Wednesday, 6th February 2008

SPORTS SHORTS

* UK commercial broadcaster ITV has renewed its deal to televise every round of motor racing’s British Touring Car Championship, but will no longer screen live races on its terrestrial channel ITV1. During the 2008 season, races from eight of the 10 rounds will be shown live in five-hour programmes on digital channel ITV4. The races from the other two rounds will be shown in full in a three-hour programme. Highlights will be available in the week after each meeting on ITV1 and digital channel Men & Motors. In all, there will be 76 hours of BTCC programming this year as the championship celebrates its 50th anniversary. Sportcal.com, 6th February 2008

* MP & Silva has widened its soccer portfolio after finalising a deal for the distribution rights to selected Asian qualifiers for the Fifa World Cup in 2010. The agency will distribute rights exclusively for 18 matches from the third round of qualifying for the Asian region, including games from Group A, considered the pick of the groups with the inclusion of Iraq, Australia, China and Qatar. The other matches acquired by MP & Silva are the home qualifying matches of Lebanon, South Korea and Syria. Sportcal.com, 5th February 2008

* Malaysia's mobile phone operator DiGi said its net profit in the quarter through December rose 22% from a year earlier, buoyed by growing subscriber base and higher revenue. or the full year, its net profit soared to 1.06 billion ringgit ($328 million), up 32% from 2006. Revenue for the full year rose 19% on-year to 4.36 billion ringgit ($135 million). t said its customer base in 2007 grew to 6.4 million from 5.3 million at the end of 2006. DiGi said it expected the Malaysian mobile market to remain favorable in 2008, with growth in the cellular broadband market. It targets a 5% growth in 2008 net profit. The company expects to spend up to 800 million ringgit ($248 million) to roll out its third-generation or 3G services over the next three years. But it said 3G services would only contribute to its revenue in the medium to longer term. telecomasia.net, 6th Feb 2008.

* Internet portal Sohu.com said its fourth-quarter profit more than doubled on strong advertising and game revenue, and said it expects its sponsorship of the Beijing Olympics this summer to help boost 2008 revenues. CEO Charles Zhang said he expected "another great year" in 2008 due in part to Sohu's status as the official internet portal for the Beijing Olympics in August. Olympics plans include online events coverage and having Chinese athletes write blogs, Zhang said in a conference call with analysts. telecomasia.net, 6th Feb 2008

* SingTel, Southeast Asia's largest phone company, posted a 9.6% rise in quarterly underlying profit, as robust Asian mobile growth offset a margin squeeze at its Australian unit Optus, a Reuters report said. The Reuters report said SingTel, Singapore's largest listed firm, maintained its guidance for higher earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation and single-digit operating sales growth for its domestic operations in its fiscal year ending March. telecomasia.net, 6th Feb 2008

* Mio TV, the IPTV platform from Singaporean telco SingTel, signed up 13,000 new subs, growth of 31%, in the final quarter of 2007. That brings Mio TV’s subs base to 55,000 customers, although so far only 27,000 of these have been installed. SingTel said in a results statement: “Although not expected to make a significant contribution to SingTel’s revenue in the short term, mio has helped to strengthen SingTel’s position as a fully integrated provider of infocomm and entertainment services.” Allen Lew, SingTel’s CEO Singapore, said: “The take-up of mio TV is in line with our projection. Over the next 18 months, we will continue to focus on leading the market in Singapore while building new revenue growth engines for the future. They include pay TV services in the consumer market.” RapidTV, 6th February 2008

* The Asian Handball Federation has fined Japan and South Korea $1,000 each for replaying controversial Olympic qualifying matches. Ahmed Abuallail, the executive director of the federation, said the two countries ‘broke the laws of the federation’ when they took part in the rematches. The fines were imposed despite the International Handball Federation's recent ruling that the original Asian qualifying tournament, held in Japan last September, should be replayed, after identifying 38 questionable refereeing decisions in a game in which Kuwait surprisingly beat South Korea 28-20. The $1,000 fines and a warning are the maximum punishments the executive committee can impose, but the AHF's board of directors and general assembly can recommend suspension or $10,000 fines. Sportcal.com, 6th February 2008

* Times Internet Limited is working with Hovr to launch India’s first free mobile gaming portal. The partners have built GameZone, a downloadable content and social network offering hundreds of free, ad-funded mobile games. They expect tens of millions of Indian subscribers participate, and to engage with the site’s community elements such as competing for high scores, chatting, playing multi-player titles and so on. Times Internet Limited is a unit of Times Group, India’s largest cross-platform media and entertainment company. India has more than 235 million subscribers and is growing at between five and eight million a month. Mobile-ent.biz, 4th February 2008

* India, Bahrain and South Africa have met a deadline of the end of last month to confirm their interest in staging the World Junior Table Tennis Championships in 2011, the International Table Tennis Federation has announced. If its bid is successful, India, which is bidding for the second time having lost out to Chile in 2003, plans to stage the event in either New Delhi or Pune. Bahrain, which hosted last year’s championships, would stage the event in its capital city Manama, while South Africa, which hosted last year’s World Cadet Challenge and World Junior Circuit Finals, would hold the event in Cape Town. The bidders for the 2011 event will present their bids at the ITTF board of directors meeting in Guangzhou, China on February 29. Sportcal.com, 6th February 2008

MORE NEWS

Singapore/ New Media: Singapore Axes Analogue TV Batch

Singapore is fast-moving to an all-digital cable environment. Seven analogue channels vanished this past weekend. Singapore’s StarHub cable system removed seven more analogue channels, including Cinemax and NHK’s World Premium (Japanese) channel. Both are already available on StarHub’s digital system.

Digital set-top boxes cost an additional $4 to rent, but if viewers sign up to premium packages the box fee is waived. As at December there were still 115,000 homes, about a quarter of StarHub’s 499,000 subs, still viewing in analogue. Only 39 analogue channels remain, compared to 115 on the digital service.

However, while Cinemax is a mainstream channel, most of those switched off to date are limited interest niche services. For example, in the last batch of terminations six channels were switched off including German news and general interest channel Deutsche Welle. StarHub says most of the viewers of these speciality channels had already migrated to the all-digital service. Local sources suggest that the target date for an all-digital service in Singapore is about 2010-2015, with powerful broadcasters like MediaCorp in no hurry to risk losing its analogue cable audience. Rapid TV, 6th February 2008