WorldSpace Corporation, which claims to be the global pioneer in satellite audio and multimedia services, has inaugurated three new channels.

Orbit Rock features classic rock and roll from the late 1960s, 70s and 80s from artists like Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and The Who. Orbit Rock will also highlight music from more recent times. The Hop highlights great hits from the 1950s and 60s, the era when rock and roll was born. Oyeme! is the WorldSpace tropical music channel offering beats of Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, Cumbia, and the latest in Latino Dance Mixes. It features top 40 Latin music with emphasis on the Tropical music genre and will be hosted in English.

The channels are exclusive to the WorldSpace system and can only be heard by using a WorldSpace satellite audio receiver. The three new services are the latest additions to an existing line-up of a variety of WorldSpace music channels that range from jazz to classical music and pop to country. They complement a diverse group of brand name broadcast partners such as Swiss Radio and Leman Telecommunications that have recently signed on with WorldSpace to broadcast via the AfriStar and AsiaStar satellites.

WorldSpace, a media company, broadcasts satellite audio, data and multimedia content to Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The WorldSpace satellite network consists of three geostationary satellites: AfriStar, AsiaStar and AmeriStar.

Bangladesh‘s first private television channel and only independent station Ekushey Television, better known as ETV, is teetering on the brink of closure.

On a charge made by individuals supporting the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party that the station did not win its license fairly during the regime of the earlier government, the court has granted it a five week reprieve to make a last ditch appeal. If ETV fails to convince the court that the license was not obtained unfairly during the Awami League‘s rule, the channel may well have to shut shop, leaving several hundred employees in the lurch.
The legal action that has lasted several months, resulted in the Supreme Court rejecting ETV‘s leave to appeal petition and upholding the high court division verdict issued on 27 March that the licensing agreement between the government and ETV was illegal. The plaintiffs had said that ETV failed to fill in the correct documentation at the time of getting its permit ahead of rival bids and had secured its license by assuring favours to those in power at the time.

Three years ago, the channel commenced broadcast as both a terrestrial and a satellite channel. In 2000, a petition was filed against it by members sympathetic to the governing coalition led by the BNP. It questioned the manner in which ETV topped the list of parties when international bids were invited for setting up a private television channel in the country in 1998.

Lawyers for the station, which is backed by the American banking firm Citicorp, have argued that if the licensing process is found to be defective, it can be replaced by another. Citicorp has invested over 100 million Tk in the venture.