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SAT-Usenet 1/96

SAT-Usenet 
1/96
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Deadline for this issue: 21.07.96, 16:52

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Transpondernews from ASTRA:

* SKY pay-per-view
Sky wants to 'experiment' some more with pay-per-view and it will do so
using 2 analogue transponders on Astra 1D. The PPV programming will
consist
of recent movies (months before their premiere on the movie channels) and
big events like boxing matches. The PPV channels will be on air every day
after 19:00 CET (in the evening, anyway). During the morning and afternoon
these two transponders will be used by Granada Talk and Granada Good Life.


* Sky Sports 3
Finally the mystery of transponder 31 is solved. It will be a third sports
channel (sheesh). Although Veronica Satellite is a bit confused, because
they were talking about transponder 27 which is also one of the three
transponders Sky took over from Kinnevik.


* Granada Plus
The second Kinnevik transponder will be used for Granada Plus. Originally
to be called Granada Gold but changed because they feared people might
get confused with UK Gold. (Got to be pretty thick not to notice a dif-
ference between those two names, but anyway)


* Warner Bros Channel / Fox Children's Network
The third Kinnevik transponder will most definitely be filled with the
Warner Channel. Veronica Satellite says there's a chance it could also
go to a European version of ol' Rupert's Fox Children's Network. They'll
probably both end up on the same transponder.


* Transponder 47 (Sci-Fi gets some more hours)
Well it seems the mess on 47 will be here to say for some time to come.
The bright side is that the Sci-Fi channel is at least getting some more
air-time. Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays will have Sci-Fi broadcasting
from 20:00 til 4:00 (2100-0500CET)!! The rest of the week will remain
the same with the impossible schedule of 1:00AM-4:00AM UKTime. Because of
all this shifting the Sky Sports Gold service will end. I've worked out
the following schedule for TP47 (all times UK):

 MO-WE :   08:00-12:00  Sky Soap
           12:00-16:00  Sky Travel
           16:00-20:00  History Channel
           20:00-04:00  Sci-Fi Channel
           04:00-08:00  Christian Channel

 TH-FR :   08:00-12:00  Sky Soap
           12:00-16:00  Sky Travel
           16:00-20:00  History Channel
           20:00-01:00  Sky Sports 2
           01:00-04:00  Sci-Fi Channel
           04:00-08:00  Christian Channel

 SA-SU :   08:00-01:00  Sky Sports 2
           01:00-04:00  Sci-Fi Channel
           04:00-08:00  Christian Channel
Don't kill me if it's not 100% correct because it's a pain to figure out
the schedule of that transponder.

* Transponder 64
As you might or might not know, Sky has made a deal to receive another
3 transponders on Astra 1D. RTL4, RTL5 and SBS6 who'll be terminating
their analogue services soon, will leave behind 3 nice analogue trans-
ponders for Sky to play with. Well, it seems Sky doesn't have enough
programs to fill all these transponders yet (how about giving us the
full 24 hours Sci-Fi Channel feed as the service is originally intended)
so they've found another way to make money off them. German Channel TM3
can lease Sky's transponder 64 (where RTL5 is now) for a rumoured sum of
12 million DM a year! The same will probably happen to the remaining
analogue Astra transponders in Sky's hands since those transponders are
pretty scarce and much in demand. Nice way of making loads of cash without
actually broadcasting anything on there yourself.
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