Broadcasters busy<br /><br /><br />There's plenty of movement in the world of ethnic broadcasting.<br /><br />Mike Boulos, founder of the defunct ethnic pay TV group Television & Radio Broadcast Services (TARBS), is planning a new pay TV venture; regional pay TV group Austar has picked up TARBS's Italian and Greek channels; and Foxtel has been busy reassuring subscribers to its Italian and Greek channels that those services are secure.<br /><br />But despite all the activity, the word from TARBS's receivers, PricewaterhouseCoopers, is that nobody wants to buy TARBS's 60,000 subscribers in 14 different language groups across Australia.<br /><br />TARBS had been broadcasting its 65-channel service via satellites owned by PanAmSat. Last month, PanAmSat, TARBS's largest creditor, decided to appoint PwC as receivers to the group after two months of discussions with Mr Boulos to renegotiate an estimated $US2.4 million debt.<br /><br /><br />http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/25/1093246617936.html?oneclick=true

Thats good I knew that from day one, All this crap about Foxtel getting 12 ethnic channels, Austar getting 12 Ethnic channels, WMI getting 2 full transponders full, Globecast getting the works. None of the above has happened and they all expected Boulos to be dead and buried but they under estimated him to bounce back at all and definitely not so soon. As for Austar two channels well we all know who supplies them to Austar.<br />I can tell you this, UBI will be run lean and mean, transponder costs will be down using Telstar then switching to NSS 6 in the next few months, Optus B3 is heaps cheaper than pas 8 for the downlink to your homes and I can expect a huge saving in the uplinks in europe and what this will all mean is a greater chance of UBI succeeding and suppling more quality channels.<br /> <br /> <small>[ 26. August 2004, 10:34 AM: Message edited by: P Debono ]</small>