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Sat-ND, 27.10.96

Sat-ND 96-10-27 - Satellite and Media News

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"(c) Copyright 1996 by Sat-ND, http://www.sat-net.com/pck/"
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Sat-ND to
Peter C. Klanowski, Fax +49-451-5820055, pck@LyNet.De

This issue is sponsored by TELE-satellite, Europe's Satellite Magazine 
Have a look at their homepage! >> http://www.TELE-satellit.com/ <<


Here are some news from the last days that didn't make to the regular
Sat-ND issues, but of course some new stuff as well. -- Ed.


=========================================================

Bad news for Italian media mogul Berlusconi
Italian prosecutors said on Wednesday they expect to have evidence soon
proving that Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest paid the equivalent of US6.5
million to the former Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi. The material
consists of 15 boxes of Fininvest company documents that were found in
Great Britain during a raid on Fininvest's office in London last April. A
British court now approved their transfer to the Italian authorities.
Fininvest immediately appealed against the decision. [Do they have anything
to hide? -- Ed.]
The case against Berlusconi, not the first of its kind, was filed last
January. Prosecutors claim that 15 billion Lira were transferred to Craxi
in October 1991. A third of the sum was given back to Fininvest later for
reasons yet unknown. Craxi, also chairman of Italy's Socialist Party, fled
the country in 1994 and now lives in Tunisia. He already was jailed to 20
years in prison on other cases.

arte under attack again
There has been some more criticism on Franco-German TV channel arte, this
time from German politicians. A spokesman of the ruling conservative party
CDU complained about the fact that Frenchman Jérôme Clement was elected the
channel's president for the third consecutive time recently. According to
the channel's statute, he should have been replaced by a German two years
ago, CDU spokesman Anton Pfeifer claimed.
He criticised German public channels ARD and ZDF which voted for Clement,
demanding a tighter state control of the formally independent broadcasters.
Pfeifer claimed that "democratic self-control" of German pubcasters didn't
work anymore.
What he was actually talking about has not got much do to with democracy
but with the influence of the German government on a channel once set up by
leading politicians of France and Germany. Which, of course, still is the
channel's fundamental problem as there is no real public demand for it.

Surprise for d-box users
Various sources reported on Sunday that the d-box decoder used for Leo
Kirch's digital TV package DF-1 is suddenly capable of receiving at least
some digital SCPC transmissions as well. The new feature appeared after a
software update had recently been transmitted to the d-boxes in use. It is
unclear whether this is just a mistake or an attempt to make Kirch's
set-top box more attractive. If so, some channels using SCPC transmissions
might not be too happy about it and take other measures to make them become
invisible again. Usually, those channels are not intended to be watched by
individual viewers.

Re: Sat-ND, 23.10.96 [Traffic lights on French TV]
M6 has it for years now. Well, only the red square, but that kept 'em from
showing soft porn at prime time... Do I have to ask my parents as well?
[Definitely. But you shouldn't read adult material such as Sat-ND anyway.
Watch your local Disney channel instead.]
.... I got some Sat-ND twice instead.
[I thought that this particular issue got lost following a server
breakdown. Unfortunately it didn't, it just took 28 hours to get out :-( We
are not amused. -- Ed.]
Thomas M. Gmür 


Rupert Watch
By Dr Sarmaz <DrSarmaz@aol.com>

Jane Fonda on public access channels
The war of words between Ted Turner (Vice President of Time Warner as well
as its largest shareholder) and Rupert Murdoch, the world's first global
media mogul, has taken an unexpected turn.
Turner's wife, actress Jane Fonda, accused Mr Murdoch's Fox Network of not
showing her at Yankee Stadium with her husband during the match Atlanta
Braves v/s New York Yankees in the first game of the World Series. [I guess
that was a baseball match but I'm not sure. -- Ed.] 
Mrs Fonda also had some interesting thoughts on public access channels.
"It's appalling that they want to buy public channels in New York," she
said. "Public channels should be open to the public, not to patrons of the
mayor." Fonda pointed out that Donna Hanover Giuliani, wife of New York's
mayor, works as a part-time reporter for FOX's WNYW-TV in New York. "The
other networks are objective and Fox isn't," Fonda said according to Daily
News. "It's hard to think otherwise when his wife works for Rupert Murdoch
and he's gotten such considerable contributions from Rupert Murdoch."
New York City officials tried to use two public access channels to carry
Fox News Channels and Bloomberg TV on the New York cable network run by
Time Warner. However, they were temporarily blocked by a court injunction.
(Many thanks to Stephen Bjuvgård Edgell who sent me some material on this
subject.)


Zeroes and Ones
By Grandpa Zheng <http://www.sat-net.com/pck/zheng/>

AOL outsmarts spammers
"Junk email is the No. 1 complaint from our members," knows AOL chairman
and CEO Steve Case. His company has tried to shield members of their online
service from unsolicited mail but suffered a legal defeat recently. A judge
ruled last month that AOL must not indiscriminately block such messages
until the case is fully debated.
As a reaction, AOL last Thursday introduced a service called
"PreferredMail" that allows users to trash unwanted messages from
well-known junk-mailers automatically. The list of those spammers will be
continuously updated. 
The trick is that users will have the possibility to allow junk mail if
they are pervert enough. Leaving the final decision to their subscribers,
AOL will probably get around the pending legal battle.

MSNBC launches toolkit
MSNBC, the joint venture of NBC and Microsoft, has introduced two Internet
tools that will keep users up to date with whatever they're interested in.
News Offline will gather news to be read later while News Alert is a tool
that checks the MSNBC site for breaking news. All this stuff seems to be
free, so why not have a look at
http://www.msnbc.com/toolkit.asp


=========================================================
Copyright 1996 by Peter C. Klanowski, pck@LyNet.De. All rights reserved.

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