Video Age International articles from April 2000

Video Age International archives from April 2000

Recognizing Changes and Values.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... JEAN BERNARD M[ddot{U}]NCH When the EBU was formed, 41 delegates representing 23 countries came together to create an organization of value. The Union's "most essential task" was defined as being "the defense of the interests of...

EBU: The World's Largest TV Program Distributor.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... With more than 100,000 transmissions per year, the EBU's Eurovision controls more than 30 percent of the European television market. Its strength is in the distribution of complex events (such as the Olympics) with parallel feeds originated...

At 50, the EBU Looks Back at Its Accomplishments.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is the largest professional association of national broadcasters in the world. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and representing members in the European arena, the EBU negotiates broadcasting rights...

ITU Is to Re-engineer for the Future.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... A 26-member Reform Advisory Panel, comprised of senior government officials, industry CEOs, regulators and operators, met in Geneva last month to agree on the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) reform. Set up by ITU's secretary...

Hollywood Sues Sites Over DVD App.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... The seven largest U.S. movie studios filed individual lawsuits to prevent Internet sites from distributing a program that would allow the copying of DVD movies. The suits, filed in federal courts in New York and Connecticut, followed a broader...

Forum Begins Interoperability Testing.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Members of the Interactive MPEG-2 Forum (IM2F) will begin interoperability testing of their products at the MPEG-2 Interoperability Laboratory on the University of Akron's (Ohio) campus. Thirty MPEG-2 vendors have met bi-monthly since its...

Lawyer Takes Over Czech TV.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... The publicly-held Czech Television appointed young-blood lawyer Dusan Chmelicek its new chief executive earlier this year. Chmelicek, 32, was head of Strategic Development for the Eastern European broadcaster since 1998. He supplants Jakub...

Scientist Shot for the Stars and Grabbed Hollywood.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Carl Sagan's first experience with reaching the masses came in the form of a co-authored book tided "Intelligent Life in the Universe" (1966). However, his partner in prose was Russian scientist I.S. Shklovskii and during the Cold War of the...

Indian TV Grows: Q & A With Shah.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Doordarshan TV's CEO Rajeeva Ratna Shah comments on changing scene Indian national TV is expanding to compete with a ballooning satellite and cable industry which is changing the face of Indian television. The "Asia-Pacific Television...

SPORTELAmerica Confirms Sports' Big Biz & Big News.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... The fourth annual SPORTELAmerica opened in Miami, the same day in which sports news moved from the sports page of most of the major American dailies into their main sections. On Monday, March 20, SPORTELAmerica's opening day, The New York Times...

Creative @ the Speed of Light.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Web heavies weigh in on TV production distribution With all the current buzz surrounding viewer divergence and the "brain drain" from television to new media, one small company (nine employees strong) is swimming upstream. Founders Scott...

Docs and iOps Focus at MIP-TV.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... This year's MIP-TV international television market (April 10-14) will inaugurate "MIPNET Day @ MIP-TV" together with its fourth MIP-DOC market. MIP-TV will host seminars concerning digital networks and convergent programming, following a...

Reports of Monte Carlo's Demise Highly Exaggerated: Part II.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... According to some trade press reports, the Monte Carlo Television Market is on its last leg and this time it's really serious. Then there are the direct accounts from distributors who participated both with and without exhibition suites. ...

Kudos for AFM's 20th. Film Market Sees TV Resurgence.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... The American Film Market 2000 celebrated its 20th anniversary at the Loews Hotel in Santa Monica, CA, which has housed this market for the past 10 years. This year, rain kept a good portion of the participants indoors, but not necessarily...

Veteran Producer Welcomes Webcasting.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Producer Don Mischer has seen the interactive writing on the wall. But unlike some television producers who view the Internet as a direct threat to broadcast viewership, Mischer embraces the possibilities convergence offers. This year Mischer,...

Video Search Engine Sparked by MediaSite.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Boasting such broadcast clients as NBC, Time Warner, BBC and most recently Stockholm-based sports-content provider, Kamera Interactive, MediaSite has cemented one more brick onto the foundation bridging television and the Internet, taking the...

e-Media Kicks Off Soccer via Internet.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... E -Media recently broadcast the UEFA Cup soccer match between Celta de Vigo of Spain and Juventus of Italy March 9 on a pay-per-view basis for Video sport.com of Dallas, Texas. Videosport.com offers live video and audio Internet broadcasts...

Countdown to iBlast.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Twelve major television-station groups have formed a national wireless network, iBlast, to deliver high-speed music, video, games, software and other services directly to personal computers. The new company already has agreements with 143...

Viewers Take Control.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Two companies are developing camera technology that will give control of the camera angle to Internet users. This interactive video has already been used by Superbowl.com and ESPN.com to stream 360-degree videos at Super Bowl XXXIV (the U.S.'s...

Lights, Camera, Legal Action(R) Trademark Theft.com.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Prior to the explosion of Internet commerce, most businesses were oblivious to the importance of translating their trademarks into web-based domain names. During the pre-explosion era, a small army of cyber-opportunists were easily able to...

History Kind to Public Broadcasting.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... In February 1950, when the European Broadcasting Union was founded in the "English Riviera" resort of Torquay, television was not even on the agenda. Half a century later, the EBU's members exchange 25,000 television news items every year...

New Pay TV Formed in Greece.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Greece's state-owned broadcaster ERT is joining OTE Telecom and Alpha Digital Synthesis in a pay-television venture. The company tripartite will also establish a subsidiary to provide digital TV infrastructure and interactive subscription...

The More Things Change, More MIP Stays the Same.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... The future of MIP-TV discussed at a lively round table A longside the fan fare, the glamour, the rumblings and the official conferences, the Monte Carlo TV Market also served to calculate and analyze what's on the horizon for MIP-TV in...

More Bang for the Buck at the L.A. Screenings.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... First the most important news: the key parties at the Los Angeles Screenings are scheduled May 24 (for Paramount) and May 27 (at Warner Bros.). Universal Studios is considering a retirement fete to wish farewell to one of its executives....

Studios' Deals Refashioned.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Three studio execs output their view Buyers don't want to be stuck with programs they can't use just to get programs they want. In 1999, such resistance fueled a widely disseminated myth that the output deal was dead. If it was dead, it...

EBU: The World's Largest TV Program Distributor.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... With 100,000 transmissions a year, the Swiss-based European Broadcasting Union controls more than 30 percent of the European television market today. The strength of EBU's Eurovision network is primarily in its ability to reach any broadcaster...

My Two Cents.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... If you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't be at NATPE," is how NATPE president Bruce Johansen reacted to an article he considered critical published in the February/March issue of Video Age. The article reported that at the recent NATPE in New...

Cinar in the Midst of Money Scandal.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Early last month, both CEOs of Canada's Cinar Corporation resigned, and the CFO was terminated amid improprieties of $122 million in unapproved investments. The husband-and-wife team (Micheline Charest and Ronald Weinberg) who founded and...

Air Spectrum Sold on Wall Street.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2000... Officials at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ate preparing rules that would create a trading system on the Street for the underused slices of the wireless spectrum. This marks a radical overhaul of the rules governing the...