 171 alt.satellite.tv.europe newsgroup on Usenet World Wide Web : http://xan.esrin.esa.it:2602/satellite.html Fidonet SAT.028 Fidonet SATELLITE.FR Fidonet RU.SAT Fidonet SATELLIT_R23.PUB Maus Net : tv.grp America On Line - from the "ham radio" area in the General file library. Anonymous FTP to : ftp.funet.fi /pub/dx/text/satellite/telesatellit CIX Skyguide/telesat conference SAT NET BBS network SweDX BBS, Swedish DX Confederation. +46-8-53034727 / Fidonet 2:201/339 Short Wave Paradise BBS, online 24 hours a day ! USA 616-383-4979 TELE-satellit News, German : CompuServe Deutschland on line (GERLINE) - ASCII version, library 15 CompuServe Der Spiegel Forum (SPIEGEL) - ASCII version, library 11 fax on demand +49-8282-81003 fax on demand +49-2163-81744 fax on demand +49-7308-919009 SAT 1 Text - page 513 3sat Text - page 279 SAT NET BBS network Other reliable sources of satellite news :  Radio Sweden Mediascan. 1st and 3rd Tuesday, 20 minutes into the English programme via Astra, Shortwave, Mediumwave 1197 kHz and the World Radio Network. Text and audio files of Mediascan can be found in the SCDX directory on ftp.funet.fi  Radio Netherlands Media Network, Thursday, 23 minutes into the English programme via shorwave and The World Radio Network  World Wide Web users can access TS News and the electronic journals above and more information via the European satellite home page, URL http://xan.esrin.esa.it:2602/satellite.html  The ProShow. Every Sunday night starting at 9:00 pm EST on the Omega Radio Network - Galaxy 3, Transponder 17, 5.80 MHz.