Apparently-to: scdx@get.pp.se
From: "George Wood" 
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  ::           MediaScan             
  ::      SWEDEN CALLING DXERS       
  ::       from Radio Sweden          
  ::    Number 2262--Dec 17, 1997    
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Satellite, shortwave and other electronic media news from Radio
Sweden.
This week's bulletin was written by George Wood.
Packet Radio BID SCDX2262
All times UTC unless otherwise noted.
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NOTE: This is going out today, a few days early, because this is my
last working day before 5 weeks of vacation. I'd like to repeat my
previous request for contributors to hold off on sending e-mail until
after January 20, so I won't be inundated when I return.
Also please note that the January 7 edition of the program will be a
repeat of the December 17 program. The next new edition will be on
January 21, 1997.
I do have a question for those of you accessing the MediaScan pages on
the Worldwide Web. Because of capacity limitations on our Web server,
I've just removed the MediaScan archives containing au-format sound
files from programs previous to edition 2238, December 19, 1995. I
would like to freshen up the form of the Web edition, using frames,and
splitting it up on several pages. But the easiest way to do that would
also be to remove the archive. Does anyone ever really access old
editions of MediaScan? Does anyone not have the ability to readh
frames? If you have an opinion, let me know (the request not to write
does not pertain here, please do write about this). Otherwise, the
archive will disappear in the New Year.
Let me also take this opportunity to thank all of you who have sent
contributions to the program during the past year. Special thanks to
James Robinson, Curt Swinehart, Martyn Williams, Richard Karlsson, and
Christian Lyngemark. Happy holidays and best wishes for the New Year!
NOTE 2: December 16 is/was science and science fiction writer Arthur
C. Clarke's 79th birthday. As the first to propose geo-stationary
satellites, he is the patron saint of satellite communications. Check
out the unofficial Arthur C. Clarke page at:
http://www.lsi.usp.br/~rbianchi/clarke/ACC.Homepage.html
Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the first public
demonstration of radio by Marconi, another patron saint of
communications.
Check out:
http://monviso2.alpcom.it/hamradio/mmm.html
NORDIC MEDIA NEWS:
RADIO SWEDEN--Beginning January 1, 1997, Radio Sweden and Swedish
Radio will be broadcasting on Eutelsat II-F1, on the NBC Europe
transponder on 10.987 GHz, audio 7.56 MHz. Our current schedule on
Astra and Tele-X will continue through March. Our broadcasts via the
World Radio Network, to Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa, will
remain unaffected.
Here's some of the Holiday specials coming on Radio Sweden's English
service during the next couple of weeks:
December 24    Christmas Eve Special
December 25    Christmas Day Special
December 26    Boxing Day Special
December 27    Look Back at 1996
December 28    Spectrum 1996 Round-up
December 29    Sounds Nordic The Year That Was
December 30    SportScan 1996 Review
December 31    Sounds Nordic The Year That Was
January   1    Money Matters 1996 Review
January   2    Nordic Report
January   3    Look Back at 1996
January   4    Spectrum 1996 Round-Up
January   5    In Touch With Stockholm
January   6    SportScan 1996 Review
STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL--We have a number of special programs on our
P6 - Stockholm International transmitter in Stockholm (89.6 MHz) over
the next few weeks (local times here):
Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol" from the BBC with Sir Ralph
Richardson will be on December 23 at 22:00 hrs, repeated on December
25 at 09:00 hrs.
"The Sixteen Christmas Concert" from the BBC will be on December 24 at
09:00 hrs.
"The Beatles at Christmas" will be aired on the 24th at 10:00 and
22:00 hrs. That will be followed by "The Beatles Story" in 6 parts,
narrated by Richard Skinner, daily from December 25 to 30 at 10:00 and
22:00 hrs.
December 26, 27, and 30 at 09:00 hrs sees "Flywheel, Shyster and
Flywheel", recreations of long-lost Marx brothers radio scripts.
On December 31 at 22:00 hrs, we'll present "After Supper Ghost
Stories" by Jerome K. Jerome.
"One Step Beyond Madness" about the band of the same name, will be
aired January 6 11:00-13:00.
Finally Keith and Kathy will be presenting "The Best of Morning
Coffee" on December 31 at 09:00-11:00 hrs and Januaary 1 at
11:00-13:00 hrs.
Beginning January 2, the program switches to the new time of 11:00-
13:00 hrs, and changes name to "Lunchbreak".
DIM--At this time of year we usually either look back at what's
happened during the year gone by, or look forward to the future. It's
the latter we're doing in this edition of MediaScan, looking at a
project that exemplifies the future of electronic multimedia. The
project is called Distributed Interactive Media, or DIM, and it
involves no less than 19 Swedish companies, including public
broadcasters Swedish Radio and Swedish Television, several major
newspapers, telecoms companies, and the Swedish subsidiaries of
hardware producers like Sun and Silicon Graphics.
Bringing them all together is the Royal Institute of Technology here
in Stockholm, and in this program we talk to the institute's Ulla
Skid‚n, the project leader for DIM.
You can find a draft summary of the project at:
http://www.it.kth.se/labs/ts/media/DIM/ericsson.medialab.DIM.html
The project had a trial run on December 10th, when the Nobel Prizes
were awarded in Stockholm and Oslo. The Royal Institute of Technology
has a special program with Stanford University in California, where
one of the 1996 laureates works. They took advantage of the
opportunity to create a special multimedia broadcast. The Nobel
broadcast included a special Worldwide Web pages, which include a
variety of multimedia presentations. Besides some offbeat photos of
Sweden's King Carl Gustav, who hands-out the Nobel prizes here,
RealAudio interviews with the Physics and Chemistry laureates, there's
a video about Stanford's Physics laureate Douglas Osheroff.
The Web site is at:
http://www.it.kth.se/nobel
SWEDISH TELEVISION--Swedish Television is taking part in Scandinavian
Channel, which broadcasts to North Americans of Scandinavian descent.
Actually the "channel" is a half-hour daily program on the
International Channel, which reaches 7 million cable households.
However, there are plans to expand to 2 hours daily.
("Radiotidningen")
KANAL 5--Kanal 5, which has slowly been closing in on Kinnevik's TV3
in viewership, has now attracted some choice children's programming.
After the terrestrial private station TV4 captured the primary rights
for Disney programming from Swedish Television, Kanal 5 grabbed the
secondary rights from TV3. (Of course it doesn't hurt that Kanal 5 is
owned by SBS, which is owned by ABC, which is owned by Disney.) There
will be Disney programming every weekday. ("Metro")
Kanal 5 has also signed a 5 year contract with Stephen Spielberg's
"Dreamworks". This gives Kanal 5 and the other SBS channels rights to
TV series and the first 50 movies produced by the company over the
next few years. ("Dagens Nyheter")
RADIO--Kinnevik's Norwegian station, Radio P4 Hele Norge, is already
broadcasting in the Swedish west coast city of Gothenburg. Now the
station plans to extend to all of Sweden, either by taking over
Kinnevik's Swedish network, Radio Rix, or buying radio licences as
they become available. ("Vision" via "Radiotidningen")
Considering the Swedish government's plans to change radio licencing,
this may become harder to do. Radio P4 Hele Norge is available on
satellite on Intelsat 707, on the Norwegian TV2 transponder, 11.555
GHz.
The report of the parliamentary committee on private radio in Sweden,
reported on last time, was as expected. The committee majority wants
to change the system introduced by the previous government, auctioning
frequencies to the highest bidder. Instead a government-appointed
panel of experts would allocate channels. Predictably, the
representatives of the parties behind the previous system, the
Conservatives, Liberals, and Christian Democrats, registered
reservations against the final report. Representatives of the current
private radio stations were also critical, as they say they were
promised an automatic 8 year renewal of their licences. Instead, they
face fighting for their allocations in 2001. (TT)
TV4--The Swedish government has reached a compromise with private
terrestrial broadcaster TV4 on the station's new licence, which means
15 regional stations can remain on the air. After the original
negotiations, TV4 said it would have to close its regional studios
around the country. Now the government has agreed to let TV4 broadacst
10 minutes of commercials per hour between 19:00 and 24:00 hrs local
time, 2 more minutes per hour than today. TV4's board meets on
December 17 to consider the fate of the regional stations. (TT and
"Svenska Dagbladet")
SPORTKANALEN--It appears more and more likely that the days of
Kinnevik's Sportkanalen are numbered. It has shared the TV6
transponder, but there are no Sportkanalen programs in the TV6
schedule for January. Instead, TV6 programming returns to weekends,
replacing Sportkanalen. (Richard Karlsson, "Aftonbladet")
Danish telecommunications group Tele Danmark, says it expects to
recover its investment in Denmark's Sportskanalen within the next 6 to
8 years. Sportskanalen is a joint venture between Tele danmark, the
state-owned Dansmarks Radio, the independent TV2, and the Danish
Football Association. It's expected to begin broadcasts via cable and
satellite on March 1, 1997. (Reuters)
TURNER--Cartoon Network and TNT are now broadcasting to Scandinavia on
Intelsat 707 on 10.995 GHz, in clear D2-MAC. ZTV Denmark on TV-SAT 2
and Tele-X has gone off the air. (Richard Karlsson and "SATCO DX Chart
Update")
DIGITAL--The Nokia Mediamaster 9500, the MPEG-2 multimedia terminal
(satellite receiver) for the Nethold/Multichoice package to
Scandinavia, is now supposed to be available in Sweden. The complete
package, with terminal, 60 cm antenna, and universal LNB, is supposed
to cost SEK 9500. The terminal alone will cost around SEK 1000 less.
(Richard Karlsson)
With Christmas shopping underway, we have yet to see a single ad in a
Stockholm newspaper for these things.
EUROPE:
ASTRA--Galavision is closing on Astra transponder 44 on December 27.
British Sky Broadcasting is taking over the transponder for a "pub
quiz" that day between 12:00 and 22:00 hrs. It will be available to
pubs and clubs only for a fee of GBP 150. There are also plans to use
the transponder for pay-per-view experiments involving Manchester
United soccer matches before the end of the current English football
season. (James Robinson)  
The Chinese Channel will start on Astra transponder 71 in MPEG-2 from
December 15. (James Robinson)
QVC Germany has started on Astra transponder 52. (James Robinson and
"SATCO DX Chart Update")
FLEXTECH--TCI's British subsidiary Flextech has shaken up some of the
channels it owns and operates. With a greater emphasis on telephone-
based competitions and games, the Family Channel will change its name
to Challenge TV from February 1. Meanwhile, the Children's Channel is
moving some programming over to UK Living. "Tiny Living" will be a new
programming block aimed at pre-schoolers. Playboy TV is also to extend
its broadcasting hours by signing on at 23:30 hrs every night. Bravo
will extend its schedule until 06:00 hrs, when EBN takes over the
transponder. ("Tele-satellit News")
EUTELSAT--The German women's channel TM3 is no longer broadcasting on
Eutelsat II-F1, 11.638 GHz. (Richard Karlsson, "Aftonbladet")
Bloomberg TV France has started broadcasts on Eutelsat II-F2, 11.575
GHz, 6.60 MHz. The Bosnian station BHT has moved to 11.080 GHz, where
Europe by Satellite is found during the day. (Richard Karlsson,
"Aftonbladet")
The Polish RTL 7 has started official service on Hot Bird 1 on 11.489
GHz. ("SATCO DX Chart Update") MCA Inc. has reached agreement to buy
50 percent of RTL 7 from Luxembourg's CLT. MCA says it will provide
both first-run and library programming, and will create two Universal
banded programming blocks, consisting of movie and action-adventure
themes. (Reuters)
Hot Bird 2 was testing at 29 degrees East on 11.785 and 11.843 GHz, on
December 3. It is now moving towards its final location alongside
Eutelsat II-F1 and Hot Bird 1 at 13 degrees East, where it is expected
to start official transmissions on December 20. ("SATCO DX Chart
Update") The widely publicised stop at 29 degrees was part of a
campaign by Eutelsat to keep rival Astra away from that position,
which Astra is planning to use for its second generation digital
satellite. ("Tele-satellit News")
TELEPIU--According to the Italian daily "La Repubblica", German media
magnate Leo Lirch is planning to sell his 45 percent stake in the
Italian pay-TV network Telepiu to Canal Plus, which already owns 45
percent inherited from Nethold after the merger between the two
companies. The deal could take place at the beginning of next year,
and in exchange Kirch would receive the 32.5 percent stake in the
German pay-TV channel Premiere which is held by Canal Plus. Since
Kirch already has a 25 percent share of Premiere, this means he would
be able to control Germany's only pay-TV network (and open the door to
a previous deal giving a share of Premiere to Rupert Murdoch's News
Corp, which had been blocked by Canal Plus and the other owner,
Bertelsmann). ("Tele-Satellit News")
RADIO--Radio Free Europe and Voice of America are no longer on
Eutelsat II-F1, 11.095 GHz (RTL 2). (Richard Karlsson, "Aftonbladet")
Belgium's Radio Vlaanderen Internationaal is cutting some foreign
language programming, beginning in November 1997. German, Spanish, and
Arabic will disappear, leaving only English and French, along with
Flemish. The reasons are to save money and to expand broadcasts in
Flemish, following protests from Flemish listeners outside of Belgium.
(Herman Boel, DX Antwerp)
ORION--C-SPAN is broadcasting to Europe for a few hours a day on Orion
1 on 12.585 GHz. ("SATCO DX Chart Update")
AFRICA/MIDDLE EAST:
TURKEY--TRT International has started on Turksat 1C, Eastern beam,
10.975 GHz. ("SATCO DX Chart Update")
ARABSAT--Star Sports was on Arabsat 1C, 3.811 GHz, in PAL, between
December 2 and 8. 
Kuwait TV has started on Arabsat 2A 12.646 GHz. Abu Dhabi TV has
started on 4.075 GHz. ("SATCO DX Chart Update")
INTELSAT--The Orbit Satellite Network digital package is on Intelsat
705, in MPEG-1.5 (?) in the Ku-band. ("SATCO DX Chart Update")
ASIA/PACIFIC:
MEASAT--The recently launched Measat 2 is now located at 148 degrees
--- NetMgr 1.00.g4+
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