Veteran TV executive Sam Barnett is stepping down as CEO of top Middle East broadcaster and streamer MBC Group and Mike Sneesby, former CEO of Australia’s Nine Entertainment, has been appointed his successor.
Barnett, who led MBC for more than 20 years in two separate stints, has been instrumental to MBC becoming a major Middle East player in both the linear and streaming spheres.
Barnett is joining PPF Group’s Central European Media Enterprises as its Prague-based CEO. CME runs 46 TV channels in six Central and Eastern European countries – Croatia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Slovakia and Slovenia – as well as streaming service Voyo.
Sneesby left Nine Entertainment, which spans TV, streaming and newspapers, in September 2024 following months of turmoil including the passing of a staff no confidence motion against him and the group’s board of directors.
Sneesby was previously co-founder of Australian streamer Stan and its CEO from 2015.
Sneesby’s appointment to lead MBC Group comes as the Saudi-owned group is on a growth trajectory after floating a 10% stake on the Riyadh stock exchange at the end of 2023 and gaining increasing traction on its streaming side.
Been a while since I posted here, so here’s some happenings around South America…
Canal 13 in Chile updated their arch symbol from 2018 across their TV, radio and online offerings. It’s designed by local agency Feels.
The rebrand occurred before their 9pm news, T13, which had a new symbol unveiled but not yet adopted to their bulletins or streamer.
13C, the cable cultural channel, slightly updated their 2024 identity with the new symbol. Preferred this over the main channel for incorporating different materials beyond glossy models:
Meanwhile, the rainbow gradient palette was reintroduced to TV Globo for their 60th anniversary. It had been a core part of their identity before the big rebrand in 2021.
Staying in Europe…
BR, the ARD local broadcaster in Southeast Germany, finally rolled out their new corporate symbol to their TV channel (after debuted for their 75th anniversary last year).
The idents are very BBC1-esque with the perspective/shape on live action footage, but a nice touch in incorporating the diamonds (which are part of the state flag) in some of them.
3 years after the debut of the new branding system, the NRK TV channels finally utilized elements from the Anti project - as in using the formup animation and colour schemes, but the promo endboards in particular look different from the original design. A lot of the existing (old) elements retained too - the clock, the in-vision continuity, and quite a big push to their radio offerings on NRK2!
Not much changed on NRK Super though.
And the trend of governments s**tting over public broadcasters continues… Dutch public broadcaster NPO got their upcoming budget cut for 156 billion Euros, with restructuring of the membership system suggested.
They currently have 11 members targeting different demos and genres, plus two task-based ones; the government wants more mergers in the former, and cut the cultural/information/educational TV provider NTR in the next few years.
Employees protested in front of the NPO headquarters last month, in addition to member broadcasters airing bumpers that directed viewers to a petition supporting Dutch public broadcasting from late March to mid-April.
CKSA/CITL in Lloydminster, Alberta, have shut down. Stingray are blaming economics for this one. Their sister radio stations are still going.
CKSA was the CBC station for the area, then switching to Global and then CityTV. CITL was the CTV station.
Final newscast can be found at youtube.com/ watch?v= f9dKZPaAerw.
The CRTC should really start allowing twinsticks to operate a multiplexed broadcast, it might not have saved these, but would cut the transmission costs.
Even the CBC has to put ICI Tele on a separate frequency, which just makes no sense.
They’re too beholden to the interests of the cable companies.
Seeing quite a bit of chatter on YouTube regarding ATSC 3.0 in the states. Someone else here might be more knowledgeable on this than I am.
It’s being rolled out progressively in the states. ATSC 3.0 compared to 1.0 allows for more channels in higher quality - 1080p I believe, some channels to be streamed with DRM and some via the web. Sinclair is leading the charge, basically because it has finacnal stakes in the technical side of things.
They’ve lost the battle now Bell owns CTV and Rogers own City.
It seems like it’s a bit of a mess really - they haven’t really gotten past just the Lighthouse stations carrying duplicated versions of the primary channels, there’s very little if any unique content, and some of that is for example having a channel number for a streaming Pickleball channel.
And what is there, the DRM mechanism is for a lot of sets requiring them to be internet connected, ruining the one benefit of over the air TV. In theory they can provide decryption keys over the air, but lots of receivers don’t seem to support that.
The DRM also introduces a channel change delay while flipping, because it has to catch up to the decryption point to do so.
The benefits are ATSC 3.0 can squeeze double (ish) the bandwidth out of a 6MHz channel - to something around 30-34Mbps, and it moves the US over to newer codecs, with them jumping from MPEG-2 to HEVC in one go.
It’s got the chicken and egg content problem that Australia had before we relaxed the multichannel rules - no one was buying digital just for picture quality.
Another Canadian TV station has since closed - CHAT-TV (great callsign) in Medicine Hat Alberta has closed a few weeks ago for much the same reasons as the Lloydminster stations.
Just reading up on the station and it seems it was still transmitting in analogue and didn’t even transmit a digital signal. The reasoning was the area was not classed as a so called “mandatory market” for digital conversion.
The deal, which kicks off in (French) summer 2026, will include TF1’s French free-to-air channels as well as its TF1+ streaming offerings.
The distribution agreement deepens the collaboration between TF1 and Netflix, which already co-produce series together, including Les Combattantes, L’Agence and Tout le bleu du ciel.
that’s huge! Gamechanging deal
VOD and live streams of TF1’s suite of commercial linear channels all on Netflix France.
Imagine if that hapepns globally,
Does Stan carry live feeds of Nine’s suite of channels, and Para+ carry all 10’s?