Free services fuel mobile TV

Fast uptake of free-to-air mobile TV services in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe is breathing new life into the ailing mobile TV broadcasting market, chip firm Telegent Systems said, according to Reuters.

Mobile television broadcasting, the hottest new feature for cellphones only a few years ago, has been widely picked up by consumers in Japan and South Korea, where more than 90% of global mobile TV viewers live.

Telegent says it has shipped 50 million mobile TV chips - controlling more than half of the mobile TV market, which analysts see at around 80 million.

The BBC Trust claims regional commercial television news could be funded by selling off broadcasting spectrum rather than using a share of the licence fee, says the Guardian.

The BBC Trust chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, says harnessing the value of the broadcast spectrum that becomes available in 2014 could bring in £130 million (R1.6 billion) a year from commercial operators.

The BBC's proposals were set out in the trust's response to the government's Digital Britain report, which proposed setting up a new contestable fund using the slice of the licence fee currently reserved for the digital switchover help scheme to provide top-up funding for news consortiums.

The Independent Network News (INN) radio broadcaster in Dublin, Ireland, closed this week due to a dramatic fall in advertising revenue, reports RTE News.

INN chief executive John O'Connor says it was no longer financially viable. 'It is with great regret that we informed staff of the decision of the board of INN to cease trading due to a collapse in advertising revenue, our primary source of income, from the first quarter of this year.”

Local radio must comply with a 20% news content condition under the terms of licences granted by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. The closure of INN will present difficulty to the stations to meet their obligations under the news requirement conditions.