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 Der TS Nachrichtendienst ist ein Service fuer die Freunde von TELE Satellit und TS-TV und ist nur fuer persoenliche infromation freigegeben. TELE SATELLIT European Satellite News - English Version Number 12, Week ending 14 August 1994 By Martyn Williams CompuServe 100025,1637 Internet martyn@euro.demon.co.uk (c) TELE Satellit Magazine PolSat looses broadcasting licence Poland's Supreme Administrative Court, the NSA, has suspended the terrestrial broadcasting licence of privately owned TV station PolSat. The suspension on the licence, gained in January, was in response to complaints lodged by companies who lost out in the competition to win the first private licence in Poland, among them Polonia 1. The ban seems to have been made against the wishes of the National Broadcasting Council, the KRRit, as they immediately criticised the action of the court. In a swiftly issued statement the council expressed surprise at the court decision. They also suggested that their authority had been breached by the court. PolSat said they would continue terrestrial broadcasting until an explicit order to shut down the network was received. The ban covers the terrestrial broadcasting licence and the additional satellite broadcasting licence is not affected. The terrestrial ban stands until a court decision in mid August. Murdoch - VOX profit in three years In an interview with German news magazine Der Spiegal Rupert Murdoch said that he aims to bring VOX into profit within three years. His plan included introducing new strands of programming onto the channel including children's programming, documentaries and game shows. He also revealed that he is considering starting new channels for sport and children's TV onto the German satellite and cable market. Bertlesmann reveals complaint to EC German multi media giant Bertlesmann has revealed it complained to the European Commission earlier this year about MTV Europe. The subject of the complaint was an MTV ban on new Bertlesmann videos. The statement alleged that MTV Europe refused to play any Bertlesmann videos during a dispute between the two over MTV Latino. The ban was lifted when the MTV Latino issue was resolved. Successful launch for Ariane An Ariane rocket successfully placed in orbit two new satellites last Wednesday from the Ariane base in French Guaina. The 66th launch took place at 2305 UTC Wednesday, delayed from July 31st due to technical problems. The Ariane 44LP rocket carried Brasilsat B1, the first of Brazil's second-generation satellite system, and Turksat 1B, Turkey's first telecommunications satellite. After the launch Arianespace Chairman and CEO Charles Bigot, said "We are pleased and proud that this launch will contribute to the expansion of telecommunications services for our faithful customer, EMBRATEL, and to the implementation of a satellite telecommunications system by Turkey, a newcomer in satellite operations. Flight 66 was a challenge to the professional skills of all ARIANE Industrial teams. Thanks to the rigorous quality controls carried out here in Kourou, the accuracy of a sensitive diagnosis concerning an unexpected incident, and work that was both fast and efficient, we have been able to carry out three launches in less than two months." The next launch, flight 67, is scheduled for September 8 and should carry Telsat 402. Algerian TV on Eutelsat 2F3 A testcard on 11.678 GHz on Eutelsat's 2F3 satellite at 16 degrees East is announcing the arrival of Algerian TV soon. The start date isn't given. Eutelsat 2F3 is becoming the European home to Arabic and gulf region satellite channels. Algerian TV broadcasts mainly in French and Arabic. Italian Radio on Show TV Radio Maria, the catholic radio station in Italy is now broadcasting via Show TV on 7.74 MHz. The station broadcasts round the clock religion on the Show TV transponder. Eutelsat 2F2, 11.575 GHz Vertical. Japan threatens China over satellite slot China is risking causing harmful interference to two satellites above Asia with the positioning of it's new Apstar 1 satellite. China has announced intentions to park Apstar 1 at 131 degrees East. Just one degree each side of this slot are the new Rimsat 1 and a Japanese CS bird. Rimsat carries TV to the Indian subcontinent and the Japanese satellite is mainly used for telephone traffic. China appears to have side stepped all International agreements and launched the satellite without informing the ITU in Geneva. An ITU spokesperson confirmed that they had received to notification of the launch from China but that they were also powerless to do anything about it. Japanese and Rimsat officials visited Beijing last week to protest the Chinese move and try to find a solution to the problem but were unsuccessful. Apstar 1 has leased transponders to several US clients including Turner Broadcasting, ESPN International, Discovery, and HBO. Turner Broadcasting announced this week that The Cartoon Network / TNT International programme will begin from Apstar on October 6th. TV69 - another missed launch Even though our common sense told us the launch was unlikely we were actually beginning to believe that TV69 would launch last Friday night on Eutelsat 2 F3. The launch looked more definite this time after a rush of coverage in the main stream newspapers and interviews given to, amongst others, the Press Association. The channel failed to launch as advertised for, as yet, unspecified reasons. A new launch date has been announced at 15 August ..... New satellite system for Asia Not wanting to miss out on the great satellite rush in Asia, Singapore has announced that it will work with Taiwan in a new 50/50 joint venture to launch a commercial satellite. The price of the project is estimated at around $215m. Singapore launch slots will be used in exchange for technology from Taiwan. ZDF wins ratings war For the second time ZDF has beaten out it's competitors to win the monthly German ratings war. GfK July statistics reveal : ZDF 18.9%; ARD 17.9%; RTL Television 16.2%; SAT 1 13.5%; PRO 7 9.1%; RTL 2 3.7%; VOX 2.0%; KabelKanal 1.9%; DSF 1.3%; n-tv 0.3% TBS revenues fall 58% but CNN up slightly Turner Broadcasting System reported a drop in second quarter earnings of 58% last week. Revenues from CNN and CNN International were up though. A seven percent increase was recorded by CNN due mainly to increased subscription revenue. Oprah - coming to Sky soon ... Sky have signed a five year deal to broadcast The Oprah Winfrey Show, starting in January next year. The current UK TV rights are held by Channel 4. A rather unhappy Channel 4 spokesperson explained that Channel 4 were used to larger broadcasters with more money stealing their most popular programmes once they became popular. CMT expands worldwide Nashville based Country Music Television has announced plans to expand it's service into Asia and Latin America. A new Asian service should be transmitting to Asia by mid-September and into Latin America by January next year. The service will be varied slightly for each market, just as the European version is separate from the US network. TS-TV on 10° East TS-TV, the German language satellite program dedicated to the satellite DXer, is moving to a new transponder. EUTELSAT II-F2 on 10° East is the new home of TS-TV. The new frequency is 11.141 GHz, vertical polarization, and the transponder is a widebeam one, so the program can now be received in wider areas of Europe. The next transmission of TS-TV is on August 26th (Friday) with a repeat on August 28th (Sunday). Transmission starts at both dates on 19.00 hours UTC (21.00 hours Central European Summer Time). Two highlights of the show: TS-TV features a newly developed way of moving the LNC instead of the dish, and a also newly developed digital receiver for the reception of very low signals. TS-TV has also started negotiations with regular mainstream broadcasters to incorporate this special interest program within their own fare. The program is also available on VHS videotape. Contact TELE-satellit customer service (c/o Susanne Pillich, Silheimerstr. 6a, D-89278 Nersingen, Germany) for further information. SPECIAL FEATURE A New Kind of Radio by Gene Reich, VOA Washington For nearly seventy years, international radio broadcasters have used shortwave to reach their audiences. Shortwave is wonderfully suited to this purpose, because it can span oceans and continents, thus making it possible for international broadcasters to reach a vast number of listeners, but shortwave has serious shortcomings as a broadcast medium: it is not totally reliable, it is prone to interference, and the sound quality of shortwave is poor as compared to other radio services. New technology is offering an alternative: direct broadcast of radio programs from satellites. A small Washington-based company called Worldspace is working with an industry giant to make satellite radio a reality. Worldspace is a small company. Founded in 1990, it has only fifteen staff members, all of whom work from a compact suite of offices in downtown Washington. Though worldspace is small, its ambitions are truly global. The company's goal is to place three satellites in orbit, which would broadcast radio programs directly to listeners in Africa, Asia and South America. The Worldspace plan, while technically feasible, represents a huge endeavor. To develop this new system, the company must work for the creation of both new satellites and a new kind of radio receiver, but Worldspace is not alone in this project. Over the past year it has enjoyed the assistance of a leading manufacturer of electronics and communications devices, Motorola. Patrick Jeffers is a senior systems engineer at Motorola. In designing the Worldspace system -- especially the new type of radio receiver, he says it's essential to concentrate on cost and simplicity "It's important from VOA's standpoint and all international broadcasters that when you deploy a new system, you want your listeners to be able to listen to it. So we need to architect [design] the system to have a viable, low-cost radio product for the consumer. The other thing -- more from a business standpoint -- is you need to be first to the market and that says that you need to use existing technology that is currently off-the-shelf". Specifically, the goal is to design satellite radio receivers which would cost around one hundred dollars and furthermore, these receivers -- not to mention the satellites themselves -- would be fashioned from currently-available, so-called "off-the-shelf technology." Is this really possible? "Most definitely. We have been quite heavily looking at the radio cost -- that's the number one priority for the system and we've [designed] and made changes to the system to insure that we can deliver a viable, low-cost radio product to the market. The technology has been available for years in terms of the digital broadcast. A lot of CD quality -- for instance, CD discs, disc-players and so forth -- use the same basic technology and all that we're doing new is being able to broadcast that directly from a geostationary satellite." That satellite in geostationary orbit -- thirty-five thousand, eight hundred eighty kilometers above the equator -- would broadcast signals to be received by a flat antenna about the same size as a standard audio cassette box, how is this possible? After all, not so long ago it took huge dish antennas to receive satellite transmissions but Motorola senior systems engineer Patrick Jeffers says satellite technology has come a long way since its early days: "The early satellites that were deployed had very limited size, weight and power aboard the space craft, and as technology has evolved, you're able to use more power, transmit more power aboard the spacecraft, than what was feasible in the early days." Mr Jeffers says the Worldspace system will employ satellites powerful enough to transmit radio programs to the new portable receivers. Of course, right now the entire Worldspace system of direct satellite audio broadcasting -- known in the industry as DAB -- exists only on the drawing board. but Motorola's Patrick Jeffers says he has no doubt this system will work: "Complete confidence. The technology is there. It's already been developed. All we have to do is to configure it and implement in the DAB system to support Worldspace." Worldspace calls its new receiver the "Starman." "In a sense, this new receiver is going to be all of what we know about radio, but a bit more." Noah Samara is the founder and chief executive officer of worldspace: "First of all, it would be like all of radio in that it would receive all kinds of audio programming as do your normal radio receivers...except that this radio would receive audio signals with a much better clarity, primarily because of the transmission mode." To broadcast its signals, the worldspace system will use digital modulation, a technique which is much less prone to noise, distortion and interference than current broadcasting methods and this digital technology will enable the new radio to receive more than just sound. The "Starman," will contain a display window for text messages. This display, for instance, could tell listeners the title of the song being broadcast as well as the artist performing it but Mr Samara says the starman's display has even more capabilities: "Additionally, the radio will also be able to receive individual messaging types of signals. So each radio is going to be individually addressable -- much like a telephone or paging device, we can send a signal to our radio, and not to any other radios, or to several radios, but not to all the radios that exist." Noah Samara is the founder and chief executive officer of Worldspace. He and the officers of motorola are confident that direct satellite radio is technically feasible. Whether this system becomes a reality, they say, has more to do with business and market factors than technology. In any event, Mr Samara says, Worldspace hopes to overcome these hurdles and launch its first satellite over africa in 1997. Source: Voice Of America Thanks ... Ralf Huebner in Stuttgart for correcting my German ! 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 a informative technical section. Part of the magazine is written in English. 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 +49-7308-5296 Where to find satellite news : TELE Satellit News, English : Zipped Windows Write Version - CompuServe UKFORUM library 17, EURFORUM library 5 ASCII Text Version - CompuServe UKFORUM library 17 Fax polling - +31-45-273615 *2*44 ; +49-89-496287 *9 alt.satellite.tv.europe newsgroup on Internet World Wide Web : http://xan.esrin.esa.it:2602/satellite.html TELE Satellit News, German : ASCII Text Version - CompuServe Deutsches Computer Forum (GERNET) Fax polling - +49-89-496287 / +31-45-273615 TELE Satellit TV ! 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Eutlesat 2F3, 11.141 GHz, Vertical. 20:00 UK, 21:00 CET Other reliable sources of satellite news : - Satellite Journal International provides worldwide satellite news and can be found in UKFORUM, EURFORUM, TELECOM, BPFORUM and CEFORUM plus other networks worldwide including Internet, Nifty Serve Japan and Fidonet. - 3615 SATPHONE on Minitel for the latest hot news ! - 3670-8192 in France for the latest French language satellite news updates - SAT 1 Text, page 550 with fresh news every 3-4 days plus frequency charts. - Radio Sweden Mediascan. 1st and 3rd Tuesday, 20 minutes into the English programme via Astra, Shortwave, Mediumwave 1197 kHz and the World Radio Network. - Sat News on the Internet - Skyguide on the Internet 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 We encourage all European satellite users and viewers to drop by UK Forum section 17, Entertainment, to chat and discuss all issues related to European satellite broadcasting.