The British Broadcasting Corporation and Discovery Communications have reached an agreement making BBC news material available on Discovery?s analogue cable channels in the US - The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel (TLC), Animal Planet, The Travel Channel and the Discovery Health Channel.

According to the agreement, Discovery has the right to showcase BBC news programmes that deal with the US war on terrorism. Also included in the deal is the news magazine - Newsnight - and evening newscasts.

The ball started rolling when after the events of 11 September through Discovery?s use of BBC World?s programmes on TLC. The two companies have collaborated on five programmes since then on current world events.

Radyne ComStream, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Armer Communications Engineering Services (ACES), has bagged a contract worth $1.1 million with leading sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports. This is to support a digital television uplink facility in Singapore.

Bob Fitting, CEO Radyne ComStream said: "This project demonstrates our continued success in providing professional turnkey solutions for the video broadcast industry while adding Radyne ComStream equipment content."

Radyne ComStream designs, manufactures and markets satellite Internet-infrastructure equipment, satellite broadband modems, multicasting receivers, and ancillary products for digital TV, data and telephone service. Through the Tiernan subsidiary the company supplies HDTV and SDTV encoding and transmission equipment.

The Ramoji Rao owned Eenadu Television Network is all set to launch six new regional language channels next month. Interestingly, each of these will speak a different dialect. There are separate channels for Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan, apart from channels in Oriya and Gujarati.

The network already has Telugu, Bangla, Marathi, Kannada and Urdu channels in its kitty. ETV Telugu was launched in 1995, followed by ETV Bangla in May 2000, ETV Marathi in June and ETV Kannada in December. The Urdu channel was launched as a 24-hour free-to-air digital channel on 15 August this year for which programming content had been built up for more than one and a half years.

ETV publicity head A Vishwambar Rao says the same meticulous preparation has gone into the building of programming software for the six channels that are to be launched next month. The new channels will follow a similar programming pattern as the existing ones. This entails a fair mix of entertainment and information with hourly news updates, telefilms, family dramas, daily soaps, devotional and musical programmes.

Most of the network?s programmes are produced in house, at the state of the art Ramoji Rao Studios in Hyderabad. Programming for the four ?Hindi-belt? channels - ETV-MP, ETV-UP, ETV-Bihar and ETV-Rajasthan - has been organised in such a way that all four will air the same shows in the prime time band. The channels will have their own programming for the rest of the slots, according to Rao.

Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company Limited (AsiaSat) and GlobeCast have signed a new lease agreement for half of a 36 MHz C-band transponder on AsiaSat 2. GlobeCast will take up additional C-band capacity on AsiaSat 2, to be used by Satlink Communications, one of the largest satellite service providers in the Middle East region.

Satlink Communications uses the AsiaSat 2 capacity to launch a multiple channels per carrier platform for the transmission of five digital television channels to Japan and the rest of Asia.

AsiaSat 2, a Lockheed Martin Series 7000 model, carries 20 36 MHz and four 72 MHz C-band, as well as nine 54 MHz Ku-band linearised transponders. Its C-band footprint covers 53 countries embracing Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Australasia and the CIS. AsiaSat 2 also has a high-power Ku beam serving the Greater China region, Korea and Japan.

AsiaSat claims to be Asia?s leading provider of high-quality satellite services to both the broadcast and telecommunications markets. AsiaSat serves telecommunications customers for public telephone networks, private VSAT networks and high speed Internet and multimedia services.

GlobeCast is a global leader in professional broadcasting and Internet delivery via satellite. It offers a one-stop shop source for full range of broadcast and Internet-driven services, from mobile newsgathering and event coverage, to studio production and post-production, DBS and DTH transmission, IP multicasting and two-way satellite Internet connectivity.

Satlink specialises in operating and installing video and audio satellite transmission systems. With 17 antennas for reception and 7 earth stations for uplink, Satlink is one of the largest satellite service providers in the Middle East region.