Chris Blount
04-25-02, 06:19 AM
This is rather interesting
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Satellite Firm SES Looks for Entry into U.S. Market
SES Global SA, the 800-pound gorilla among European satellite operators, today will announce a novel but risky bid to jump into the U.S. direct-to-home broadcast market, Thursday's Wall Street Journal reported.
SES proposes to eventually beam hundreds of channels of entertainment potentially reaching millions of American homes -- the first time U.S. customers are served from a foreign-licensed satellite. The initiative, which seeks to replicate its profitable European business model, envisions offering consumers a more flexible range of programming and pricing than do current U.S. satellite TV operators: Hughes Electronic Corp.'s DirecTV and EchoStar Communications Corp.'s (DISH) Dish Network.
This business model, which also features fast Internet access, hasn't been tested in the U.S. and will require SES to forge partnerships with content providers who will then market their programming in ways that won't interfere with any existing deals with DirecTV and Dish. However, SES could face an uphill fight to snare new content or entice programmers away from those systems. The content providers will have to do the brunt of the marketing.
But SES does have a track record. Serving as a wholesaler of satellite capacity by creating an "open" platform accessible to many different programmers able to tailor offerings to targeted consumers is at the heart of SES's profitable European service, which reaches about 87 million homes. The company counts heavyweights such as Viacom Inc., News Corp. and Vivendi Universal SA among its media partners.
The timing of the move, expected to be announced at an industry conference in Carmel, Calif. , is canny. Entrenched U.S. rivals, Hughes and EchoStar, which package and directly market all of their broadcast offerings, will find it hard to strenuously object to competition from SES. That is because they are in the midst of executing a merger (news - web sites) agreement that has met with substantial antitrust concerns.
The move underscores the aggressive strategy of Luxembourg 's SES, which is publicly traded on European exchanges, and which plans to expand its services into North and South America and Asia.
SES Americom, the company's U.S. unit based in Princeton , N.J. , is prepared initially to invest about $250 million to launch a new satellite aimed exclusively at the U.S. market. Dean Olmstead, the unit's chief executive, won't identify potential content providers. But he says SES has gotten an "extremely favorable reaction" from some big players.
-----------------------------------------------
Satellite Firm SES Looks for Entry into U.S. Market
SES Global SA, the 800-pound gorilla among European satellite operators, today will announce a novel but risky bid to jump into the U.S. direct-to-home broadcast market, Thursday's Wall Street Journal reported.
SES proposes to eventually beam hundreds of channels of entertainment potentially reaching millions of American homes -- the first time U.S. customers are served from a foreign-licensed satellite. The initiative, which seeks to replicate its profitable European business model, envisions offering consumers a more flexible range of programming and pricing than do current U.S. satellite TV operators: Hughes Electronic Corp.'s DirecTV and EchoStar Communications Corp.'s (DISH) Dish Network.
This business model, which also features fast Internet access, hasn't been tested in the U.S. and will require SES to forge partnerships with content providers who will then market their programming in ways that won't interfere with any existing deals with DirecTV and Dish. However, SES could face an uphill fight to snare new content or entice programmers away from those systems. The content providers will have to do the brunt of the marketing.
But SES does have a track record. Serving as a wholesaler of satellite capacity by creating an "open" platform accessible to many different programmers able to tailor offerings to targeted consumers is at the heart of SES's profitable European service, which reaches about 87 million homes. The company counts heavyweights such as Viacom Inc., News Corp. and Vivendi Universal SA among its media partners.
The timing of the move, expected to be announced at an industry conference in Carmel, Calif. , is canny. Entrenched U.S. rivals, Hughes and EchoStar, which package and directly market all of their broadcast offerings, will find it hard to strenuously object to competition from SES. That is because they are in the midst of executing a merger (news - web sites) agreement that has met with substantial antitrust concerns.
The move underscores the aggressive strategy of Luxembourg 's SES, which is publicly traded on European exchanges, and which plans to expand its services into North and South America and Asia.
SES Americom, the company's U.S. unit based in Princeton , N.J. , is prepared initially to invest about $250 million to launch a new satellite aimed exclusively at the U.S. market. Dean Olmstead, the unit's chief executive, won't identify potential content providers. But he says SES has gotten an "extremely favorable reaction" from some big players.